faith, patience, and Kim Tone

I never really understood what it meant for God to promise something. I have seen God's promises all throughout the Bible. I have seen the Lord make promises countless times throughout those pages. And each and every time the Lord fulfills those promises.

I have seen Him fulfill promises in my own life, such as salvation, grace, comfort, provision, sanctification, joy, and so many others.

But this is the first time the Lord has promised me something personal and specific.


Lets be real, just because I have a specific promise it definitely does not mean it is easier to believe (I will share more about what this promise is soon).  This promise is not time specific. Which makes it difficult to continually believe not knowing when it is supposed to happen.  I guess Abraham never thought he would be 100 years old when he had a child.

Thankfully, a dear friend of mine was going through a very similar situation.

God had promised her and called her to go share His truth in the Middle East.  But she had to wait. She had to wait to finish school and wait to raise all of her support.  I cannot even begin to express how encouraging it was to watch her walk through this time of faith and patience.  She was so so patient! Even when the rest of her team had already arrived in the Middle East. She had such faith in God's promise to her that when she was given what seemed like an impossible deadline, she continued to believe.

I came across this verse recently:

Hebrews 6:12

We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.  

God's Word truly is living and active (Hebrews 4:12).  This verse is exactly what I need! To imitate the faith and patience God showed me in Kim as she waited for God to fulfill what He had promised.

Thank you my dear friend for being such an incredible encouragement! I am so stinkin' excited for you!!

Don't pray for patience

I have spent the last four summers working at a Christian sports camp in Branson, Missouri.
It is a time in my life where I am constantly needing to be more patient.

It is hot (Like 100 degrees for 3 months).
There are kids, everywhere.  And they ask a LOT of questions.

My first summer as a counselor my co-counselor and I prayed for patience consistently throughout our first term of campers.  What we found was that there were more and more situations that drove us to the edge of our sanity.

My co had a revelation. "I'm not going to pray for patience anymore. Because God doesn't just make you patient.  He gives you situations where you have to be patient. Its not working. I'm never praying for patience again."

It is true. Patience is developed by situations that causes us to practice patience. And not just one situation.  Time and time again I found myself in situations where I needed to be incredibly patient, until it becomes second nature.

The same goes for many spiritual disciplines.

If I pray for faith, God is not going to simply give me more faith. He is going to allow me to go through circumstances that will force me to depend solely on Him, therefore causing my faith to grow.

Another is fear.  If I ask God to help me not be afraid, he is not going to turn me into Superman.  I am going to have to go through experiences that cause me to confront my fears. I am going to have to choose to trust the Lord instead of myself through my fear.  And I am going to have to face them again and again until it becomes second nature.

Essentially I am saying that if you don't want to grow, you shouldn't pray for any of these things.

BUT, if growth and maturity are what we desire, then ask for them!! Because God will answer!

Hebrews 12:11-12 says,

"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful.  Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.  Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees."

If we want to be stronger we have to go through the training! If we want to get in shape, we have to put in the painful miles.  

Galatians 6:9 says, 

"Let us not become weary in doing good, 

for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." 

Keep praying for patience, don't give up! Go through the training to reap a good harvest!!

if I can run a mile (part 2)

So yesterday, talking about training got me thinking.
I know that if I want to succeed at running a marathon I need to do the same thing over and over again.
Run.


But looking at my life, and specifically dealing with sin struggles, I want to knock them down the first time. Just once, and then I expect myself to be an expert. That is not realistic.  I have to deal with that sin more than once. More than twice. Probably more than three times.
Thats like saying if I can run a mile I could run 26.

Something a lot of women in my life have shared, and that I think a lot of us deal with, is that we expect ourselves to either struggle with a sin forever, or deal with something once and then it never creeps up again.  Neither alternative is practical.

You do not have to struggle with this same sin forever. It does not rule you. It does not define you. You are able to be free from it. But not on your own strength.  
You are not expected to conquer a sin once and then never struggle with it again.  It takes time to train your heart, no matter what the sin may be.  


Instead of bombarding with a bunch of unconnected verses I'm going to share one of my favorite passages. It is 2 Samuel 21:15-22.  It is full of a lot of hard-to-say names and places, and there are none of those "quotable" verses, if you will.  However, I find it a beautiful picture of the way God deals with our sin struggles.

It takes place during David's reign as King of Israel. It talks about four different battles Israel had with the Philistines.  Just for some quick background, the Philistines were that age old enemy Israel could never seem to defeat (like the girls that you play in of every sport of intramurals and you never seem to be able to beat them).  They are the same Philistines that so many years before produced a giant named Goliath (1 Samuel 17). David had been to battle with the Philistines many times. The Lord had given him victory many times, yet here he was again, about to face another battle.

