Committed to the Cost.

It’s been a rough few months, but rather than talk about my situation and the miracle I’m praying for, I’m going to talk about the beautiful revelations that God has been speaking into my heart and life. I hope that you, too, can relate and see that even though we cannot always understand why things are the way they are, we are being held by the Creator of the earth who, if you just hold on, will work things out for something far greater than you and I could have ever imagined.

What I’ve learned in my twenty four years of living is that when you commit to something, you know it’s going to cost you something. It’s going to cost you time, relationships, your own desires, the list goes on, to reach the end goal. Have you ever started a diet and literally that very day, it’s as though the diet police called your boss and told them to bring in doughnuts to work? The worst. Am I right? But, if you made that choice to stay committed, no matter what, you would have the will power to say no and go chew on some lettuce in the break room. (Silly example, but you get the point.) So, in commitment to a relationship with Jesus Christ, we know that you have to give up some things in order to stay committed to the race. But, even more than that, you are going to have to go through some things. Will you stay committed, even when the going gets rough? It starts with a choice.

In Mark 14:32-42, we see Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, praying for the cup(his calling to save mankind) to be passed from him. The God of the universe, in his human flesh, prays for it to be taken away, because the pain is unbearable. Yet, because He had made the decision long ago to stay committed, he carried through with his decision, a decision that we will be eternally grateful for. I don’t know about you, but there have been times when I, too, have prayed, “God, would you just take this trial away? God, please let the brokenness in this season come to an end.” Other times, we pray, “God not my will, but yours be done.” What we fail to remember is the contradiction in the first set of prayers to the latter. If we are truly committed, we must remember that anointing comes with a cost. Don’t detest the season/trials that you are in. It is so easy to tune into the negative thoughts, the hopeless reports, the unanswered prayers and give so much of our attention to what is right in front of us. But, instead, God is reminding us to fixate our eyes on Him.

“So, we fixate our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:18

I’ve shared this verse so many times in my life, but it is my mantra when I can’t understand why things are the way they are. When my parents divorced when I was a teenager, when brokenness in the home became too heavy to bear, when emotional trauma left me empty handed, when my finances hit rock bottom, when loneliness hit me in the middle of the night, when my health became a concern, I cried out to God and begged, “Please, take this away from me. I don’t want to go through this. This isn’t fair.”

What I hadn’t realized through every one of these trials and through my most recent season of pain is that God was producing something within me, a testimony, that no one on earth will be able to take away from me. The truth is that sometimes we become broken so that others may experience the healing hand of God.

A few years ago, before my grandfather passed away, I received a letter in the mail from him. He always apologized for his letters being too long, but I always thought they weren’t long enough. In one of them, he beautifully wrote, “Uncertainty, Questions, Disappointments, Difficulties, yes, but I believe God is in it all to help mature us into what he has in mind for us…Joseph had his prison, Daniel had his Lion’s Den, David was hunted like an animal by Saul, yet all these were in God’s will+used by God.”

This past weekend, I heard a message that brought that letter to my mind. Bro. Michael Thomas said, “The purpose of Joseph’s prison was to bring pain, but it brought growth. The temporary pain you are experiencing is producing something eternal. Endure your prison. Something of eternal significance is being born in you while you are in that prison.”

This revelation is the game changer. It’s a perspective that changes everything. It can be easy to fixate our thoughts and our conversations on the disappointments and difficulties that we are facing, but instead of doing so, I encourage you to lift your eyes to Jesus. He does not waste pain. He is hoping that you will become a steward of the season that you are in and know that one day, you will be able to look back and see that if it hadn’t been for what you had been through, the dreams that God had placed in you would not have been fulfilled according to His perfect purpose.

I’ll leave you with this text that I sent to a friend today.
“God knows. He just knows. He knows my needs, my weaknesses, my strengths, what is going to be best for my ministry, down to the right doors that will open, the right relationships, the pain, the joy, the everything. To be known by a God who knows the beginning and end is an indescribable thing.”

It is an indescribable thing. It is the best thing. So, stay committed to the cost. I promise you that it is worth it.