Doing the hard things

Below comes from the blog
Lamplighter


Doing Hard Things
I was conversing with a friend of mine last night and he said something that
caught my attention. He said that he has been noticing how the younger
generations walk more slowly than our generation. The current teenage
generation seems to walk at snail pace and even slower. I have noticed this
phenomenon myself. I see young people even dragging their feet as they walk.
We no longer see groups of kids playing basketball at the neighbors. When I
grew up there was a pick up game of basketball every night. During the
summers we had enough neighborhood friends to play baseball; at night we
played kick-the-can, and on a slow day you could find a bunch of us kids
hiking up the streams catching crayfish or climbing the cliffs. We were
always on the go. Today, kids are found sitting behind a computer or in
front of a tv. What has happened? I would like to share a teen's perspective
in the article below. I found this article in Magnum Opus III written by
Alex and Brett Harris. Nicely written...worth reading...worth having your
teens read especially.

Doing the Hard Things
by Alex and Brett Harris
We've all heard people say that God wants us "on fire" for Him. Maybe your
pastor has talked about being "sold out" for Jesus, or a conference speaker
has challenged you to serve God with "total abandon." We're used to that
kind of talk. It's almost cliché.
But has anyone ever told you that God commands you to do hard things?
For some reason that sounds more extreme, doesn't it? Being "on fire" or
"sold out" for God sound like positive emotional states where nothing can
really get to you. Even serving God with "total abandon" doesn't make us
feel uncomfortable as long as we leave it general and vague. But "do hard
things" sounds so—well, hard.
We don't like hard things in our society, especially as young people. We
avoid hard things as much as possible. Unfortunately (or should we say,
fortunately), there's no avoiding them in the Bible.
Of course, our tendency is to say that God's commands aren't "easy" or that
it's only by His grace that we can obey any of them—and both of those
statements are 100 percent true—but why can't we ever come out and say that
God's commands are hard? When Christ commands us to love our enemies, why
can't we just call it what it is?
Everything God commands is hard. Repenting is hard. Forgiving is hard.
Turning the other cheek is hard. Overcoming sin in our lives is hard.
Honoring our parents is hard. Sharing the gospel is hard. Reading our Bibles
is hard. We could go on.
Part of our hesitation to call things hard can be that we're afraid to come
across as unspiritual. After all, if we're truly "on fire" for Jesus,
shouldn't it be easy for us to read our Bibles every day, say no to sin, and
share the gospel with others?
But when we think that way, we're missing something huge that God wants to
teach us about personal growth and His plan for our lives.


The Way We Grow

In James 1:2, we're told to consider it "pure joy" when we're faced with
challenges, trials, and obstacles, because they test our faith and makes us
stronger. Think about that: The God who created you and loves you cares
about your growth. And the way He has designed you to grow is through
challenges.
When you work out your muscles grow stronger. When you challenge yourself
mentally your brain grows new neurons. When you do hard things, you grow,
both in character and in practical areas of competence.
If we want to grow we need to get over the idea that God's love means He
wants us to go through life with as little effort or discomfort as possible.
This is similar to the mistaken notion that we don't need to change because
God loves us just the way we are. God does love us just the way we are, but
He also loves us too much to leave us that way. He wants us to grow.
Of course, none of this is to say that God wants us to live joyless and
pain-filled lives, but our joy must be rooted in more than temporary
circumstances, and at times pain is necessary in order to gain something of
greater value.


A Radical Argument

We're making what sounds like a radical argument. We're not just saying
that hard things happen and that you can benefit from them. We're not just
saying that you have the ability to do hard things. We're telling you that
you should do hard things because it's the best and only way to experience
true growth in your life.
Take a moment and think. Can you remember any period of growth in your life
(as a Christian, student, athlete, musician) that didn't involve effort and
even some level of discomfort? The truth is that all growth involves
discomfort.
This isn't a new idea. We don't want to reinvent truth. But we do want our
generation to rediscover what has always been true—and one thing that has
always been true is that in order to grow we must do hard things. We must
challenge and stretch ourselves, step outside our comfort zones and do
something difficult. It's how we've grown before, and it's the only way
we'll grow for the rest of our lives.
while it may sound more appealing to sign up for a less extreme version of
the Christian life, such as the platinum "do hard things" membership,
perhaps we could take more of a "less benefits for less effort" approach by
instituting something more along the lines of a bronze
"go-to-church-every-week" membership
Unfortunately (or again, fortunately), God doesn't leave that option open to
us.
Writes C.S. Lewis: "It is hard; but the sort of compromise we're hankering
after is harder—in fact, it is impossible…. We are like eggs at present. And
we cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be
hatched or go bad."
In other words, we can't just go on being ordinary, decent Christians,
giving God part of our lives while holding back the rest. Either we are
hatched and learn to fly or we are a dud that will soon start to stink. The
ironic thing here is that although the hardest thing—the almost impossible
thing—is to hand over our whole selves to Christ, it is far easier than what
we are trying to do instead.

