My fiancé and I got to the airport at 5:30am the other morning to find they canceled our flight.We got pushed from airline to airline in attempts to get us close enough to our destination until they finally got us on a plane, praise God!
As some of you who live in New England may have noticed, winter showed up in the form of lots of snow…this meant there were thousands of canceled flights over the weekend.
As we were sitting at our gate in the terminal trying to sleep a little bit, I began to listen to all the stories of the people near us, people who were just like us – they had some place to be and they were just trying to get there.
Two gentlemen in particular had an interesting story….
They had stayed over at the Dallas / Fort Worth Airport two nights on what was originally a short layover. All they were trying to do was get on a flight to make their best friend’s wedding. They were groomsmen and they were hoping their luggage with their tuxedos would make it following all of the flight changes and confusion so that they could share in the celebration of their friend’s marriage.
They explained all they had been though over and over, yet they were still there again at the very same airport that has failed them the past two days, first thing in the morning, coffee and expectation in hand.
Every time a new person sat down and asked where they were going, they would take a breath and tell again the story of their troubles, perseverance, and hopes that today would be their day.
As I began writing this while sitting on a flight to Boston, I started reflecting on our journey so far and looking at the last leg we still had left to get to our destination. In looking at the work it took to get this far, and all of the the sitting and waiting, I can’t help but look at our walk with God as the Church.
You see, the Word promises us that there will be storms, and just like in travel, when there are storms, there are delays.
I don’t know where you are trying to get in life at this moment in time but if you feel like you’ve been shuttled from airline to airline and have been waiting in one terminal after another, don’t lose heart.
The two men trying to make it to the wedding taught me a lesson that day, and as cliche as it may sound, I feel in my heart somebody out there that needs to hear it.
Keep holding on, keep persevering, keep hoping, and keep telling your story.
You see, in the Church we have gotten into the habit of keeping our troubles to ourselves, and I really began to notice it as these men were openly sharing their troubles. The interesting thing that happened was people around them just kept telling them things like, “Keep going! You’ll get there in time.”
What’s been our issue? We won’t tell anyone about our problems even if it was five years ago because of the fear that someone may judge us! In turn, we have robbed a generation of the power of a testimony, which gives them and the world this judgmental and false state of perfection, and causes them to feel like a failure because their life would never live up to that. Never underestimate the power of your testimony.
“They overcame by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony,” Revelation 12:11
We’ve kept our testimonies quiet and therefore kept our victories small.
When the Israelites were walking around the walls of Jericho, they were loud in their demand for victory and they persevered, knowing that if they did what God asked, the walls would come down.
When Paul and Silas were in jail writing different churches they were very plain about the attacks they were under saying continually, “Pray for us here in prison!”
I am not saying to go around telling the world all your problems. What I am saying is those two men ignited hope on the inside of me, hope that says, “If they can get there I can too! If they can fight for it I can too! If they can wait I can too!”
We must stop complaining and hiding from our problems and start demanding our victory, and testifying of God’s goodness to you in the past, shouting from the rooftops, “He is faithful to do it again!” This gives the people around you that same faith that ignited you. Faith that says they are overcomers by Christ Jesus too.
By not sharing our challenges as the Body of Christ with each other in our efforts to keep up the perfect image we wanted to uphold, we have kicked our legs out from under us and belittled the power of the blood and testimony we have in Christ – that by His grace we are saved.
We are not overcomers because we’ve beat a drug addiction, pornography, gambling, sickness or disease. We are overcomers by the blood of Christ and the power of our testimony, through the work Christ has done in your life, from the cross to healing your marriage. That alone makes us an overcomer, not our perfection.
It’s time for us to rise up alongside of our brothers and sisters who are struggling in this world. Sharing our testimony will ignite faith on the inside of them that if God can do it for them then he can surely do it for me too.
If you’re feeling like your flight has been delayed today, whether in your breakthrough or in a relationship, or whatever it may be just know….
You will get there, stick to the Faith, hold fast to the promises, and keep the blood in the forefront of your thinking and your testimony on your tongue.
Love in Him,
Shellby Celeste