The passage starts out each battle saying "In the couse of time, there was another battle with the Philistines" "Once again, there was a battle with the Philistines" "In another battle . . ." "In still another battle . . .".

How many times in my life have I felt like that? "And once again I am struggling with this sin." " Well, I failed again dealing with that sin today."  "In other news, I'm struggling with the same thing again."

It gets discouraging.
Real quick.

A girl who was in my Bible study once said to me "I just feel like God is sick of hearing me ask for victory from this. I feel like he is looking at me and saying "really, this again." I feel like eventually he'll just get sick of me asking for freedom from it."

My heart struggles with that. That is for sure.

But thankfully, that is a lie!! 


Read that passage in 2 Samuel and you will find that David struggled with the same enemy over and over and over again. And God gave him victory every time.  
Right after that passage about the battles is David's song of praise.

"He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me.

They confronted me in the day of my disaster,

but the Lord was my support.

He brought me out into a spacious place;

He rescued me because he delighted in me."

(2 Samuel 22:18-20)

He rescued me because he delighted in me.

Not because I quit struggling with sin, not because I did everything right, not because I totally messed up, not because I asked in the right way . . . because he delighted in me.

Do not allow the enemy a foothold by believing a lie.  

He wants to rescue you. He does not tire of saving you. 

God eventually gave David freedom from the Philistines.  But not on David's time. On God's.  It was not on David's strength either. Those enemies were too strong for him, but not for his God.  

And God did not stop giving David victory just because he was facing the same enemy again.  

He wants to do the same in our lives . . . because he delights in us!!

the neck is not invited to this party (part 1)

Its official.
I have completed my first week of my 25 week marathon training program. Don't get too excited. I only ran a total of 7 miles last week.

Twenty-five weeks is a long time. Six months to be exact.

But training your body to run 26.2 miles takes time. It takes time for your body to adjust to the level of activity that is being demanded of it. It takes time to train your mind to think in a new way. It takes time to train yourself to eat a balanced diet, with lots of carbs, protein, and salt (when you sweat, your body not only loses water but salt as well. That would be why I crave pretzels after I run).

We know it takes time to train our bodies.  We prepare for that change by giving ourselves time to adapt.

I'll be the first to admit I do not have the same patience with my spirit.

When I feel that the Lord wants to teach me something, I want to learn it, understand it, have it down, not struggle with it anymore, and be able to teach it to someone else within a very short period of time.

That is so impractical!

Just like my body needs time to adapt and prepare for a marathon, my heart needs time to change and grow when the Lord is teaching me something.  I need repetition.   I need devoted time.  I need to train in a way that will lead me to success. I need to be committed.  I need to give my all. I need to focus. I need discipline.  I need to put things in my mind that will produce fruit (crap in, crap out).

Another issue is that I need to train correctly.  One of my favorite Jillian Michaels' quotes is "The neck is not invited to this party."  She's explaining how to correctly do a crunch.

But the concept is essential here. If I do 1000 crunches using my neck muscles, my neck might end up looking like Dwayne Johnson's, but my abs will be flabby Patty.  If I am relying on my own interpretation of truth, or someone else's, without backing it up with the truth in scripture, I'm not going to grow.

I'll be the first to admit that I get incredibly discouraged when I don't get something down right away. Or when an old struggle creeps up again (seriously, haven't I dealt with you already?).  But that doesn't surprise Jesus.  He knows exactly what we are struggling with and just how much time it will take us to let truth penetrate our hearts.

Philippians 1:6 says,
"...being confident of this that he who began a good work in you will carry it onto completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

He promises to continue to work on our hearts until they are just like him.  We just have to continue training and stay committed.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect,

but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.

But one thing I do:

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 

I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Phil 3:12-14

more tomorrow . . .

From Rainboots to Football

Psalm 27:13-14

I am still confident of this:

I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord;

Be strong and take heart and

wait for the Lord.

It was a hard day. 

It was super rainy, and I got soaked as I walked from the parking garage to class. I was freezing cold all day. I was easily distracted and there was definitely no "operation focus" going on as I tried to study.  Then I was by myself studying all night. Ok "studying" cause the Bears and the Packers were playing (Go Bears! Only undefeated team left in the NFC).  And on top of that I was just wrestling with God all day. 

I've been wrestling with this for awhile, but yesterday it came up in a new light. I realized some hard truth last night.  And I don't know exactly why, but He kept bringing this verse to mind.  Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.  

This is where it gets hard. Knowing that the Lord has a plan and that He is so faithful. I can still be confident in Him, even though my hope has been deferred. Its a choice though. A choice to wait on the Lord instead of myself. A choice to trust Him and be strong and courageous and choose to wait for Him.  

Wait on the Lord. He promises to be faithful!

Lamentations 3:22-23

But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed.

His mercies never come to an end,

they are new every morning!!