'The thing is, it’s what Phelps said: Stay in the pool.

'Michael Phelps said that the way he trained to be one of the greatest athletes of all time — was to stay in the pool longer than anyone else.

'To stay at it when everyone else got out. To stay focused when you’d love to be distracted. To do the next thing when it’s not the easiest thing. To not flip over to Facebook or turn on the TV or check Twitter or pop into email.

'The most successful are the ones most focused and the greats are greatly focused. There is never any fruit without focus."'
I hope and pray this is used in evangelism and discipleship also in the coming days!  The LORD is my strength and my song!  He has become my salvation!

{http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/09/how-to-cultivate-the-habit-of-focus-in-an-age-of-distraction/}

Perseverance means not just in the BIG things that others may see but in the small things you know you must do before His coming....true joy is in doing the big and the little with perseverance (Heb. 10:36-39).  Let's obey Him.

"Also, we need to pray for those who are in positions of authority so that they will allow God's Word to be preached and the Gospel to be boldly proclaimed in our own neighborhoods as well as around the world. (See Ephesians 6:18-19.)"  -Bill Gothard

Resisting Retirement

"Finishing life to the glory of Christ means resolutely resisting the typical American dream of retirement. It means being so satisfied with all that God promises to be for us in Christ that we are set free from the cravings that create so much emptiness and uselessness in retirement. Instead, knowing that we have an infinitely satisfying and everlasting inheritance in God just over the horizon of life makes us zealous in our few remaining years here to spend ourselves in the sacrifices of love, not the accumulation of comforts."

....just like the longing of God's people to be fruitful even in the summer...how can we EVER stop enduring if we know endurance is the WILL of GOD?!  Praise be to God, who allows his people to live lives of beauty, endurance, and knowledge of truth.  If we choose to reject God's will at the end of our lives, why not now, too?  ...and since that would be horrible (to forsake His will now), how much MORE should we embrace God's unexplainable strength in the form of endurance till the end of life?!

Taking Another Step

Sometimes in life I feel like I can't move another inch, and it's a good feeling.  It fell on my heart like rawness a few days before the day when I was due to have finished memorizing the many, many Bible verses for Bible Bee.  In itself, the Scriptures were overwhelmingly refreshing, but a weakness was upon me...and still is.  It was a few days before Bible Bee that this happened, and I cherish it.  It is now that it is happening, and I still cherish it.  It brings me to reality, this thing called weakness, because when I know I am weak and where I am weak, I see that I am ALIVE.  I am struggling.  I am living.  I am breathing.  I am praising God.

When I am so weak inside, waiting on God gives strength.  When I must struggle to be still, I know I MUST be still.  When I must struggle and rack my brain to think deeply on what I KNOW I MUST THINK ON, I find an unexplainable joy that indeed I have the honor of saying that I am living by the blood shed on the cross for me, because this Jesus, this precious Jesus, has died for a weakling like me, a person who must consciously recognize stumbling points and times when the most important thing is to just LISTEN.  When a person just can't take another step, the unexplainable mercies of God are new every morning.  That mercy is something I still strive to understand.