The world (including the religious world) boasts in outward signs of success. When their lives get hard, they run to other pastures. Their only escape is prosperity and acceptance—from someone, anyone.

 

Our God puts us through hard things and times. We don't run. We stay. While the world rushes to the next trough of refreshment, we remain beneath the yoke of being last. We are accounted as sheep for slaughter.

 

But the last shall be first. Our hour of manifestation approaches, so that soon the world will bow in awe before those whom God especially favors, those who have learned faith and obedience through the things they have suffered—while the world relished their many escapes.

 

And those who stay will be champions.