It's been tough lately. It's one thing to feel like your life is going nowhere. It's quite another to feel like your life is going backward. Unfortunately, that is the feeling I get when finances and my professional life are heading in the wrong direction. I am prone to falling into the trap of wondering why God is allowing these struggles when I am striving to live for Him. I have written about that kind of thinking before...as if God owes us material blessings in this life. I think God allows these difficult periods to show me where my heart has made agreements that have no basis in Scripture. Again...it's about loving God for who He is and not what He can do for us.
My traditional way of handling challenging times is to simply put my head down and work even harder. That is still a temptation that I have. As if I can just rely on myself to get through. Oh sure, I will pray for reprieve, strength and provision but in the day-to-day grind I find it very easy to make it about me and my ability to rise above the situation. I was recently watching "Rocky Balboa" (the last installment) and Rocky's words to his son resonated with me at the time:
"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that!"
Ever feel like Rocky? Where life is just reduced to seeing how much you can take and keep moving forward? I feel like that from time to time. That it's all just one big test and the winners and losers are simply separated by who throws in the towel and who doesn't. But where is God in that? I think I am tempted to put it all on my shoulders so that I can have the glory when things ultimately break my way. I won't have to credit God or anyone else for helping me through. Kinda like Lance Armstrong.
As is written in the Sacred Journey, "To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do - to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst - is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed."
To grit your teeth and steel yourself against the harshness of this world is to say that your agenda and your glory is more important than that of God. Yes, we will have to work hard and struggle during this life. But to become so myopically focused on that sliver of reality is to deny who we are and what God wants to do in us and through us. You are missing what LIFE truly is about if you have reduced it to being a cruel game of seeing how much it can dish out before you break. That isn't the life Christ came to give and it isn't the life we are called to live. When you feel like you can't take anymore and keep going forward, don't focus your eyes on the problems right in front of you but rather focus your heart above where life is truly found.
The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners - Isaiah 61:1
9/1/10 Addendums: "I ask you not to lose heart" - Paul in Eph. 3:13, merits thinking deeply on
"Whom God would use greatly He will hurt deeply."- A.W. Tozer
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