A key for your strength overcomer.
Tho'
Sadly, the breezy Taliban optimism above... proved all too prophetic for Afghanistan. (For USA, worse than Vietnam).
Still,
The ‘Great Game’ has long history high up here in the Himalaya.
Alexander the Great. The Moguls. The British Empire.
Then more recently…
SEE-EYE-A and the USSR invasion of Dec 1979.
Today,
We see the Taliban in power.
Their gleaming lines of brand new US army Humvees and Black Hawks, all gifted courtesy of America.
Chuckling Islamic commanders love their new kit of course.
Which recalls to mind their famous phrase...
‘You’ve got the watches but we’ve got the time.’
Certainly has a ring to it eh?
That said...
What’s all this to do with us Christians?
Everything actually...
This pithy phrase reveals a key to our daily triumph too.
The Principle of Patience.
Nothing takes it's place in the Christian life.
Simply put...
Who endures always wins.
Especially we saints.
Like the Psalmist...
"He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord."
Psalm 112:7 KJV
However...
The path is not always pleasant.
Because very often, the alternate spelling for patience is...
PAIN.
Take Isaiah, 700 years before Christ.
As an exile in a foreign country he suffered anguish.
Yet in his pain, he kept patiently enduring only to go on to pen one of the most accurate prophesies in the Bible.
Of our patient suffering Saviour 700 years ahead in his future...
"I gave My back to those who struck Me, And My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard; I did not hide My face from shame and spitting."
Isaiah 50:6 NKJV
And for us it's the same...
No matter what pain we suffer. We shall patiently overcome.
Isaiah's next verse promises us this too,
"Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame."
Isaiah 50:7 NIV
The same thing happened for Jesus’s best friend* too.
What they did they do to him?
They boiled him alive in oil.
How did he react in his deadly trial by oil?
He responded by BEING PATIENT.
This kindly old man...
Endured what would kill most of us.
Being plunged into a cauldron. A lethal, bubbling vat of boiling oil.
Yet miraculously, his astonished torturers soon discovered it was impossible to kill him. Dang it! He just wouldn't die.
It's true.
Jesus's best friend, the Apostle John simply...
'Out endured' death.
So not knowing what to do with him, next they banished him to the lonely island of Patmos.
What harm could he do there after all?
Ha ha!
Write the Book of Revelation that’s what! Which of course soon spread like a wildfire right through the Roman Empire.
Talk about the enemies plan backfiring.
Imagine.
John's greatest life's work accomplished bang on time, in God's perfect will. The most staggering book in the Bible too :)
All because,
Beloved, aged John... set the Principle of Patience to work for him.
So to you,
Hold steady faithful one.
"Imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises."
Hebrews 6:12 NKJV
Who knows what's inside you, which GOD decreed before the foundation of this world must yet come forth...
And only through you.
You patience is your victory.
Bless you.
Dave.
PS *John was Jesus's best friend. The 'beloved disciple,' he who leaned on Jesus breast at the Passover... (John 21:20).
KISS: Keep It Simple Saint.