Stay the Course


Galatians 6:9

“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”

This week’s focus is technically on physical health but it can be translated to any aspect of life. In your journey to living healthy, there will be seasons of growth, seasons of maintaining and even seasons where you feel like you are regressing from the progress that you made. The key thing in any of these phases of life is to stay the course. When things are getting hard, stay the course. When things are stressful, stay the course. Even when you need a break, stay the course. Do not give up or give in to the thoughts of quitting. Quitting on yourself will only make you feel worse about your current condition. Thoughts to give up only come from a want to be comfortable. However, that comfortability is a catalyst to regret and resentment. You owe it to yourself to remain faithful long enough to see results from your commitment. So if you haven’t seen results yet then DO NOT QUIT. Stay the course! 

One contributing factor to the want to quit is our perception. We focus heavily on the end result of things and rarely give thought to the process of getting there. Having been trained to only recognize huge chunks of change we minimize the truth of slow, incremental growth. Due to our lack of understanding of this process, it becomes easy to give up when things move slower than expected. We can quickly see how far away the goal is but fail to acknowledge how the little progress we make along the way helps us reach the goal. We have to learn to direct our focus on attainable goals along the way. For example, when going for jogs I often find a marker like a stop sign to aim for. Saying to myself you can stop once you make it there. Then once getting there saying to myself how easy it was and to keep going without a break until the next mark that I find for myself. The same thing must be done with any Goal. Make sure you set small attainable goals for yourself along the way to help keep you motivated for the small steps to success.

It’s important to also note that people don’t just give up because they want to. Giving up is the result of the pain of a slow process breaking your will to continue. In order to get through this, we HAVE to fall in love with or at least learn to enjoy “the process”. "The process" is the things that you have to do DAILY to receive the results that you are looking for.  Whatever your process may be, you have to learn to enjoy the grind that comes with that. If you are trying to be physically fit then you should learn to enjoy working out or eventually no driving force will be enough to get you to the gym. If you desire a closer relationship with Christ then you should enjoy prayer and spending time with God. If you don’t learn to enjoy the process then you will eventually learn to hate the very thing you said that you desired. Not because you aren’t trying hard enough or don't want it but because the process is never easy and no matter what you do there is no way around it. You must go THROUGH IT. The blessing in anything is never on the other side of the pain or storm. The real blessing is the strength and wisdom that is built through the testing of life. Stay your course and go through your process. 

To close I encourage you, just as I encourage myself. STAY THE COURSE! Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would give us the mindset to stay faithful to the things that you have called us to and that when we make up our minds to commit to something that you would give us the strength to stay on the course of commitment. I ask for endurance and peace along the way and that you would release your strength to your children. Most of all help us to find joy in our process. In Jesus name, I pray, Amen. 

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