Don't Grow Weary

I keep hoping. Each season. Each time the first game of the year rolls around. Each time I get out my USC glass stemware, put on my Carolina t-shirt and pull out my boiled peanuts and coca-cola, I think "Surely this will be the year." We even won our first game 32-0. That win ranked us at 24. Even though we looked like the Keystone Cops the entire game. So, when I got into my seat at the Vanderbilt Stadium, Thursday night a week ago, I knew this would be our year. Vanderbilt had always been our "For Sure" win of the year. Not so much last year. Not so much this year either. My best college buddy, Beth Davis, even came up from Charleston to spend the weekend with me and go to the game. We didn't miss hardly any of them when we went to Carolina, and it was like old times. Completely like old times. We lost again.

Yesterday as I watched us throw an interception at the five yard line during the last twenty seconds of our game against Georgia, to rake in our second loss, I realized once again this was going to be a very weary season.

Kind of like some of the things in our life. We have those moments where it seems like we win a victory and it's going to set a new tone for our lives. Only to be met the next week with a moment of defeat in the very area we thought we had victory. And we grow weary. Weary in the well doing.

And I realize that life is often lost in the middle of the season. Real victories are often given up on before the goal line is even in site. We give up because we're afraid. We give up because we're tired. We give up because we meet resistance. We give up because it feels too difficult, too unattainable.

But our life has a "race marked out for us." And the only way to run this race is with "perseverance." It is this perseverance that produces character. I've learned in this life that the places where true character has been performed in me is the very place where perseverance was my constant companion.

I'm having to practice this even now. Back about five years ago, while in Savannah, Georgia I got a vision in my heart of something I felt the Lord had called me to do. At that time all I had was the "what." Five years later, this past May, while in the little tree house in Dadeville, Alabama of my friend Nellie Jo, during a moment when I was learning how to "be" instead of "do", I got the "how" to the "what". (Hope you could follow all of that...) And since then I have been putting into place the pieces necessary to accomplish this new vision. And each day I fight the feelings of inadequacies, the moments I feel completely overwhelmed. Fortunately, that is the place where we know that it is not about us. It is about what God is capable of doing through us.

Many dreams, visions, marriages, even lives are lost in the mid-season. They're lost when we've had a few setbacks, discover our inadequacies and take our eyes off the quarterback. We forget we're a part of a team, or could be, and we try to do it ourselves. It is here many dreams are lost, aborted even. Simply abandoned because of our fear, our shame or our disillusionment.

May I encourage you today with this, it doesn't matter if you're down 1-7 in the season. Each game offers a new opportunity for victory. Just like each day offers a new mercy. If yesterday didn't work out so well, if you gave up, gave in, today is a new day with new mercies, and the same promise. That the man who doesn't "grow weary in well doing, in due season will reap if he faints not."

You and I have a game to play. A victory to win. A vision to accomplish. A faithful companion for the journey. There will be moments we'll get sacked, tackled so hard the stars fly, but there will be a moment when we'll cross into the end zone, watch the ball fly through the goal posts, and hear the roar of the crowd. And none of that will be experienced if we give up now.

May you brush the dirt of your white stretchy pants, pull the patch of grass out of your helmet, and pat your team mate on the butt and get your booty back there on the field. We've got a game to win, you've got a marriage to save, you've got a vision to accomplish, you've got a child to raise, a neighbor to touch and none of that will get done if you park your self on the metal bench that runs up the sidelines.

I will say this about my Gamecocks, yes they are still my Gamecocks despite my brother's ridicule, even with 30 seconds left on the clock they were still fighting for victory. The game may not have turned out the way they had hoped, even fought for it to turn out, but the beauty is they were still fighting when the clock ran out. There may be some things in life that don't turn out like we hope or even the way our efforts strive for, but what I can promise you is that when the game is over and the coach knows you've given it your best effort, He's going to wrap His arms around us and let us know that there is much coming our way, much to reap in this journey of life for the perseverance we've shown. And next week is a whole new game!

We play Wofford! If we can't win that...well...then we're...oh, yeah, right, this is about perseverance. Okay then, there's always next week...