Post #12 - The Problem Is, I've Been Through This Before (Cycles)

If you are anything like me, you try to avoid trouble. You run from it.

Every time a situation gets the least bit hot, or is no longer going the way I think it should, I bail.

Ain't nobody got time for that!

But... if you are anything like me, you also find yourself going through the same situations over and over again.

And, like me, you probably blame the circumstances. It's the other person's fault or the job is not right for you or the relationship has run its course.

But, really, it's because when hard times come, we run. We give up. We throw in the towel.

What is important to understand is that our hard times don't come just to aggravate us. They come to teach us lessons and to build our strength.

But if we run every time something gets hard, our lessons are never learned and we remain in weakness.

People go to the gym to get into shape. Right? They run and do calisthenics and lift weights, ripping and tearing their muscles and putting their cardiovascular system under pressure. They do all of this with the expectation that their body is going to change - that they are going to get slim, trim, and fine.

Well, this is what God does for us. He sends us to our spiritual gym. He allows us to endure difficult situations to put us, and our faith, to the test. To measure our spiritual endurance.

Like the person who goes to the gym, we've got to keep going to get the desired results. If we don't hang in there when we are tested, when we get tired, when it hurts, when times get hard... we will never build our spiritual muscles. We will never get what we need to grow and be strengthened.

So, whenever we quit that job or relationship, or even that workout routine, prematurely, we are sabotaging ourselves and our opportunity for spiritual strength.

When we give up because we have encountered a difficult place, because things aren't the way they used to be, or because the situation is not comfortable anymore, we will, at some point in our near future, find ourselves going through that situation again.

We will find ourselves experiencing the same arguments and complaints, bad attitudes, disagreements and disappointments. We will just keep repeating the cycle.

What we don't realize is that there are blessings in going through our hard times. But, our blessings are waiting for us on the other side of the trial.

We tend to think that our trials are going to last forever. Or that we cannot handle them. And then we stop. We give up... right in the middle.

That is why we keep experiencing them. Because we never really go THROUGH them.

We stop in the middle of darkness when there is light at the end of the tunnel. How can we ever get to the revelations of God when we don't fight through the darkness of the problem?

To quit is to remain in darkness.

But God is the God of another chance. He will give us opportunity after opportunity to FINALLY get it right.

When I noticed that I was repeating the cycle AGAIN, I asked God what it was about me that was causing me to continuously go through the same situation. God told me that I gave up too easily. He showed me the things I walked away from because they got difficult. And they were way more than I care to admit.

And He told me what I am telling you right now: To break the cycle and get past the stalemate - the place where I had been stuck - I have to endure some things. I have to stay the course and remember that I am not alone.

In 2 Chronicles 20:15, the Lord says, "Be not afraid nor dismayed because of this great multitude, for the battle is not yours, but God's."

That means that no matter what we are going through and how bad it seems, we are not going through it alone.

We can endure our problems and difficulties because God is with us. And instead of fighting with our flesh, we can give our situations over to God and ask Him to give us strength to endure it while He carries us through it.

God is strong in our weakness. And He is the ONLY way we can break the cycle.