No Pain... No Gain

Well, it’s Monday... again. I am sure some of you are facing things today and this week that are, to put it mildly, challenging. You did your best to put it behind you for the weekend, but you did think about it. It is just so prominent right now it is difficult to just temporarily forget. If you’re not identifying with this right now you either have at some time in the past or will in the future so just read on and say a pray for those in the fight right now.

The truth is that the times of greatest growth in our lives, the times that have weeded out of us the attitudes that kept up from moving forward, the times that we look back on and probably even talk about the most are those difficult times. But we don’t talk about them in a negative way, even though it was a painful experience, because the result was very positive.

In “Byways of Blessedness,” author, James Allen, challenges us to embrace our circumstances. "Let a person rejoice when he is confronted with obstacles, for it means that he has reached the end of some particular line of indifference or folly, and is now called upon to summon up all his energy and intelligence in order to extricate himself, and to find a better way; that the powers within him are crying out for greater freedom, for enlarged exercise and scope.

"No situation can be difficult of itself; it is the lack of insight into its intricacies, and the want of wisdom in dealing with it, which give rise to the difficulty. Immeasurable, therefore, is the gain of a difficulty transcended." — James Allen in “Byways of Blessedness”

Maybe that’s the reason we can’t seemed to get past the present situation or struggle. There is a work to be done in us, a blessing to be gained in time... God’s time. Am I saying that God creates these evils we battle against? Absolutely not! But He does allow it as He did with Job. God knew that the end of the test would result not in Job’s destruction, but in the doubling of everything he had. Our greatest successes in life come through our greatest trials.

The apostle James told us this long before James Allen lived. “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. James 1:2-5 (NIV)

Consider it PURE joy, not just joy but PURE joy. There is a key phrase in that Scripture. It is “not lacking anything.” God knows what we need and sometimes what we lack can only be gained through resistance or difficulty. He wants us to have everything.

Sometimes we feel like the soldier I read about. During the Civil War a Union soldier from Ohio was shot in the arm. His captain saw he was wounded and barked out an order, “Gimme your gun, Private, and get to the rear!”

The private handed over his rifle and ran toward the north, seeking safety. But after gong only about two or three hundred yards, he came upon another skirmish. So he ran to the east, and found himself in another part of the battle. Then he ran west, but encountered more fighting there.

Finally, he ran back to the front lines shouting, “Gimme back my rifle, Cap’n. There ain’t no rear to this battle nowhere!”

Author Emmet Fox, wrote, "It is the Law that any difficulties that can come to you at any time, no matter what they are, must be exactly what you need most at the moment, to enable you to take the next step forward by overcoming them. The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy, comes when we suffer without learning the lesson."

So let’s learn the lesson, get the wisdom, gain the knowledge and move on. But it takes patience, perseverance. It probably won’t happen in a day. Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes not so long. Just let “perseverance finish its work.”

Prayer: Lord Jesus, give me today what I need to deal with today. Grant me the patience, the wisdom, the grace, and the strength to endure and finally overcome, and become what You have planned for me. AMEN.

Blessings!
Pastor Roger