Play hard, pray harder

Ever here that saying? What does it mean? There is something to it you know. If you have been "playing" under God's rules: the harder you play, the harder you may get hit. The enemy is very crafty and cunning, who likes to play dirty. He knows of all the opportunities that can do damage and will use every second of these times to keep you on the bench and off the field "playing". All the temptations that come in different forms, from being tired on Sunday morning and choosing not to go, to not having free time for yourself where you can spend time with scripture, prayer, and God, are ways of getting benched. Imagined if you kept getting benched. What would your self esteem be like? How would you feel about "playing" the game? Perhaps even the love that you once had would be gone. Thankfully we don't have to have physical characteristics for this battle plan. We have two things that come into play. We have prayer and the Word! These are our lifelines! Let's realign our priorities and take ourselves off the benches. We can resist temptations. We can become armored with scripture as our ammunition. It is our weapon against evil. We can overcome and perservere when we have a relationship with Him. There is a battle with the enemy which is hard enough, let's not battle ourselves too. Give it all up, James 4:10 "humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up". Let's keep training ourselves. Keep equipping ourselves. Just like an athlete, they do it even though there are days they may not want to. Keep pressing on for the prize. Let us do just that.