Pound the Rock.
“When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
Pound the Rock.
It’s the slogan of the San Antonio Spurs.
And it describes perseverance perfectly.
What are you waiting for?
After a three year drought, God told Elijah that rain was coming.
1 Kings 18 tells the story. Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face to his knees. He then asked his servant to go and look for the evidence .
“There is nothing there.”
Seven times Elijah said, “Go back”
The seventh time, the servant reported, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.”
The sky soon grew black with clouds, the wind rose and heavy rain came.”
What if Elijah had given up after the 5th or 6th true but negative report from his servant.
I can envision Elijah now. With each negative report, his face went back down to the ground.
I am a realist. Almost to a fault. If it ain’t happening, it ain’t happening. (Pardon my Texas grammar).
I probably would’ve put my umbrella away and questioned whether I really did hear God say what I thought He said.
What about the commander Naaman, who was plagued with leprosy?
Sure he had some initial pride issues but who could blame him.
He had leprosy. He sought God’s prophet for healing and he was told by the the prophet Elisha to go and dip in the Jordan river 7 times in order to receive his healing.
“I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his handover the spot and cure me of my leprosy. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?”
I can’t even imagine the pain and discomfort Naaman must have felt as his open skin met the mud and dirt from the Jordan river.
But He did His part and God did His.
What are you waiting for ?
A better marriage? Pound the rock. Go to counseling…do what you have to do in the natural and put your face to the ground as Elijah did.
A better job? Pound the rock. Do your part and ask God to do His.
Continue to Pound the rock.
Even Jesus, God in the flesh, had to “learn obedience through the things he suffered.”
Hebrews 5:8 tells us that “Even though Jesus was God’s son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered. In this way, God qualified Him as a perfect high priest.”
In prayer and in action. We must all continue to put our hand to the plow and our face to the ground.
For it isn’t the “hundred and first blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
Pound the Rock
-Binu