By Odon Bulamba
Those who endure to the end will be
saved. Very simple sentence but you must
go to the end to be saved. Endurance
sometimes can be a challenge. Salvation
requires you to accept Jesus as your Saviour, as the Master of your life but
you have also to endure and it shouldn’t be for a short time but continuously
until the end.
Today, I’m sharing with you this sign of
the end of times that Jesus has given us, endurance. Endurance means to push yourself through a tough
time without giving up until the end.
It’s not a time of joy. When you
endure, you are not going to join a party, you feel suffering and bad, tired
but you know that when you reach the other side, you will gain something.
There are two categories of endurance. Some will endure without knowing what they
will gain at the end, an empty endurance.
The other endurance is where you know that if you reach the end, this is
what you will get from your work.
Endurance requires not only your physical
body but your mind and spirit. I’ve seen
in our world, many join the gym and there they tell you no pain, no gain. If you want to gain, you must accept
pain. Boys especially want to look
attractive with a six pack and muscles everywhere. My son, for example, pulls up his shirt to
show his six pack. For him to have that
is a glory but to get a six pack you must endure and persevere.
We pay to go to the gym. Maybe it will cost $10 per week and now it’s
up to you to use the machines that you have access to you. You now must work hard to reshape your
body. I’ve been going to gym for years
but shame on me when I look at my body and my clothes don’t fit anymore because
I don’t persevere, I don’t endure. This
morning I wanted to wear one of my nice shirts but after ironing it, the
buttons couldn’t close because I had gained too much weight.
I started to think, I’ve gained so much
weight. Oh well, I will use another shirt instead. I tried to tell myself it’s alright but
tomorrow, I will be even bigger. For the
first two days I go to the gym with courage to reach my target but then my arms
and legs are in pain and so I take a break and with revenge, I eat KFC and
other fatty foods that will kill me. Then
later I go back to the gym and then one week I stay home and then I go back to
the gym and then six weeks I don’t appear again.
My neighbour is also the member of my gym
and he was fat but now he has lost weight.
I asked him what is wrong, are you sick.
He said, “No I decided to lose weight”.
You must push your body and mind to decide and to keep that decision to
make the target.
You can have a target but if you don’t push
your body or mind to reach it, you have nothing. Those three things must work together.
When that time comes, it will be a time of
suffering but you have to push yourselves and tell your mind, “you must do
this, body you must do this,” and then you know what you will gain. We pray to God and worship him for a purpose
(1) a command from God (2) we must follow the rules to be in the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God is like a gym,
everything is here now and it’s up to you to work. The Holy Spirit is here as an instructor to
teach you how to use the machines. After
knowing how to use them, what do you do?
It’s a matter of decision.
I have made several bad decisions with the
gym by not going but they keep taking my money.
I feel bad but I can’t claim my money back. I can’t ask for a refund because I didn’t
go. If you don’t make any effort to work
hard you will wake up the next morning and time has passed and you will
discover that every day you have postponed your gym time. When you don’t go to the gym, what do you
do? Distraction, tv, out with friends
but when you hear someone has had a heart attack you are shocked, maybe because
they didn’t exercise.
How often do you exercise by reading the Bible? How often do you use what God has given you
to keep your shape in the Lord?
When we trained for cross country at
school, my father will encourage me to keep running, and I will say, “no I’m
tired, I’m not running”. My father can’t
run for me, I must decide to run. My
father is disappointed when I don’t run.
Then after running, I would ask for an icecream, “no you don’t deserve
it”. “I ran”. “No but you didn’t
persevere”. My father wanted me to learn
how to be among the best. Since I have
started to practice that in my life, that spirit of competition started to grow
in my life.
If someone can read the Bible, why can’t I
read it. If someone has been working,
why can’t I? if someone looks after
their body, why not me? We must accept
pain but if we want to gain without pain, we gain in a wrong way.
The life we are living, requesting to run
with Jesus, practising every time even when things are hard, we need to
remember to endure. It’s up to you to do
the job. How often do you endure for
your soul and spiritual life? When we
die, our bodies will remain down here on earth but our souls will go
somewhere. How healthy is my soul, how
often do I take care of my soul? Maybe I
don’t because I don’t care but God is saying, you must endure until the end not
just for a short time and then quit.
