I live an incredibly blessed life. I am well loved and loved well by God. I have a great family-the best wife any man can hope for and three beautiful daughters. I have loyal and faithful mentors, peers, and friends at my side. I get the privilege to teach emerging leaders at Messiah College. I am honored to pastor a wonderful church at Horizon Ministries.
Yet with all honesty, life has never been easy for me. I am not naturally gifted nor a born leader and achiever. I am at best, average. Everything I have and accomplished so far, though clearly only by the grace of God, I have to work hard for and dare I say the word-struggle for.
I have more unanswered prayers than answered ones. I have more dreams unfulfilled than those realized.The sacrifices outnumber the successes. There are more disappointments, discouragements, and disillusionment than I care to remember.Horizon Ministries is a perfect mirror of my life. We officially have 292 members but only around 100 of them are active. That means we have more members lost than those who have chosen to stay and grow with us.
I know, I know. I should not wallow in self pity. I should look on the bright side.I should count my blessings. And that's the thing I'm doing now. At the very least I would like to say I'm struggling well.
By now I have accepted this to be a norm for my life. No more ''pie in the sky'' stuff for me.No more simplistic statements like ''if you can see it, you can achieve it'' hogwash. The truth is I am blessed, but I accept the reality that everything I dream of, care for, and want to achieve will be done through sacrifice, pain, hard work, and agonizing prayer. That's just the way it is for me. It is what it is. No explananations needed.
Many of my church members know I live by a code, a number of them actually (think of them as principles for living). I call them my Code 27 (twenty seven representing the number of Codes there are.) Right now, I'm adding a Code 28, and Code # 28 says Embrace the struggle. Struggles are a part of life, and since they refuse to go away, might as well embrace it as a friend instead of treating it like an enemy.
It's not a contradiction to say you are blessed and at the same time acknowledge that life is hard, even for a believer.That's the path God has chosen for me, and I know for so many of you also.
Life is not fair. It's not fair that some of you were molested as a child. It's not fair that you have irresponsible parents. It's not fair that your children who are selfish. It's not fair that you grew up in poverty. It's not fair that the people you trust betrayed you. Hell, it's not fair that life isn't fair. Simply get over it!
May we have the faith to believe in the face of these realities that God is still good and will and have already blessed us.That's the one thing we should never get over with!
Let's choose to live in hope. Tomorrow can be better than today. It won't be easy, but so what? Nothing good and worthwhile comes easy anyway.
So there. Embrace the struggle and fall into the embrace of God.
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