Never Never Never Give Up: Never Never Never

None of us is perfect or we would be home with the Lord, Amen? He is still working on every.one.of.us - all who are living and breathing. We haven’t arrived and therefore we are never, never to give up following hard after Him - seeking to be more and more like the Master and less and less like us. As we become more like Him - through His power and for His glory - we point many to Jesus. And this is God’s desire for each life. We are not here to merely fill our days whiling them away or entertaining ourselves to death. Jesus was to be the firstborn among many brothers. And we are not to abandon this great pursuit. It is the way to take hold of the life that is truly life and one without regrets.  
Satan hates our pursuit of holiness. His obvious desire is not for us to walk as Jesus walked. He ever seeks to make us stumble, to abort mission, to harm our testimonies, to challenge our reasons for faith in God and to make us miserable in the pursuit of becoming like the Master – a pursuit of which we never get there until we are home with the Lord. It can be profound how we can be on the right track and something strikes us on just the right nerve to unveil our fragility both in our trust in God and His love for us and our walks with Him. Questioning everything. His ways are good and pleasing and perfect though we will often walk through the extraordinarily difficult. The harshness of life constantly challenges our faith walks – just ask Job when you get to heaven. It has never been easy for believers – it wasn’t easy for Jesus either. We can feel burned out and disillusioned, alone and discouraged – feeling we are wandering around in the wilderness of our soul. We are not alone. Look up. Our circumstances often get us to look in or out to others and not up to the One Who promised to take us from “strength to strength”. When we rely on self and others in lieu of Him we rob ourselves of the peace that passes understanding He bestows. He is amazingly abundant and His Words are powerful and effective. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Anything else is so very less.  
We cannot control the chaos or all the unwanted circumstances that occur in a life but we can control our choices and our reactions to them. Oftentimes, our adverse circumstances bring out what is down deep in our hearts and God uses the things He allows to help us rid ourselves of what is harmful to us. He is all about changing our hearts and Scripture tells us they can be very deceitful.