The Glory Being Revealed To Us

In Romans 8:18, Paul describes the future of those who persevere in the faith: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” in The Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkein provides a stirring image of this glory at the death of the great king Aragorn (that is, after his life-long struggle against the evil forces in Middle Earth, and his own personal demons):

Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him in wonder; for they saw that the grace of his youth, and the valour of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world.

The idea here is that the same thing will happen to those who place their faith in Jesus Christ. We are, in the words of C.S. Lewis, “no mere mortals.”

Stuart Strachan Jr. , Source material from J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings (New York: Ballantine, 1955), 378.

In the sport of cycling, one of the most important things necessary to be successful in a race is the ability to manage the timing of when “to burn a match.” This is a phrase that all bike racers know and refers to when one must put in a big effort to either stay with the pack, get up a hill, or to break away at a key moment. Knowing when to “burn a match” is critical because in any given race, one only has so many “matches to burn!” If you were to do any entire race going your hardest at every moment in that race, then it would be impossible to make it all the way to the finish line, little alone to win. Thus, knowing when and how hard to go at any given point in a race is constantly on your mind and after every big effort, the anxious thoughts begin: “How many more of those efforts do I have? What happens if there’s a hill around the next corner? How many miles until the finish line? I’ve got to take it easy if I’m going to make it to the finish!”

However, if you could somehow line up on the start line of a race knowing that you were going to win no matter what happens on the road, all anxiety over when to “burn a match” would suddenly disappear. There would be no need to manage your physical resources or monitor how hard you are going. You could just go all out any time you wanted, free of any worry that your investment of effort would go to waste or put your race in jeopardy.

This is just like serving the coming King Jesus. We can have to confidence to use whatever we have for His kingdom and His glory in the knowledge and assurance that He is returning, that we live for another Kingdom, and that no investment for Him goes to waste.

Jeff Volkmer

Save Only Plenty

The author John Steinbeck once wrote a letter to the politician Adlai Stevenson, which was later published in the Washington Post in January of 1960. In it Steinbeck said, “A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick.”

Stuart Strachan Jr., Source Material from Richard Halverson, Perspective, 24 June 1987.

Remember it Ends

I saw a live podcast a few weeks ago, and the host, actor Dax Shepherd, gave the audience a couple minutes to ask questions. One young woman in the front row asked him, “How do you get through the hard times in life?” Dax didn’t even pause. He looked her right in the eyes and said, “Just remember it always ends.

You never get on a roller coaster and think, This is so fun, I will be here forever. The best things end, and so do the worst things. This will end.”1 I thought that was a profound and very tangible example for when we forget that the bad days don’t last forever and that the good days don’t last forever either.

Annie F. Downs, That Sounds Fun: The Joys of Being an Amateur, the Power of Falling in Love, and Why You Need a Hobby, Revell, 2021.

A Rough Start to Ministry

Pastor Craig Groeschel shares the true story of his “less than promising” career as a pastor. It should serve as a reminder that rejection and criticism are never final, unless we allow them to be:

Only weeks after putting my faith in Jesus, I tried to teach my first Bible study to a group of young guys in a little church in Ada, Oklahoma. Afterward the leader of the youth group said, “Well, I guess teaching the Bible is not your gift, is it?” Three years later I finally got up the nerve to try teaching the Bible again, after being asked to preach my first sermon.

After the service, as I stood at the door saying goodbye to church members, an older gentleman looked at me with a raised brow and remarked, “Nice try.” Nice try?! The next lady in line asked if I had any other skills besides being a preacher and then made a weak attempt to encourage me to keep my options open. Seriously, that really happened.

I had to fight off the temptation to run and hide in the church baptistry. And yes, full immersion! Despite yet another setback, still believing God’s call, I continued my journey toward full-time vocational ministry by going to seminary following college and marriage.

About halfway through seminary, the day finally came when I stood before a group of spiritual leaders as a candidate for ordination in our denominational church. With the entire committee looking on, the spokesperson explained to me, “We’ve chosen not to ordain you. You don’t have the gift-mix we see in most pastors. In fact, we are not sure you are called to be a pastor. But feel free to try again next year. But for now, it’s a no.”

Craig Groeschel, Winning the War in Your Mind, Zondervan, 2021.

Who Do They Think We Are?

The day after Christmas would normally have been a quiet day in Washington, D.C., above all on Capitol Hill. But December 26, 1941, was different. It was only nineteen days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and both the Senate chamber and the overflow gallery were packed to hear British Prime Minister Winston Churchill address a joint session of the United States Congress.

With the Capitol ringed by police and soldiers, the lectern bristling with microphones, and the glare of unusually bright lights in the chamber for the film cameras, Churchill started his thirty-minute address with a light touch. “If my father had been an American,” he said, “and my mother British, instead of the other way around, I might have gotten here on my own. In that case this would not have been the first time you would have heard my voice.”

