Back in August, a 20-year-old British girl named Emma French wanted to take her driving test. She was pregnant and suffering labor contractions but did not want to forfeit her opportunity to take the test she had failed five months earlier. Even when her water broke and everyone telling her to go to the hospital, she finished her test, passing it. Then she drove herself to the hospital later that day. Little Eva was born to a mom with some strong determination!

How badly do you want to go to heaven? How important is it in life – like Emma French – and for eternal life to have the ability to not gratify immediate urges? Can we work through the pain and discomfort of this life, knowing that if we remain faithful to God, we’ll have something far better? Too many people can’t do that. Too many people are too easily knocked off course – fear, doubt, persecution, self-denial of various forms. There are a lot of “labor contractions” that Satan tries to use to get us to get out of the car and go somewhere else.

Can we use Emma French as an example of someone who knew what she wanted and was willing to tolerate the pain necessary to get it? How badly do you want to go to heaven?

So we do not lose heart. “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).

–Paul Holland