One more time and you feel like it will kill you. You feel you have given your all. But the job is not done. You don’t know if you can take any more. This is what soldiers experience. Or some of those in sports. And even some Christians.

It is said of Jesus, “He poured out His soul unto death.” (Isaiah 53:12) “He went a little further and fell on His face.” (Matthew 26:39) For Jesus, He went all the way, “even the death of the cross.” (Philippians 2:8)

It’s a funny place to be in your life. You believe in what you are doing. But you’ve come to the place where it really costs you something. If you keep going further, there looks to be real loss; personal loss will be the price. Maybe there is physical pain but maybe it’s just emotional and spiritual pain, hopes, plans and possibilities. The results of decisions that you know are going to further the kingdom of God, but really cost you personally.

This is what the quote from Shakespeare is about, “once more, into the breach”. I’ve never read Shakespeare extensively but I do know that his writings are considered to be some of the greatest heights ever reached in the English language. Here’s what he wrote about “into the breach”

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger.”

From Shakespeare’s play “Henry the Fifth”

Maybe you’ve come to a place in your life where your hopes, dreams and possibilities have come together in a unique and golden opportunity that’s before you and you recognize it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But you also see clearly that there is a price to pay. To reach your goal is going to take everything, all that you have and no one will know about it but you and God.

I’ve never been in a physical war. Never had bullets whizzing by me, never had artillery shells exploding around me. But I think this must be how it is for people in that situation, where their life is on the line from minute to minute.

I like sports for this reason. People in sports have to give their total all if they are going to succeed. Half hearted people are not successful in sports. Actually it is the same in Christianity but it doesn’t show up as easily. Christians are actually supposed to be maintaining many of the attributes of soldiers. “A good soldier of Jesus Christ” (II Timothy 2:3) And also the discipline and commitment of athletes. “Lay aside ever weight and the sins that so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus…”   (Hebrews 12:1 & 2)

Many people cry at the end of a movie. But have you ever cried at the opening scenes of a movie? That happened to me one time. I was just going through a very rough marriage and family breakup and I went to watch “Chariots of Fire”. The opening scene was of these athletes running on a beach and the music was so moving. So the movie had been on a minute or two and I started crying. God was speaking to me that I just had to be like those athletes and to keep going and moving on.

Sometimes, that’s how we can make it, with a broken heart. We don’t have the strength in ourselves. We can’t run the race. We can’t measure up to the task before us. We are weak, very much, in ourselves. But then we have to give ourselves over to the Lord. He has to be the one that goes further within us in our lives. It’s only our faith in Him in us that gives us the power and faith to go as far as He calls us to go.

This is the better life He has called us to. A life of purpose, of impact and effect on the world we live, a life that is lived from the heart that He has entered and changed. But sometimes, no one really knows but God. No one sees what you are paying for decisions you are making. Soldiers dying in the battle, athletes giving their utmost and then more. And yes, Christians, like Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane when “He went a little further and fell on his face.” (Matthew 26:39)

It can be so difficult. But then it also is an incredible blessing of the Lord, to be in a place where you clearly have to decide if you will go that far, if you will die that much, if you will suffer that distance. Paul in the Bible evidently experienced this. In one place he said “I die daily”. (I Corinthians 15:31)

I truly believe that at some point in the future, Christians around the world will be in “a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation”. (Daniel 12:1) Jesus clearly said a time like that would come. For so many, times come that test us very much, where decisions test how far we will go, often the way it is for soldiers in battle or athletes in competition. But then as the Bible says about these warriors and competitors of this world, “They do it to obtain a corruptible crown, be we an incorruptible.” (I Corinthians 9:25)

Often it can be like Shakespeare said in “Henry the Fifth”, like soldiers in the midst of mortal combat, “once more, into the breach”. May the Lord in us help us to go further than we ever could in our own strength and faith. May we press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.