It’s Thursday!!! I don’t know why ‘they’ decided to throw things back on Thursdays… I might as well throw my entire blog back 🤦🏽♂️ I don’t think I have posted with as much zeal of late as I used to. Goodness it has been ages!
So 10 years ago, on an evening like last, I slept with my green card to the military. Months before I had been considering if I would be doing evening runs or morning runs would be enough by themselves. I had wanted to join the military and I didn’t have what it takes to be in the military. Key words… DIDN’T HAVE.
Fitness is like everything for this career. I wasn’t much of a sports person in high-school. Cricket wasn’t that much of a serious game back then. It was a lazy game at the time. So I really struggled with morning runs in the chilly July weather in Kirinyaga. But my goal was very clear. I had to get that slot in the Air Force. I contemplated running both morning and evenings but I think I only made it to run a few times in the evening at the Kerugoya Catholic Church Compound. (Privacy and all) running in Kerugoya was a weird thing. The questions were too much. So unlike morning when people were still asleep, evening was a different story. Everyone including school children were going home at that time.
By the grace of God. I managed to get fit in a month or less but my weight didn’t go up as expected – you will read in joining the military series. It would be easy to say that by getting the slot I had got, I had paid the price of that slot. Because I was up at 0500hrs and out of the house running by 0530hrs… But No. As I would realise, everyday was a running day at the training school. It was even worse when we started carrying each other and carrying logs and heavy bags… Again after ‘Pass Out’… It would have been easy to say… I had paid the price to become a soldier.
Life moves swiftly on. Inside training… As I shared earlier, the first time we cleared a paddock of grass was using our bare fingers, then this moved to a blunt unsharpened Panga… Then an unsharpened slasher… Etc until the day we graduated to use a sharpened cutting tool… Same with the weapons… You don’t just start off with a loaded weapon. It would start with holstering a panga, then carrying an empty mag rifle, then 5 Bullets onto 10, onto 20, and upto a point now where you can have a rifle, a pistol on your thigh, a dagger somewhere on your waist and ankle and a vest full of magazines… Etc… You get the point – levels – upgrades at a price. Working out never stops = Daily Gym. Carrying all this load is not an easy fête… This calls for daily workouts for various reasons, to increase fitness and operational sharpness, to get used to the load and to reduce daily pressure and stresses to rid one of stress disorders related to operations and to have a healthier stronger body.
This reminded me of this clause “I have paid the price” this is especially on my spiritual journey. While at fellowship with Astra a while back, we were sharing about paying the price of salvation for our spot in heaven. Or paying for that spot in heaven 🤔. My this is hard… But help me Lord. I thank God we have all been over various hurdles in life, more so our spiritual journey. I just realised that I cannot rest that “I have paid the price” for being where I am spiritually and even physically because “I have paid the price.” It is not done. I need to become effective and fruitful in the purposes of God and this means that there is a price to pay for every level. It will cost me to be a “full-throttle” Christian! The big question is: “Is my relationship and walk with Jesus real enough to make me want to be more effective in my being a positive witness for Jesus? Or ‘am I willing to pay the price’ as Jesus says in the book of Mark?
When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
Mark 8:34-38 NKJV
I find the issue of the price being very sensitive. Sensitive because it has been used often as a factor of encouragement for some and to an extent acts as a discourager to others… What do I mean? Often you will hear someone saying I have paid the price for this and paid the price for that… Which I wouldn’t deny. They are entitled to it at some level. (Like getting a prize for a job well done at a stage in school.) However I find this an ‘arrival mentality’ or a ‘destination mentality’ in other aspects. No soldier can comfortably say they have paid the price for their level so they can chill out and be easy, because as soon as you start getting comfortable you get to another level. A level you have to be prepared for, meaning you have to keep doing what you were doing to the end.
It’s the same thing I recently learnt about salvation. Jesus shed His blood for my sins. Beaten, rejected, ashamed, nailed on the cross for my sins… And guess what he had done wrong? Nothing. NOTHING!!! But here I am, man, counting the many times I feel I have paid the price to deserve a spot in heaven, yet, I haven’t completed the race. I haven’t completed the race 😣. I should never put the cross down! Same as a soldiers life. What’s the point of camping out at jungles, hours in the gym and hours at the shooting range if not to become a better soldier. That is to be more effective on their primary roles. The way of the cross speaks of death to self, dying to the flesh. My physical and possibly carnal minded self that I have to kill everyday would never comprehend, know, or understand how God operates. His ways are very different to my ways and they cannot be received by my natural mind and reasoning. I therefore have to walk this journey with its ups and downs as I seek to know Him and get more intimate with Him!
But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
I Corinthians 2:14 NKJV
I cannot carry this cross without sufficient knowledge of this new life in Christ. This life of self denial this life of fighting the evils of the devil who’s always ready to kill steal and destroy. God’s wisdom always guides me and every hour every minute of self denial (Unending price payment) is a moment for me to grow because the Holy Spirit is constantly opening my eyes and ears in spirit teaching and training me on what is expected of me in God’s kingdom at every level.
My relationship and walk with Jesus should be real enough to make me yearn to be more effective in my being a positive witness of Jesus! I should be willing to pay the price that Jesus talk about in the scriptures above every single day! Does it have a time frame? Well… Yes indeed it has… For eternity, until I go up to be with the Lord which is my hope and prayer. That will be the end of me paying the price.