Day 25 - 40 Days of Prayer We Are The Champions The other day our youngest came home from school with a few pages with pencil drawings. Curious to know what that represents, I asked him what he drew there. He answered: “This is me playing, this is me riding the bike, this is me sleeping and this is me saving the world!” I have to confess: the last one took me by surprise! In the midst of the mundane things, he inserted “saving the world” as if this is just another thing any child his age has to deal with, every day. After I recovered from my 2 seconds wide-open-mouth stance, I managed to look at him. All I could see was an honest, large smile: he really believed what he said, no joke about it! In Matthew 19:14 Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these." Pure, strong faith seems to reside in these little children’s minds. They believe they can save the world, they believe they can be heroes, champions. The same kind of faith we need to have if we want to reach the Kingdom. We start with this kind of faith; we all dream of being heroes or champions, but then later on we “grow up” and graduate to certainty, “mature”, “well balanced perspective”. We drop our aspirations for greatness in the dust of this dull, colorless world and that’s where they rust and decay for a long time, maybe even until today. We start dreaming big but later, for some reason, we give up. “I tried but it doesn’t work”. Have you heard this before? Have you said something similar? There are times in life when we know exactly what’s the right thing to do, but then we give up with only “trying”. What happened with the big dream of saving the world? A hero, or a champion doesn’t only try. A hero, a champion doesn’t have a magic wand that makes things easy for him. He works hard. She sweats her way to the accomplishment of her goals. “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.” Says Beverly Sills, one of America’s most famous opera performers. Listen to what Ellen White, one of the Adventist pioneers says about what kind of heroes and champions this world needs and how they are made. “The greatest want of the world is the want of men—men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall. But such a character is not the result of accident; it is not due to special favors or endowments of Providence. A noble character is the result of self-discipline, of the subjection of the lower to the higher nature—the surrender of self for the service of love to God and man.” Education, p.57 “Not the result of accident”, “no special favors” – no magic wand, no easy way to glory. It is a result of training, of subjecting to the regimen of exercises, workouts and practices that will develop the strengths that we need in order to become champions. It is hard but it is worth it. Apostle Paul talks about how we can become God’s champions: “[…] work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Philippians 2:12-13 Do you want to be God’s champion? Do you want to be God’s hero? You can (re)start today. You can do it! He can help! Submit yourself to the discipline and the influence of the Holy Spirit.
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 13:08:35 +0000
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