It Ain't Easy - Keep On Keepin' On!

Do you have any “go to” passages in Scripture that encourage you, that lift you up, that inspire you to keep going when life is hard? When you feel overwhelmed, or when it just feels like you are struggling just to put one foot in front of the other and make it through another day. I don’t know if you ever feel like that, but I do know that life is hard. For me, there are a few in the Bible that I return to again and again, and this morning’s passage is one of them.

Let’s read Philippians 3:12-14 together.

Philippians 3:12–14 ESV

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Once I was on a hike with some church members. Having been an avid hiker I did not find the journey particularly arduous, but one particular student was having a really rough time. She was lagging behind, when you talked to her she was frustrated, she often complained about the hike we were on. It was too steep, it was too long, it was too hard. The other students and leaders encouraged her and tried to let her know we were there for her.

The group had stopped on a plateau, taken off our day packs and were breaking out our lunches. Linda (not her real name) plodded along far behind. As she saw that we’d stopped she began to complain again to the entire group. “Linda” one of the leaders interrupted. She kept complaining. “Linda!” the leader tried to get her attention again, but the complaints just kept coming as she continued to plod along.

“Linda!!!” the leader shouted.

“Whaaat!” She huffed half whining.

The leader returned to normal conversational tone and said, “Look to your left.”

Linda scowled at the leader and turned slowly to her left. Her reaction was priceless. She jumped and exclaimed “Oh My!” as a smile burst across her face. Suddenly she was using terms like “amazing,” “beautiful,” “gorgeous,” and in reference to what had been a "slog” to her moments ago, it was “totally worth it!” She told the leaders, “You need to bring more people up here!” She couldn’t stop talking about the beauty she was seeing. Her tired legs, the amount of strain, the work it had taken to get there no longer mattered.

It Ain’t Easy!

Anyone who has tried to convince you that life was easy, clearly did not know what they were talking about. Yet, for some reason that is what many have come to expect. In fact, when we love someone, one of the hardest things to do is to watch them struggle. But the struggle is often what is necessary for the growth.

Linda’s perspective on the difficulty of the hike totally changed when she saw the prize. An athlete’s attitude toward difficult workout routines will often change when they see their performance getting better. The struggle is a part of the journey.

Hebrews 12:11 ESV

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

M. Scott Peck in his best selling book The Road Less Travelled began with perhaps the most profound one sentence paragraph of any book I’ve ever read. He simply wrote:

“Life is difficult.”

Let that sink in. That’s what he wanted us to do when he wrote it, that’s why this one sentence paragraph was set up all by itself. Life is difficult.

Think about this, what makes us stronger?

Have you ever been injured, or confined to bed for a period of time? Did you get stronger or weaker?

It gets weaker, medically it’s called atrophy.

There’s a reason that when you have a surgery the doctors want you to get up and moving around as soon as they can safely have you do that. Our bodies were meant to move.

And how do we gain strength? By exercise, by moving, by actually using what we have. At the microscopic level its by hard work that tears apart the muscles. This causes the body to grow more muscle tissue to strengthen that area, thus accounting for the increased muscle size when you work out.

I saw an illustration once where it spoke of a person who had sat in fascination watching a butterfly struggle to exit its chrysalis. After watching for what seemed like way to long they decided to help, and carefully snipped the delicate outer shell of the chrysalis freeing the butterfly from its impending tomb. What emerged was an ugly creature with a grossly swollen abdomen, spindly wings. It survived only a few hours.

You see it is in the struggle of emerging from the chrysalis that the fluids in the abdomen are forced out into the wings that then elongate and fill to form the beautiful creature we call the butterfly. So just because it is difficult does not mean that it is not worth the journey.

Own it!

Too many people claim to have made a commitment but do absolutely nothing about it. Talent, skills, gifts, whatever you want to call it, go to waste because they do nothing. The butterfly has to press (literally) on and out to get through the Chrysalis wall and become what it is intended to be.

I’ve talked about this several times in the past few weeks about what it takes to move forward. It’s not about holding on to your past, it’s about building upon your past and using it as a launching pad into your future.

Philippians 3:13 ESV

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,

We become very attached to our past. Our past is much of what has made us who we are today - but it is not what defines who we will be in the future. God continues to call us forward, to call us upward to be the people that God created us to be.

Onward and Upward!

It takes commitment. It takes guts. It takes being willing to work through the hard stuff that we have in our lives. Pain, suffering, death, grief, all of it - and all of it shapes us. Pressing onward to the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

What do you claim - what are you making your own knowing that Christ Jesus has made you his own?

Is it stuff?

Is it reputation?

Is it of this world or is it eternal?

These are questions we should be asking ourselves of what we do.

Philippians 3:20–21 ESV

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.