Endurance...

Spoke at a DNow this weekend. Been a couple years since I've been a part of a weekend like this. It was fun...tiring, but fun.

The topic for the weekend was endurance. The youth pastor really wanted to combat this reality that so many students/young adults abandon church and their faith. I shared with them that it seemed to me there were two primary reasons for this. The first is the fault of those that mentor them or journey ahead of them. We must be communicating faith as irrelevant or childish. They seem to embrace it when they're young. They rush back when they have kids. What is it about those years in between that make God seem so out of touch with where we are?

The second has to do with the fact that the journey isn't always pretty. So many TV preachers give us the idea that faith is a joy ride. Well where the hell is the joy ride? I feel like this topic fit my life. Some days all I feel like I'm doing is holding on. Other days I've let go completely and chosen me over God. It's not always a great ride.

Many days it's hard. Many days in the last 5 years I find myself sitting and wondering where God is. In my head I know God is still right beside me, but I sure wish I had some evidence of God's presence. I start to get frustrated - with God, with myself, with the world around me.

As I taught this weekend, I found myself on the stories in the Bible that look more like mine than I often want to admit. Moses started with an amazing call but when through hell before getting the people to the edge of the Promised Land. Joseph has a mighty dream. The next few years aren't so pretty - beat up, sold, falsely accused, imprisoned. Only to end up the number two man in Egypt. David was called out by Samuel. He would one day lead the people of God rather than the sheep of his father. But he spent the next 13 years hiding from Saul in caves.

How much easier would it have been for all of them to quit? How much easier would it be for us to quit? But what about the end game? What about the call place on our lives and in our hearts? God has created us to do mighty things. If we don't fight through the "middles" we never make it to the dream.

God's dreams for me are even greater than my own!!

He will continue the work he has begun in me!