Written By: Mikayla Groffie | Northwest Regional Coordinator
Photo By: Reed Burr | Media Coordinator
I hadn’t surfed in a couple of days, and I had the itch to get a session in. I didn’t check the reports — I just loaded up my board and drove to the nearest spot. When I first saw the conditions, my heart sank. Nothing was appealing about what my eyes could see. I asked a surfer who was just getting back to his car how it was, and his report confirmed my suspicions — it wasn’t good — big, choppy surf, strong currents, a hard paddle out, and unpredictable peaks. Now I had to decide whether or not it would be worth paddling out.
Honestly, I find myself in this predicament quite often because of the wave conditions where I live. I often ask myself, “Why in the world do I choose to surf?” No one is forcing me, yet I willingly choose to paddle out into conditions I know won’t be fun. I decided to paddle out anyway, and I was right — it wasn’t fun. But somehow, by the end of the session, I still felt like it was worth it. I’m guessing I’m not the only one who has found themselves in a similar situation.
If anyone has been following Jesus for any length of time, you know that life with Him doesn’t mean conditions are always going to be ideal. If we had a spiritual report app like Surfline giving us the forecast for our lives, it would probably look a lot like the range of swells that roll in — from “very poor” all the way to “epic.” Although we all hope for epic days in the forecast, we know that life’s conditions vary from day to day. There are mornings when we wake up and already know it’s not going to be an easy day. There has to be a deeper reason within us to keep pursuing the life Jesus has for us — something not dependent on the conditions life brings. It’s on those difficult days that we discover what our love is grounded in.
The believers in the book of Romans also needed a reason to continue following Jesus despite their circumstances. They were being heavily persecuted. Imagine a very, very poor report on Surfline with no hope of the conditions changing anytime soon. They probably wondered, Is following Jesus really worth it? Paul gave them the deeper hope they needed to keep going.
In Romans 8:35,37, he writes: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”
There is a love stronger than anything this life can throw at us, and that is the love of Christ. This love gives us a reason to keep pressing forward, no matter the outcome or circumstances we face.