It should be baseball season right now but under the most recent circumstances it has been delayed. When
I think back to when I played if there was one thing that I hated most of all it was early season baseball practices that only consisted of conditioning. Just the thought of running makes me queasy and in many of these practices that is ALL that we did! We were doing laps and sprints here, there, and everywhere. I couldn’t stand it! I couldn’t understand why we weren’t moving onto throwing the ball, hitting, or running (ONLY) when absolutely necessary. Well, as you know and as I learned, my coaches had a purpose in all of this.
They were preparing us for a long season. They were readying us, strengthening us, and enabling us to play the game without growing tired or weary. We spent time on running (something I didn’t like, wasn’t pleasant, that I couldn’t understand and wouldn’t
plan for) in order to produce endurance.
Right now, we are all in the midst of an unplanned and unpleasant time. We just want to get on with it. We’re wrestling with questions like, “What is all of this for?” and “Why can’t this just be over?” Interestingly enough, those are the same questions I would be asking while running those laps in High School and College. “How long are we going to do this!?” It is good for us to take questions like these to God’s Word. It is there that we can be corrected, comforted, and find the help that we need. Listen to what James says in James 1:3-4, “Knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance…And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
We may want to move on to bigger, better, or at least more normal things but do not despise what God is doing and what He is producing within you through this time. He is preparing you. He is strengthening you. This trial is for your conditioning – so that you are lacking in nothing in your walk with Him. It is also to work in your right now and ready you for what is ahead. God desires that you would press on with endurance in this life until we are made perfect and complete in His presence! Let us not grow weary but keep running knowing that our God is at work for our good and His glory!
Running With You, Pastor Rudy