Soldier on

2 Peter 2:3 Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs—he wants to please his commanding officer. 5 Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor's crown unless he competes according to the rules.

Amazingly, just as I began to blog this, my wife came over and began talking to me about a potential sale we are working on. It is down in Malibu, and in my experience, the farther a sale is away from our shop the smaller the chance is that we will retain any profit on it. There are a combination of things at work here:

Spas which are far away always seem to fail more, so more long trips are needed to do warranty work after the sale.
Tradesmen who we rely upon to do electrical or concrete work will not go to these jobs, so we have to depend upon new people, or the customer's buddies.
People who have shopped our store from far away are generally trying to get a real low price, and will do amazing things to get it.
People who demand a low price always demand an extra high level of service, and
Those same people also expect us to include expensive items at no additional cost.

So what am I saying - only this: in one split second, my mind jumped from a study of God's word to all of the above, just because Hope came over and showed me an email from a customer while I was trying to blog.

Oh how easily my mind can get OFF of things above! OK - I'm back. But, of course, I now have eaten up my time and have to get out there and walk, then all the normal cleanup stuff - to make myself presentable to the world.

So - how does this tie in to the verse above? I need to set aside the things that so easily side-track me when it comes time to do the work of the Kingdom. Fear, pressures from business, money in general, material possessions, success and failure from man's perspective.

I'll let you know when I get there!!