On Thursday morning I went out for my daily run. As I left the driveway I started to hear a noise that was annoying. After a bit I realized it was a rock stuck in the sole of my shoe. I could feel it now and hear it, clop, clop, clop, very annoying.
My first thought that I would stop and remove the rock that was making me uncomfortable but then I decided against it because I knew if I stopped I wouldn’t want to start to run again. I wanted to get the first mile behind me and then I would take care of the annoyance.
At the end of the first mile I no longer heard or felt the rock and decided to run the next two miles and at the end of three miles I looked and the rock was still lodged in my shoe. Not only had the rock (annoyance) encouraged me to run the first mile, it had helped me to run three miles without resting. My burden became my motivator to do better.
In Judges the Bible says that God didn’t remove all of the opposition to the Israelites due to the fact that if he removed the opposition, the people would forget about the God who had delivered them and of course that is the story of Judges. Over and over again the people were blessed, they forgot God, worshiped idols, an army would come along and cause problems, they would cry out to God, God would deliver them and round and round it goes.
We are like that today, I bleieve that the Old Testament, the Israelites are a picture of us today. God blesses us, we forget God, something comes along to shake us, we cry out to God and God forgives and rescues us.
My prayer is that the rocks in our lives will not only be an annoyance to us but they will be a motivator to make us stronger.
Blessings
Ronnie