Churchill then rose to his central theme. Britain was standing alone, but reeling. Most of Europe lay prostrate under the Nazi heel. Hitler was well on his way to Moscow. Half of the American Navy was at the bottom of the Hawaiian harbor, and there was little or no air force to rise to the nation’s defense. He therefore delivered a stern denunciation of the Japanese and the German menace, and warned about “the many disappointments and unpleasant surprises that await us” in countering them.

At the heart of the prime minister’s address was a famous question to his listeners in light of the Japanese aggression: “What kind of a people do they think we are? Is it possible that they do not realize that we shall never cease to persevere against them until they have been taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget?”‘

Taken from A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future by Os Guinness Copyright (c) 2013 by Os Guinness. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

Becoming a King

When you purchase a game of checkers, you’ll notice that on the top of each piece is the insignia of a crown. That is because each checker was created to become a king. Once it is crowned because it has successfully made it to the other side of the board, it will have the right and authority to maneuver and function at a much higher level than it could prior to being crowned.

The reality is, however, that most individual checkers will not successfully make it to the other end of the board to be crowned, because the opposition will jump them and knock them out of the game. Whether a checker achieves its created goal of being crowned as a king is fully determined by the moves that are made underneath the hand of the one controlling it.

Tony Evans, Kingdom Men Rising: A Call to Growth and Greater Influence, Bethany House Publishers, 2021.

Elephants Chains’ and Self-Limiting Beliefs

Have you ever wondered how people keep elephants, whether at a circus or as means of transport throughout Asia, from throwing off their shackles and marching to their own tune? A single metal chain is wrapped around one foot and fastened to a tiny post is able to hold them in place. Any elephant held in place like this could easily rip the stake out of the ground and be on their merry way. But they don’t, and so their caretakers can comfortably leave these giants chained up as long as necessary, even though a simple pull of the chain would grant them instant freedom.

So why do these massive creatures allow themselves to be chained up so easily? The answer, it turns out, has everything to do with the way these elephants are raised. You see, when they are young, their trainers begin tying them up, and at that age, they will pull and pull but without success. Eventually the trainer gets the elephants to accept their chains and for most of them, that’s the end of the story. 

Except…when it’s not. Occasionally, an elephant will become so agitated that it will pull hard on the stake and its chains will immediately be released. The chains of an elephant provide an apt analogy for our lives. We often develop, either internally or from others, “limiting beliefs.” Limiting beliefs keep us bound to ways of life that are either unhealthy or unhelpful. But occasionally, something might cause us to throw off our shackles, lose our limiting beliefs, and pursue a life of flourishing

Stuart Strachan Jr.

Keeping a Good [Hu]man Down

Martin Luther King, Jr. was right: We can overcome, despite adversity, the trend toward mediocrity, and the temptation to rationalize our weaknesses. You simply cannot keep a good person down.

Cripple him, and you have a Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in a prison cell, and you have a John Bunyan.

Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington.

Raise him in abject poverty, and you have an Abraham Lincoln.

Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes a Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Burn him so severely that the doctors say he’ll never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham—who set the world’s one-mile record in 1934.

Deafen him and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven.

Have him or her bom black in a society filled with racial Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a Marian Anderson, a George Washington Carver, or a Martin Luther King, Jr.

Call him a slow learner, “retarded,” and write him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.

Quoted in Ted W. Engstrom, The Pursuit of Excellence (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 1982)

Save Only Plenty

The author John Steinbeck once wrote a letter to the politician Adlai Stevenson, which was later published in the Washington Post in January of 1960. In it Steinbeck said, “A strange species we are. We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick.”

Stuart Strachan Jr., Source Material from Richard Halverson, Perspective, 24 June 1987.

A Rough Start to Ministry

Pastor Craig Groeschel shares the true story of his “less than promising” career as a pastor. It should serve as a reminder that rejection and criticism are never final, unless we allow them to be:

Only weeks after putting my faith in Jesus, I tried to teach my first Bible study to a group of young guys in a little church in Ada, Oklahoma. Afterward the leader of the youth group said, “Well, I guess teaching the Bible is not your gift, is it?” Three years later I finally got up the nerve to try teaching the Bible again, after being asked to preach my first sermon.

After the service, as I stood at the door saying goodbye to church members, an older gentleman looked at me with a raised brow and remarked, “Nice try.” Nice try?! The next lady in line asked if I had any other skills besides being a preacher and then made a weak attempt to encourage me to keep my options open. Seriously, that really happened.

I had to fight off the temptation to run and hide in the church baptistry. And yes, full immersion! Despite yet another setback, still believing God’s call, I continued my journey toward full-time vocational ministry by going to seminary following college and marriage.

About halfway through seminary, the day finally came when I stood before a group of spiritual leaders as a candidate for ordination in our denominational church. With the entire committee looking on, the spokesperson explained to me, “We’ve chosen not to ordain you. You don’t have the gift-mix we see in most pastors. In fact, we are not sure you are called to be a pastor. But feel free to try again next year. But for now, it’s a no.”

Craig Groeschel, Winning the War in Your Mind, Zondervan, 2021.

Related Themes

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Adversity

Challenges

Endurance

Problems

Resilience

& Many More