Coming out stronger

Why do medicines have to be bitter to cure ailments? Must pangs of childbirth always precede delivery? Max Lucado suggests an answer:

“Light always hurts before it helps.”

Quit gulping temporary pain-killers for an ailment that requires surgery. Don’t paper over the cracks, own up to the truth. Plastering a burst pipe only postpones judgment day.

Delayed gratification in money, sex, food, some luxury or position is a painful endurance test, producing in you a robust harvest of discipline and character, which your mind and body require to generate the successful lifestyle God destined for you. When you deprive yourself of any pleasurable craving, you exhibit delayed gratification.

No big thing comes close to cheap, a price tag sticks to every prize. Each time you overcome a bad habit, you cross the threshold of self-imposed limitation. Are your habits pushing you forward or otherwise?

Uproot the weeds to save the life of your seed. The weeds are sapping your strengths. It takes a lifetime to build the reputation of a good character but a slight error of judgment to crumble it in a day. History and the Tiger Woods’ scandal have proven this. Endure the pain and get the gain.

Photo: Microsoft Office images

The furnace of affliction

I visited a steel mill recently. Top executives sat in large air-conditioned offices and labourers worked at the furnace, sweating heavily in the long overalls they wore.

In life you must choose which divide you want to belong. This is influenced by your daily choices (how do you spend your time?), your risk appetite (how willing are you to take risks?), your knowledge quotient (how well do you know your field?), your passion (how intoxicated are you to want what you claim to want?) and the supernatural (how sound is your relationship with God?).

Success and failure are not given, they’re achieved. You’re not a product of chance, but of choice. You choose to live, to die, to dream and to have faith in God. Your life is a summation of your daily choices.

d1 + d2 + d3 + … d1m = YL
(Where d is decision, m is million, YL is your life).

I saw the labourers pour molten steel as red hot liquid fire. Endure your furnace of affliction. This is where you’re melted, cut to size, made to shape, moulded into destiny. This is where you’re transformed to a candidate for cosy offices. Every problem is designed with an expiry date, it won’t last, friend.

Your light and momentary troubles are achieving for you an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. Endure hardship.