No Pain... No Gain

"You crown the year with a bountiful harvest; even the hard pathways overflow with abundance." Psalm 65:11 (NLT)

         Those who are fitness addicts are very familiar with the phrase, "no pain. no gain" and rightfully so. It speaks to those who go from a static lifestyle to one of fitness. In the transition you experience a lot of pain caused by the lactic acid which is causing your muscles to stretcg. It's really an interesting concept of how God designed our bodies to consistently handle an increase in pressure physically.

           The same can be said for our emotional and spiritual fitness. I look back and think of all the draining moments of my life. Times of war, where despair was evident. Times of lack, thinking of how I was going to make it through some agonizing moments of my life. As I thought back on what I navigated in life, I think about the fact that though those things were afflicting me at that moment, I grew a tolerance to it. Perhaps at some other time in my life I wouldn't have been able to handle it, but at that moment I could and I did. My spiritual and emotional muscles were flexing and the pain caused by the "lactic acid" was an indicator that I can take on "more weight."

             I think of those who want the God of abundant provision without them having a need, or those who want God to be the healer without there being anything to heal. For God to move there has to be something He needs to move in or towards. For there to be a credit there must be a deficit.

             What if we really understood that he wants to make the hard pathways turn decidedly in our favor? Would we really get the fact that growth comes with pain, but in the midst of this pain there is overflow and abundance? I know it runs counter to anything that many people can reason, but that's the breeding ground for God's impossible nature. He desires to make something out of nothing...that's His expertise. He just asks us to trust along the way. To give up our tendency for self-preservation when things get tough and rely on those hard pathways to overflow with our abundance.