I cannot believe it is August already! In these 8 months, I have experienced blessings and tribulations of epic magnitude all at once!! How is that possible? Could it be that they are contingent upon one another? If so, which is the friend and which is the foe? Or are they in cahoots, wherein the survival of the tribulation deems a reward of blessing or the reward of a blessing reaps the angst of the tribulation? ...I do not know the answer to any of this!

All I know is that I have seen the Lord bless me tremendously in such a short amount of time; however, in this same amount of time I feel like I am being broken in two! What hidden thing is He trying to uncover? What manner of oil does He want to flow from me that justifies this pressing? What treasure is He after and how deep does He plan to excavate? What is it that He wants my knees to buckle in surrender to? Why won't He just tell me so I can get over all of this? I say it again...I do not know the answer!

While I am wonderfully favored and even trained to endure hardness as a good solider, I am honestly wearied by the hardness of this season! Yes, I know that it is poetic to say that I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling, but do you want the real truth?! The real truth is that it is my choice to bypass my trouble or to walk right through it! I choose the latter, because the risk to forfeit the end blessing is too great! But, better still, deciding to look my test eye to eye brings me to a most holy place! The place where the Lord's strength is made perfect and where the power of Christ rises upon my weakness!

If I would just give in or would just stay down without resisting, this seeming madness would cease immediately! I am sure of it!! Nonetheless, to lose the Lord's eternal inheritance for the sake of relieving my temporal trials requires a surrender I cannot live with and provides a yellow-bellied comfort that I cannot eat nor sleep in! Therefore, I choose to stand in this heat, for the Lord is with me and His cool place is in the flames! I choose to triumph over my enemies, seen and unseen, for I am more than a conqueror through Him that loves me!

My choices are easy, for I am manifesting in the divine dunamis power of my Heavenly Father! He is a Man of War and they say that He is terrible in all His ways! As the Ancient of Days, He has been conquering from way back and does not know how to lose! He never uses the same strategy twice, for He is a genius and bad like that! My confidence in Him is unmoved, for it is His great pleasure to show Himself strong to annihilate my adversaries without mercy!!

So yeah, I may be a little tired in this walk with Christ, but that comes with the territory! What I know to be true is they that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength and they shall mount up their wings like eagles! And, if the Lord does things the way I think He will do things, He wilI uncommonly revive me beyond my age!