I’m Going to the Finish Line!

I read today in my feed of someone who is representing the United States in the Olympics, yet they don’t want to hear the national anthem played, believing it was an affront to them personally. I remember a time when I was barely 21 and I sat in protest when they gave the Pledge of Allegiance. I foolishly was protesting the very country that I lived in.

When we are young, we don’t always see the big picture. The years have shown me that cursing the hand that feeds you is counterproductive. While we may not like everything about every circumstance we find ourselves in, protesting in a pout won’t change the things we are reacting to.

I began to grow up when one day I asserted my militant self in a huff when my superior at a school I taught at issued a policy I didn’t like. I was so angry that I left that day fuming, trying to decide what I was going to do to prove that my viewpoint was right. It wasn’t long before the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said so clearly that I can still hear it today some forty years later. He said, “don’t throw out the baby with the bath water, this is how your children go to school!” I had temporarily forgot that my teaching at that private Christian school afforded my children the opportunity to go tuition-free; if I were to take my protest to the ultimate level (probably resulting in being let go), that I would also be taking them out of the school they loved.

Needless to say, I reconsidered both my temper and my actions. That day I realized that there was more than one way to fight a battle, and my way was not always the most expedient. Leaving the justice to God would be far more beneficial both for me and for my children. And of course God worked it out – eventually – after I had fully given it to Him.

This was not the only time my emotions rose above better judgement. I made a few more potentially fatal errors before I realized that the war was not fought with a single battle, it was necessary to go to the finish line:

You keep every promise you’ve ever made to me! Since your love for me is constant and endless, I ask you, Lord, to finish every good thing that you’ve begun in me! Psalm 138:8 (TPT)

Patient endurance of things that didn’t go my way brought me experience in finding out that God does keep eery promise that He made to me, and that it is my going through the process is even more important to Him than the promise!

I have learned (and am still learning) to quiet my raging. heart and trust God with the process, knowing that He is faithful who promised!

Maria