If you go to the end, that is the time that
you will be saved. Do you want to be
saved? Then go to the end. Do you want to be in the Kingdom of God? Then go to the end. God is so good, whenever we know something is
hard, He doesn’t hide from us. He opens
our mind to understand that it is hard but we should try. E.g. if press-ups are hard, then start with
one and then move to two on the next day but we always want everything at once
without hard work.
Ladies always look at other ladies and
comment how beautiful they look. Ladies
spend a lot of time on their faces, first looking at their eyebrows, then using
their tools to remove hair from their brows and then take a crayon to artistically,
nicely create nice eyebrows. Then their
hair. I have seen a lady walk into a
bathroom and don’t expect them to come out in five minutes. Once they step out, you can see the
difference and how hard they have been taking care of their bodies.
Men, we are supposed to say, wow, you look
so great. Teach us also to know how to
take care of ourselves. Women have a lot
of talents that we men don’t have. They
have patience to spend 10 minutes on eyebrows but I can’t do that. They will wear red lipstick to match a red
outfit. After doing that, they can come
out not to please themselves but for others to see, for the world to appreciate
how clean and beautiful they look.
We must do a proper make up for our souls
so that wherever we go, people will say, you have done a great job. If you want to be saved, don’t only say that Jesus
has given His life for me and that’s all I need, you also need to
exercise. Someone who never goes to the
gym will be weak compared to the one who goes every time.
As a student, we would study and then go to
the gym. The more you work physically,
the more you become mentally focused. We
can be twins but if you practise a lot and go to the gym and I don’t, our
bodies and abilities to do things will be different.
Whose fault is it, if I don’t
exercise? Can I blame anyone? Should I blame myself? Jesus is telling us clearly that we must
endure and if there is no endurance and you don’t find any obstacle in your
life it means that there is a problem in your life. Every Christian must face challenges and
temptations and tests. Your test can be
your children, friend, neighbours, family and even your tv.
I was born on 14 November. I decided this year to do nothing on that
day, to have a rest. Then I watched tv
for hours and my eyes told me it was enough but the program was so good, I told
my eyes to be quiet. Even now I feel
that I have a headache because I watched tv all day. I was watching Greenleaf. A pastor’s family with disorder in the church
and all is about money and glory.
I was watching episode after another to
discover what is next. I started at 9am
and I was still there at 5pm. I believed
it was a good day for me but it wasn’t, I should have spent the day with the Lord,
maybe I should have vacuumed for my health.
To watch tv is ok for a couple of hours but not all day focussing on
what is not necessary.
I endured to watch it but gained nothing,
waste of time. The Lord is telling us
that salvation is coming, if you endure, salvation is at the end. There are only two destinations, Kingdom of
God and the other is the opposite. If
you endure, you will end in the Kingdom of God but if you feel tired or lazy or
tell yourself you will do it next time, you will be shocked when Jesus tells
you, I don’t know you.
Why postpone things you should do
today? Once you go to gym daily without
stopping, it becomes a habit but if you give up, you will start every week. Endurance requires encouragement and motivate
each other. E.g. Ange lets go for a run
together. By encouraging each other we
can move forward as a team. If we don’t
encourage each other, we will all die cold.
Like the army of the Lord, we should be
there for each other not only by watching movies but all spiritual activities. Levi loves to play and sometimes he asks me
to play with the football. We kick the
ball around the house and because I’m lazy I tell him to go and play with his friends
and he is happy and he learns and socialises while I am just sitting in my chair. When he comes back he has gained something
but I haven’t.
After a few days I feel I need to exercise
and I go back to the gym and I will see those running on treadmill non-stop and
I envy them. I can’t run like them
because they practice while I don’t. They
have gained a lot and I have lost my money and more. They know how to use their time, mind and
bodies to gain something. I know how to
waste my money on the gym but I don’t think about how to gain.
I must be stupid, waste of money. If that was my child wasting money like that,
I would tell them no. after two months those
at the gym are so much ahead of me, that I am embarrassed.
Take courage. Jesus gave the sick new life. He touched them and they could walk. Not only physical miracles but spiritually, God
is telling us that we can stand up and move forward.
The end is coming, we are going towards the
end of everything and when the end comes, it doesn’t care what you look like,
and your end is not only the return of Jesus but it can be today or tomorrow,
you life can end and when it ends, God will look at your endurance. What report will you tell God about your
spiritual endurance. You can give a
report about your singing for church, now your endurance for your soul, prepare
it.
No comments:
Post a Comment