Almost there

Thomas Edison reminds us, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." God reminds us, "...let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up."  (Galatians 6:9) How close are you to giving up on something right now? We have lots and lots of dreams as we are growing up, but how many of them are really fulfilled in the course of time? It is quite likely that some dreams get put on the back burner, while we go about pursuing other things that present themselves as 'more important' for that season of our life. Do we ever get back to those dreams? I daresay some of them are never revisited, while rare few others are finally pursued at some point. Truth be told, we might not realize just how close we were to a breakthrough when we decided it was time to give up.

Giving up is really a means of escaping something that is kind of hard and maybe even a little fearful. Sometimes we are even afraid to fail - to allow others to see we are human, just like them. Fear keeps us from pursuing things to the end sometimes, paralyzing us and keeping us from moving forward, despite the desire to see a dream realized. If we have been guilty of giving up on something, is it possible to pick it back up and run with it again? I believe God's grace allows fresh starts time and time again. If God tells us to pick it up again, then we can be assured he will be with us when we do! Will it be easy to 'start over' when we have abandoned something? No, definitely not, but will God be there to help us pick up the pieces and make right choices as we move forward - definitely!

The harvest comes at a specific time - not just because we want to see it. We have to put in a whole lot of work prior to harvesting the reward, don't we? It may be that fear isn't what is holding us back from doing what God asks, it could be we are just a bit 'lazy' in our faith. We don't want to invest ourselves quite at the level God asks us to invest. That makes us not only lazy, but stingy! Have you ever notices how God won't allow us to be lazy? He somehow manages to 'stimulate' our faith, little by little, until we are moving toward that goal once again. He brings us to the place we make the investment, maybe not all at one time, but somehow, he gets us there! 

Giving up is not really an option - God asks us to persevere - to continue on, take hold, and stand against adversity. What appears to be way to big for us to realize, or to hard for us to attain may just be the thing he is calling us to do right now. Wouldn't it be a shame to quit right at the apex of our victory? Just askin!