Living the Daily Epic

We have some friends that took their young family, sold most of their possessions and moved half a world away to place not comfortable with Christianity in order to tell others about Jesus. There is a family right here in College Station who is moving mountains to get a ministry going that reaches the growing number of international students at Texas A&M. I've known people who raise well adjusted kids, only to see those kids, believers in Christ, rebel- yet these people don't give up and fight for their kids. I've seen people make tough choices about what to do on day to day basis. I know of people who love every second of their job. There are still others who spend their every waking hour just struggling to survive.

All of these are epic stories- if we want them to be.

That is the thing about epics, we have to want to be a part of something bigger. We can't look at our Civil Wars, or Mordors or Wicked Witches and give up. We can't resign ourselves to mediocrity, we must rise up. And we must daily choose to do that. As Hebrews 10:39 says: "But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved."

When we shrink back from our epic struggles to overcome sin, or reach the lost or simply live FOR God, we are destroyed. We are destroyed the same way God told Adam and Eve that they would die if they eat the fruit. It is not an instantaneous, Snow White-biting-the-apple destruction, it is a daily destruction. Our hopes fade. Our optimism dies. Our energy disappears. And we give up. We lose sight of the big story- that we are in pursuit of King as He is in pursuit of us. We are fighting battles of meaning, even if there is no physical enemy to face. We are making stands upon principle, even if there is no grand courtroom for us to argue in.

We need to once again realize that it is vital that we speak with God in prayer, as if our lives depend on it. That we read His Word as though it were food for an empty stomach. That we share with others the story of rescue as though they were prisoners of war.

These things remind us that we are in a great story, one written by the Great Storyteller.