Question #2: What Trials Have You Faced?
The key question from the second soil is this: What trials have kept you from living out your calling? What has happened to you to keep you from making progress towards your calling? What events, people, fears, or experiences have kept you from moving forward?
When things get tough, you may not know what to do, but you can know the One who does. You can trust Him. You can trust that somehow what was intended for evil, God can work so miraculously that good can come out of even the darkest moments.
We do not know why, but we know the One who does. We can trust Him.
We can choose Hope even when we don't feel like it.
We can become tenacious!
Have you ever wanted to give up? Has your calling ever seemed beyond reach? According to the Scriptures, your path towards overcoming trials includes living a life worthy of the calling you have received, and God can help you do this!
The Thessalonians suffered greatly. They experienced riots, violence, and persecution. They had expected Jesus to return so soon after He was crucified and resurrected from the dead that they stopped working. A fake letter being passed around convinced them that Jesus had returned but had not come for them. As a result they were disappointed and disillusioned.
To encourage them in the midst of their suffering and to keep them from giving up, Paul writes:
"For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory." 1 Thessalonians 2:11-12
We see this idea over and over in the Scriptures. When things get tough, live a lifeworthy of the calling you’ve received.
What God is calling you to do is worth the struggle, challenge, and hardship.
2 Thessalonians 1:11
"With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith."
Too often we give up too soon. We give up right before the breakthrough.
Harvard business professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter explained this idea in this way:
"Everything looks like failure in the middle."
In Great by Choice, Jim Collins tells about the first two groups who traveled to the South Pole. One group made it and the other group died trying.
The group that died went as far as they could on the days when the weather was good, but they would be too tired to make much progress on the next good weather day. When the weather was poor, they hunkered down and did not travel at all. Tragically, they never returned.
The group that made it had a 20 mile march approach. They committed to go 20 miles every day whether it was great weather or terrible weather.
Collins writes: "The 20 Mile March creates two types of self-imposed discomfort: (1) the discomfort of unwavering commitment to high performance in difficult conditions, and (2) the discomfort of holding back in good conditions."
He goes on to say: "To achieve consistent performance, you need both parts of a 20 Mile March: a lower bound and an upper bound, a hurdle that you jump over and a ceiling that you will not rise above, the ambition to achieve and the self-control to hold back....
Accomplishing a 20 Mile March, consistently, in good times and bad, builds confidence. Tangible achievement in the face of adversity reinforces the winning perspective that we are ultimately responsible for improving performance. We never blame circumstance; we never blame the environment."
Some of us have spent too much time blaming our circumstances and blaming the environment. We need to remember who we are, remember Whose we are, and we need to live a life worthy of the calling we have received. Become tenacious! Never let your circumstances determine your level of faith. Let your faith determine how you respond to your circumstances.
Before moving on, answer the following questions:
For more on overcoming trials, read the Becoming Tenacious Snippet.