IT'S ME OH LORD: MY OWN STUMBLING BLOCK!!

Praise the Lord everybody!! Because He alone is worthy to be praised. I can't thank God enough for what He's doing in my life, how He's shown me another level of prayer, shown me another level of obedience, another way of seeing things and another way of doing things. The reason I say "He has shown me" is because all God can do is show us the way but it is up to us to follow His lead.
God has equipped me for the journey but it is I who must still walk the path.
In my last post I wrote about obeying God on another level and I must be obedient right now and write about what God Has been dealing with me about these last few days. I was sitting around thinking about my old football playing days in high school and college, how much I loved the game and how different my life would have been Had I not gotten injured in my senior year in High School. I kept going over it and over it in my mind until God began to remind me of what really happened.

He reminded me of how I walked away from my college football career because I was not willing to pay the physical price it took to continue. Of course He was right, I began to look back over my life, my life before Christ that is. Not long after I quit football my sister and I started writing songs together and producing demo records, before long we started our own production company, things were going pretty good until we ran into some financial problems concerning studio time. I walked away from the music business to go in to nursing school, telling myself that the extra income would help us meet our expenses until we had our first hit song. Needless to say I never went back to the music business and despite a successful nursing career I never reached my full potential in nursing because of drug addiction and then physical disability.

I began to feel sad about all the things I did not accomplish over my life, all the missed opportunities but God said not to look back at what I didn't accomplish but look forward to what I still can accomplish. These two scriptures were brought to mind, Philippians 3:13-14   13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. And,
1st Corinthians 9:24    24 Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. 

I have decided to not only finish this Christian race but to run a race worthy of winning a prize, verse 25 states  25 And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.

There are so many blessings that God had prepared for me that I blew because I pulled up lame as I came down the home stretch, too many to cover in this post. I am more determined now than ever to  not only to run but to endure to the end. Just as it says in God's word, 2nd Timothy 2:3,4         3 Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
4 No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. 

I had forgotten that we are all soldiers in God's army and I had to revisit one of my early blog post titled "I am a soldier"(check archives). Also it says in James 1:12    12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
This world is full of temptation, one of those temptations for me according to my history is to give up when the pain or the task becomes to tough on my flesh. Then I think about Jesus, Paul writes in Hebrews 12:1+2         Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

If Jesus can endure the cross for our sins then why can't I endure a few trials, tribulations and temptations for His name sake. I am a soldier and I will endure until He comes or calls me home. No taking down, No turning back.

        God Bless You All, Brother Darrell, Speaking Off The Wall