Each day during the month of March we will be sharing a devotional from a booklet written by Steve Love. Steve is a member of Canton First and a Traumatic Brain Injury survivor. If you would like a complete PDF of this devotional, it can be downloaded here.
Day 23
Luke 18:1-5 (New International Version)
1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
4 “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’ “
The Parable of the Persistent Widow is the story of someone who would not give up. Luke tells us, “Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Life is not always fair. Problems and difficulties are a part of life. Andrae Crouch’s “Through It All” talks about how we could know that God could solve our problems and show us His love if we never had any. It is only in times when life is hard that we grow in our spiritually life with God.
Living life with a brain injury is a hard and troublesome time for us who have one. It is not fair that we must endure the pain and sufferings it brings to us and our families. I could not control the circumstances that lead to me brain injury. I did everything right, but I stilled have a brain injury. Many if the just used a helmet or seatbelt would be living without a brain injury. My seatbelt did not stop me from having a brain injury, but it keeps me alive and give me the chase to have a life.
The women are Jesus’ parable kept go back to the Judge to plea her case. He gives in and makes sure she had justice not because he thought she desired it. He gave her justice just to stop her coming before his court. She would not give up. We must not give up. We need to push ourselves to beyond what is essay and comfortable. There is never a grain unless we push ourselves to make a grain.
In therapy I was told that I pushed too hard. I was never happy. I wanted to achieve a high-level high for myself each day. I was just stubborn and would not give in to the voices which were telling me it was ok for me to remain were I was in my struggles for has much as a normal life I could reach. Even today I push myself physically and mentally resulting in growth in my recovery. Our brains might be injured but we still have our mind intact, and it needs to be exercise daily.
Jesus wanted the disciples to have the minds set to never give in to keep doing the job that God had for them. When you read about the lives of the disciples you take note that they took this lesson to their heart/mind. They remind true to their task and remind true to God. No matter what life throws at us we need to remind faithful. Paul writes in Romans 8:38-39” For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Never give up just pray.
Pray and thank God for the way He is taking care of us and is proving for our needs.
Pray and thank for the problems we have face in our past that has made us to grow in our spiritual walk with God.
Pray and ask God to help us to help us as we face problems to give us the strength we need and the help to exercise or mind and our bodies.