Day 17 (Mar 16)
– Persevering in Our Relationship with God

Day 17 (Mar 16)
Persevering in Our Relationship with God

Are you staying or leaving?

“If we sin deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains sacrifice for sins but a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire that is going to consume the adversaries”

- Hebrews 10:26-27

What a stern and frightening warning for us Christians! Our decision to follow Christ is not a one-way ticket to heaven. In fact, if we renege on our baptismal vow and deliberately turn away from God, what awaits us is “a fearful prospect of judgment and a flaming fire”!

Faith, after all, is an ongoing relationship between the believer and God, a relationship that needs to be sustained. If we choose to opt out, know that God's heart is pained to see us go. Yet, God will not force us to stay although He remains faithful to the relationship (see 2 Timothy 2:13).

Faith, in other words, takes effort and perseverance.

“For these are the beginning and end of life; faith is the beginning and love is the end” (St. Ignatius of Antioch). Interestingly, perseverance is the crucial link connecting the two.

For us Christians, dying with Christ is past (since it had already happened in baptism), the resurrection is future, perseverance is present.

To persevere or endure takes love because love endures all things
(see 1 Corinthians 13:7).

REFLECTION:

How well have I persevered in faith? How much love have I invested in keeping my faith and my relationship with God?

TODAY'S PRAYER

Heavenly Father, we praise You and glorify You! You are worthy of our praise and worship. Those who repent their sin of ever abandoning You, you forgive; those who persevere in faith, you grant them the imperishable inheritance in heaven. (see 1 Peter 1:4).

As my response to your call for perseverance in faith, O God, I will take time to reassess my personal relationship with You and to repent and confess my sin
for having ever abandoned You. 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

If, unfortunately, you have already opted out, please know that, ever a merciful Father, God is waiting for you to return to Him.

If, by the grace of God, you manage to persevere, how can you do better?

St. Peter offers 8 qualities of Christian life that make us worthy of sharing the divine nature as children of God (see 2 Peter 1:5-7). It's a crescendo of virtues that goes from individual (faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance) to communal (devotion, affection, love). Yes, faith is more than an individual endeavor. It always elevates us to the level of community. After all, heaven is a community – a communion of saints.

Would you take one extra step to make good use of St. Peter's 8 qualities of Christian life so that you will become a better Farmer of Heart?

May this Lenten retreat enable the seed of Christ in you to produce fruit “a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold” (Matthew 13:8)!