We've all heard of the phenomena known as "growing pains", the idea that when a child hits a growth spurt the muscles and bones throb and ache without much relief available. Throughout my years of coaching, teaching, and parenting it seems like the kids that experience the most intense growing pains are the ones that experience a highly noticeable increase in height in a short period of time. You see a 5'1" seventh grader one day and then it seems like you see them the next day and they are 5'7" and looking at you eye to eye. Chances are, if you can get that early teen to talk to you at all, he or she will tell you that they are dealing with growing pains.
Growth in our lives is much the same in respect to the pain that many times is associated with becoming the person we were created to be. God created you on purpose for a purpose, finding that purpose is the outcome associated with growth. Unfortunately, growth in life comes with a great deal of growing pains, called lessons learned. We all go through adversity and afflictions in life, not by choice, but instead because we are breathing oxygen. Growing pains in life are different than the muscle/bone aches we experience as children. Everyone experiences life growing pains, the problem is many people don't learn from their opportunity to "grow" and they either mask the growth with something, or they refuse to learn and thus hinder the growth experience that needs to occur.
Sickness, loss, relational issues, financial flops, addictions, or even an unanticipated career change can all create quite a bit of growing pains. I believe we can all agree, the life experiences in the aforementioned list hurt. Physically hurt, mentally hurt, emotionally hurt, some create more pain than the others, but they all have one thing in common, they hurt. A reliable verse that I cling deeply to tells me that "Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them." Isaiah 30:20. In other words it is common to man to experience pain and suffering, we don't have to like it, but we have to choose whether we will look for the growth opportunities associated with the adversity we are experiencing, thus deepening our relationship with our Creator, or we choose to hide from the growth through our excuses, blame shifting, addictions, or abuses.
Faith is developed. It is strengthened through trust, and made to be more flexible during times when faith may not feel like the emotion you want to express. We want revenge when we hurt, God says "vengeance is mine..." Romans 12:19. We want immediate relief when we experience pain, yet Paul proclaimed "That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties, for when I am weak then I am made strong." II Corinthians 12:9-11. That is much easier to say then it is to do for sure, but when you allow yourself to trust God, you will grow. It is inevitable, just as our muscles and bones feel the pain of physical growth, our spiritual relationship with God grows through the adversity that we endure in this current life we have been given to live.
I have asked God to make me a lifelong learner. What I must be willing to embrace is that by being a life learner, I am going to learn most of those lessons through situations and circumstances that are either uncomfortable or painful to the point of tears. You can't fathom God's plan for your life. "My plans aren’t your plans, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my plans than your plans." Isaiah 55:8-10. That being said, it is our opportunity to grow through God's plan when we are given the option to trust in Him or we choose to trust in self or things of this world that many times are destructive instead of constructive for our growth plan.
I leave you with this today, the apostle Paul endured much pain in his adult life after he made the decision to give his life to Christ and to follow Him. Through it all he embraced the pain and allowed it to work deeply in his faith relationship with the Maker. The following scripture is a testament to the growth Paul experienced through the growing pains of life, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things." I Corinthians 13:11. When you make the decision to trust God through the adversity and affliction, and as you turn dealing with something in life to a victory forged in perseverance and grit, the things that might break us down suddenly become the experiences that take us to the next level of leadership that we want others to encounter in life. There is victory in Christ! Grow through your life situations and circumstances, and become who you were created to be!
Growing in Christ for life,
Coach Carter
No comments:
Post a Comment