I was thinking about some of the greatest achievements that I have had in my life today. The thing about most of the things that I have achieved in life is that they aren’t really great things. They are really just things that I endured in life. In fact I started to think about all of the great men and women in history, how their stories are not stories of good times but of crisis. The thing that is amazing about history is that you are not remembered by what you achieved but by what you endured.
Crisis is a thing most of us try to avoid like the plague. When crisis comes our way we run as fast as we can go. The reality is that crisis is the fuel that propels change, growth and success in our life. Crisis don’t come in our lives to destroy our faith but to expose it. Instead of running from crisis, we should run to it. Often times our crisis is the opportunity we have been looking for in life, we just have to endure it. We should embrace it as an opportunity for each one of us to achieve the Greater Things that God has is store for you and I. It is the way we grow our faith and trust in God. In our crisis we truly find out if we have faith. See a faith that is tested by crisis is a faith that can be trusted. By running from the crisis, we are saying that we don’t trust God but are looking at our own ability. In and of ourselves we will always fail, but with God we can do Greater Things.
What crisis are you currently facing?
- What do you need to run to instead of from to achieve victory in your life?
- Who are you trusting in, yourself or God?
The biggest thing that I think I have learned is that talent is not or ever enough. I know that a lot of people have talent but when the going gets tough a lot of times talented people quit. It is the strong, the diligent and the COMMITTED who end up succeeding in life and ministry. This has been a tough challenge for me personally. I always think of commitment as an easy thing but as Shayla and I have stepped out, quit our jobs and moved this commitment thing has started to settle in our lives. I have asked myself probably one hundred times, “What the heck are you doing, are you crazy leaving everything that you know, the security for this new church plant” and all that I keep responding with is “I guess I am now really committed.” See before it was just a really good idea but I could still decide that maybe this wasn’t from God and just go back to my old way of life. Now on the other hand I am truly and fully committed. In this process the thing that I have found is that commitment hurts. I have yet to even experience the pain of truly planting the church but at the same time I am continually facing the reality of commitment. I think that I truly understand to a degree what Jesus was feeling at the Garden of Gethsemane when He was praying to God to take the cup of suffering on the cross from him. Even though he was not yet tortured and nailed to the cross he understood and felt the weight of that COMMITMENT he was making to endure the pain in the future. The commitment he made there in the garden helped him to endure the pain, suffering and sin of the world by dying on the cross for you and I. The thing is that the decision was made way before he was ever on the cross.