Lean Into Your Troubles

A person’s psyche is a very fragile thing. It is amazing that on certain days we feel every task is a chore and like we are walking knee deep in mud. Every step is a strain on our physical bodies as well as our psyche. We focus on the difficulty of the journey, the enormity of the mountain we must climb and we begin entertaining thoughts of despair and doubt when what we really need is to reach down deep in the soul with grit and lean into our troubles with determination.
We are not accustomed to leaning into our troubles. We have a trouble adverse mentality seeking to flee in the complete opposite direction. We often seek to step out of the harness of trials and adversity. What is amazing is the number of people who learned how to lean into their troubles and developed character in the process. I am thinking of people like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, and Franklin Roosevelt. Each of these faced adversity and each learned to lean into their troubles in triumph rather than defeat.
There are days when I am riding my bike and I see an approaching hill and my psyche begins to dread the climb. I begin dwelling on how hard it is to pedal and how I wish I was on the down hill side. My mind muses on the length and steep grade of the hill making it more difficult to endure. There are other days when my mind is determined and focused and I lean into the hill seeking to push past the pain and climb to the top faster than I climbed it the ride before. On those days the hills are just as steep but are somehow easier to surmount. What makes the difference? The hill is the same and the gears on my bike are the same. Attitude makes the difference.
Troubles can be little more than stepping stones to success when your attitude is altered. Keeping God’s perspective about problems makes them more manageable. They no longer overwhelm but give us the opportunity to watch God intervene. We can actually learn from trials if are ready and willing to learn the lessons God is seeking to teach us. At times it might be to learn patience. At other times we might need to learn how to have enduring faith or how to maintain joy in joyless circumstances. We might need a crash course in how to have hope in the midst of hopelessness or to love the unlovable. The lessons are bountiful as well as the lessons learned when we learn how to lean into our problems.
There are things I will never fully understand. Why does one person suffer from a diseased body early in life while another abuses his or her body with sex, drugs, and loose living but lives to a ripe old age? Why do some families encounter tragedy after tragedy while other families may live for generations without ever seeing tragedy? I do not have the answer why some pagan can father unwanted child after unwanted child while some married couple fall on their knees pleading with God for just one child coping with barren wombs? Why do some hard workers who labor diligently for a lifetime never seems able to get ahead while some lazy people cheat, deceive and fraud prospering hand over fist? Life is filled with many such contradictions.
If you give into pity parties and doubting fits, your problems will only appear that much larger. Lean into troubles today and learn what you can you learn from them. Refuse to give up but by faith press on to victory. Partner with God as He brings you into triumph.
I don’t know why we are so surprised when troubles find their way to our address. We ought to expect them and when they do come we should lean into them with our best efforts, our best prayers, our best faith, and refused to be conquered. We are victors and not victims through Jesus Christ. “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘for Your sake we are being put to death all day long, we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loves us.”[Rom 8:35-37]
Please take note that we are likely to face tribulation in this life. We are bound to be distressed from time to time just like we might face persecution for our faith. We may know what is like to go through some financially lean times and face danger and or tragedy but none of these things can change the fact that we are loved by Christ. He helps in these troubles and uses them in ways we could never fathom. At times to reject the troubles is to reject Christ and what He wants to teach us and develop in us.
I urge you again to lean into your troubles. Get your mind right and set your thoughts on the things above and not on the things of this earth. [Col 3:1-2] As you lean into your troubles what you will discover is that you are leaning into Christ and what better place is there for any true believer to lean. He gives us strength and resolve to endure and His grace is sufficient. [II Cor 12:9-10]
Lean into the harness of your troubles and plow faithfulness in the soil of your trials. The harvest will come and with it the day of celebration. That might take place in eternity in the presence of Jesus or it might take place with your feet firmly planted in the sod of this planet. Either way, Jesus is sufficient and more than enough to help us keep leaning and straining against the sod of trouble and the snags of this life. In and through Jesus we conquer and overcome when we lean into our troubles.