Climbing a mountain, running a marathon, giving birth, confronting a trauma, learning a new language, spending all day in the car with your new teen driver. Sometimes things are hard, not all equally so, but difficult nonetheless. They are challenging, worthwhile tasks but incredibly tough. If that confrontation with your coworker didn’t go great, but you know you did the right thing, if that daily reminder to not yell at your children—even for dumping the bag of flour on the rug, if that plan to walk 10,000 steps per day seems like a good idea until it rains every day for a month, if all of those things have you feeling like you’ve made a mistake, let’s stop and reflect. All of these things are hard, but just because they’re hard doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you’ve missed the mark.
When life seems hard most of us question if this is the right path. Did I make a mistake? Is this God’s will? We question if we misheard or misunderstood God when obstacles arise. When we see something hard or face an unspeakable challenge, we question like the disciples, “Did this man sin or his parents?” We believe like the disciples that this difficulty must be a result of a wrong move, or even an egregious sin. Jesus refutes that belief unequivocally. He tells us that this happened so the work of God might be displayed. (John 9). What if God equipped you, just you, for the hard and difficult work standing before you now? Paul was an amazing writer, speaker, evangelist, and overall encourager to believers. Let’s stop and remember, though, where he was writing all of those letters. So many letters stem from his imprisonment. What if he had questioned if this the path he was supposed to take because he kept getting punished, over and over? What if he had stopped just because it was hard? He would have missed out on the journey. The believers would not have been encouraged by him. Perhaps Timothy and others wouldn’t have been led by him to preach and teach the gospel to the world. We wouldn’t have half of the new testament. God equips you for the hard and heart. As I preach to my own heart, with a dose of iced coffee in the summer afternoon, I realize what I need. The community that encourages and reminds: Just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
Comment below with something that was really hard, but you persevered and it made allll the difference!
