Opposition

What are you willing to go through to make your dream a reality?

I don’t know about you, but I often have great intentions and plans at the start of a project. I am excited and enjoy the process of seeing something start to take shape. However, somewhere in the middle there comes a place where you have to decide to finish no matter what. There comes a time when you lose your momentum, you get tired…maybe even bored, and you let it go by the wayside…waiting in a forgotten corner. Or, maybe you hit a snag or problem, like running out of supplies. Either way for some reason the project halts mid-course.

The Israelites had a similar problem. The temple was destroyed, but the people were allowed years later to come back and rebuild it. The project was started with great enthusiasm. The rubble was cleared out and the foundation laid: the start. After a few years, they ran out of resources, and then they faced opposition from their enemies, so they stopped (Ezra 3). Part of the issue was the opposition, and part was procrastination.

Opposition does not always mean you are going the wrong way. Sometimes it is proof that you are going in the right direction. The trick is to figure out whether God is trying to keep you from making a mistake, or if He is testing your willingness and building your character for whatever He has called you to do. The key is knowing God’s will. If God has called you to do something, then you should expect opposition since the enemy is always at war with those who follow God. You only have to look at the life and ministry of Christ to see that he was always being opposed by the religious leaders of that day who felt their power was being threatened. When you know that it is God’s will, then you have to press on even in the face of opposition.

The other enemy we face is ourselves. We procrastinate when things get difficult, putting off to tomorrow what we should do today. Just this morning I had to force myself to take care of a couple of tasks that I had been putting off all week because they were tedious. Now that those tasks are done I feel much freer, like a weight has been lifted.

We can’t let opposition, either from our enemies or ourselves, keep us from completing the tasks before us. “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof; and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit” (Ecclesiastes 7:8). While we may love starting new projects, there is something satisfying about completing a project. So, dust off your vision from God and push past the opposition, external and internal, and move forward. The end will be well worth the effort.