I had just about decided, and had even told my husband, that a certain ongoing project I found myself beginning several years ago just doesn't seem worth the fight anymore. It doesn't seem that I make any difference. I feel swallowed up except for an ultrathin shaft of light at the end of the tunnel. It seems all but closed up sometimes.
Then a sweet lady approached me this weekend and said something to me that gave me hope and makes me think that I've made some sort of impact on that one person. Could there be more?
This morning's Bible reading schedule encouraged me more. I checked it and today's New Testament reading is 2 Timothy 3. Here is the entire chapter, but verse 14 is the one that really spoke to me.
2 Timothy 3 New American Standard Bible (NASB)
3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, [a]haters of good, 4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to a form of [b]godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. 6 For among them are those who [c]enter into households and captivate [d]weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, 7 always learning and never able to come to the [e]knowledge of the truth. 8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith. 9 But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as [f]Jannes’s and Jambres’s folly was also.
10 Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, [g]perseverance, 11 persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me! 12 Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. 13 But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. 14 You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, 15 and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is [h]inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for [i]training in righteousness; 17 so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
I see the evidence of verses 1-5 all around me. I'm even able to secretly pin names on most of the negative attributes listed there. Maybe I'm not supposed to do that, but I do, not revealing them to others but knowing that these things are true for many people right now. And I believe these ARE the last days.
I don't know if I'll continue on this project or not. Maybe writing this blog indicates that I will...or that I never gave it up...or that these recent encouragements have made me pick it back up. I don't know, but I'll keep praying and asking God to show me what to do. The road is long and hard and the persecution goes completely against my sanguine temperament, but as Paul said, I look forward, fighting for the prize.
