The son of a good friend of mine is playing ball in a great deal of pain these days. He is playing with Osgood-Schlatter. He’s a tough kid, but the pain is starting to cause him to slow down. There is nothing that can be done for the disease. He just has to play through the pain.
Last night I watched Survivor Nicaragua. This group of people has been in the jungle for 28 days. There are 11 days left and last night two people quit. They just decided that it was too hard. That is a decision they will remember and regret the rest of their days.
Life is hard. There are going to be times when we do not feel like going on in marriage or work or ministry or some other important commitment. It may be because of the way we are being treated or because we don’t agree with a decision or because of the challenging requirements or any number of reasons.
In those moments we have to make a choice. We can choose to do the hard thing early and the easy thing later or do the easy thing early and the hard thing later. The easy thing to do early is to quit. Just give up, make an excuse, and walk away. It will feel good for a bit, but it will be hard on you later. You will regret it and you will miss out on the opportunity and hope the pain could have brought.
James 1:2–4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Do the hard thing early and learn from the pain. Through perseverance God has a way of changing us. It is in those moments in life when we hurt that God seems to do His best work in and through us.
No comments:
Post a Comment