Hard Things or Harder Things?

What happens when we avoid hard things? The answer is that hard things come
to us. It's like the guy who won't go in to the gas station to put some air
in a slightly deflated tire, only to have it blow out on him on the freeway
when he's late for an important meeting. Maybe it's even happened before,
and he's already used his spare. Tough luck.
We can't really avoid doing hard things. We can only decide when to do them
and how prepared we will be to handle the hard things life brings our way.
You either do the hard thing of getting prepared, or you deal with the
harder thing of being unprepared. We either "do it" now, or we end up having
to "deal with it" later.
This is about a lot more than flat tires or missed meetings. Resisting
temptation is hard, but not as hard as dealing with an addiction. Finding
and keeping a job is hard, but not as hard as dealing with unemployment and
struggling to make ends meet.
This world would have you think that your best life would be a life in which
you were able to completely avoid responsibility and effort. But a life like
that could be compared to the strange fish that live in the complete
darkness of the deepest parts of the ocean, who never come in contact with a
hard object their entire lives, and whose flesh has become completely
translucent. That is a picture of what we're asking for when we desire a
life of ease.
John Piper, in his book Don't Waste Your Life, shares this story:
I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life.
Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader's Digest, which
tells about a couple who "took early retirement from their jobs in the
Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51.
Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot
trawler, play softball and collect shells." At first, when I read it I
thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn't.
Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life—your one and
only precious, God-given life—and let the last great work of your life,
before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and
collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great Day of Judgment:
"Look, Lord. See my shells." That is a tragedy. And people today are
spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream.
Over and against that, I put my protest: Don't buy it. Don't waste your
life.

We don't want to waste our lives. That's why we choose do hard things, and
why we challenge you to do hard things as well.
Theodore Roosevelt said it well when he said, "A mere life of ease is not in
the end a satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately
unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world." Such a life is a
tragedy—a wasted life.
When we fail to do hard things, we not only disobey God, we set ourselves up
to fall short of our true, God-given potential. Even worse, we act as if God
is not worthy of our effort—or as if He is unable to accomplish through us
what He has called us to do.


Living Your Best Life

God isn't glorified when His children limit themselves to what comes easily
for them. He isn't glorified when His children aren't willing to do hard
things. The Christian calling is hard, but it is also the only calling
worthy of such extraordinary effort.
History tells us that our best life is not our easiest life. Those men and
women who were of the greatest service to God and to mankind were those who
gave the most of themselves; those who endeavored, not to avoid
difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek comfort, but to do what was
necessary, no matter how hard.
If you can take only one thing from this article, take this: Our greatest
joy and satisfaction comes not from avoiding hard things but from joyfully
embracing them. This is how the same Jesus who said, "If anyone would come
after Me let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow Me," could
also say, "for My yoke is easy and My burden is light." Following in
Christ's footsteps is hard, but it's good—and He is the ultimate example to
us of a life spent doing hard things for the glory of God.
Our big, crazy idea is that this is the life God has called us to live
now—not ten or twenty years from now, but right now, as young people. This
is your best life, not your easiest life; the only way to avoid wasting your
single years and ultimately your life.


Something to Give Your Life To

If you want something that you can give your life to, this is it. This will
ask for all of you and give you back more than you could ever imagine.
This is what Jim Elliot was speaking of when he said, "He is no fool who
gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."
This is what Christ promised when He said, ""He who would save his life will
lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save
it."
This is what G.K. Chesterton was talking about when he wrote, "The Christian
ideal has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and
left untried."
Our dream is that our generation would be made up of those who find the
Christian ideal difficult and yet still try—knowing that the loving God who
would never leave us as we are and who desires our growth, will also delight
with the first feeble, stumbling effort we make tomorrow to do the simplest
hard thing for His glory.
George MacDonald, a great Christian writer, pointed out that every father is
pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk, but no father would be
satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up
son. In the same way, he said, "God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy."
And why would we ever want God to be satisfied with anything less than the
very best for us?
published in Magnum Opus III