“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” – James 1:2-4 (NIV)

Playing through pain

One of my favorite sports movie scenes is the “death crawl” scene from Sherwood Pictures’ Facing the Giants. In this scene, the head coach pushes one of his players to the limit, which far exceeds that player’s expectations of himself.

In sports, it is tempting to do just enough. Maybe you stop at ten reps when you could have done twelve. You run two miles when you had enough gas in the tank for one more. While I am not saying we should push ourselves to injury, far too often players quit when things get hard even though they would benefit from pushing through the pain.

In ministry, that temptation can be even more dangerous. We want to do good things for the Lord, but we are sometimes too quick to give up on many of our ministry projects. Perhaps we have trouble getting committed volunteers to help. Maybe fund raising is behind schedule. Or we may find ourselves becoming “too busy” to put the work in.

If God calls you to do something, whether that is a career ministry path or a project within your community, enduring pain, frustration, and road blocks should be expected. The enemy is not going to let your acts of obedience come easy. However, we must persevere. We must play through the pain. We must move forward and push our limits to spread the greatest news of all time to the rest of the world.

– Jamie Boggs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUKoKQlEC4