We always look forward to when things will get easier. If I could just make it past this deadline, if I could just reach that goal, if I could hit that milestone, if I could hit that benchmark, then things will get easier. It can help to think that way to persevere through a particularly challenging period. It can be beneficial to look forward to a break or reward that helps you push through hard things. But we all need to realize that life does not actually work that way. Life never gets easier. We have to adjust our thinking to be more in line with God’s.
Kara Lawson is the head coach of Duke University’s women’s basketball team. She is a Women’s National Basketball Association champion and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, both as a player and as a coach. This is what she said to her team:
“It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better. That’s what happens. Most people think that it’s going to get easier …
“So that’s a mental shift that has to occur in each of your brains. It has to. Because, if you go around waiting for stuff to get easier in life, it’s never going to happen. And then what happens? Oh, it’s so hard; oh, I can’t do it; oh, I don’t know when it’s going to be easy for me; oh, it’s easy for other people. It’s not. It’s hard!
“And the second we see you handling stuff, handling hard better, what are we going to do? We are going to make it harder, because we’re preparing you for when you leave here—not just basketball—in life. …
“So, make yourself a person that handles hard well, not someone that’s waiting for the easy, because if you have a meaningful pursuit in life, it will never be easy. If you’re trying to win a championship, if you’re trying to have a family. Ask your parents. Do you think it was ever easy for them to raise kids? Caring is easy? It’s not. Any meaningful pursuit in life, if you want to be successful at it, goes to the people that handle hard well. Those are the people that get the stuff they want.
“People that wait around for easy, you’ll probably see them at the bus stop—they’re waiting for the easy bus to come around. The easy bus never comes around. You’ve got to handle hard.
“So don’t get discouraged through this time if it’s hard. Don’t get discouraged. It’s supposed to be. And don’t wait for it to be easy—I’ve got to just get through the summer and then it will all of a sudden get easy in the fall. No, it won’t. It won’t. It won’t get easy in the fall. So, make yourself someone that handles hard well, and then whatever comes at you, you’re going to be great.”
This is someone who has accomplished some pretty impressive things in the world, and what she is describing is consistent with what God is trying to build within you: We have a very meaningful pursuit in life, and it is not easy.
Endure Hardness
The Apostle Paul wrote his final letter to Timothy just before his death. Paul was in prison, yet Gerald Flurry has said this letter is Paul’s most inspiring work. Timothy, a young minister, was shaken by Paul’s inprisonment. There was an apostacy taking place in the Church. There were a lot of real struggles happening and Timothy was afraid, even ashamed.
2 Timothy 1:6-7 says, “Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” This is how God thinks. He wants us to have the power and sound mind that is characteristic of his nature.
“Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God” (verse 8). That is extraordinary direction: This is not going to be easy; don’t be ashamed; stop thinking weakly. Embracing God’s work will require some affliction.
“Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (verses 9-10). We have nothing to fear because we win in the end!
“Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles” (verse 11). Paul suffered to do God’s Work. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul records that he was beaten with rods three times, received 39 stripes five times, was shipwrecked three times, and underwent dangerous journeys, weariness, painfulness, hunger, thirst, cold and nakedness. Paul is telling Timothy that God’s people are called to a difficult life. We are not called to a life snuggled in our comfort zone; we are called to a life of struggle, battle, overcoming and doing what needs to be done for the Work and Family of God.
2 Timothy 2:1-2 says, “Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” This is manly advice: Be strong and embrace the struggle!
“Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ” (verse 3). Make yourself a person that handles hard well! All those problems, challenges and afflictions are necessary for you to become who God wants you to be. Embracing struggles is how you bring God into your life and learn to rely on Him. Only then can God develop His character within you.
God has big plans for each of his sons—big, exciting challenges and responsibilities. He wants you to grow to be able to handle more, and He is leading you to that point, step by step. The challenges you face today are preparations for greater challenges. This is not something to try to escape; it’s something to handle well.
The Stress Myth
In his book, Think, Michael Legault makes an interesting point about the rise of stress and its symptoms in the world today. People think their lives are out of control, putting them in perpetual crisis mode. That weakens their mental energy to do creative, productive and problem-solving work. He writes, “But how real is stress? There are obviously traumatic events that can introduce severe stress into people’s lives. But the meaning of stress, a word once applied to extreme, relatively rare situation, has been inflated to apply to just about everything that happens. Indeed, stress, say some experts, is largely a matter of perception and attitude. The word ‘stress,’ it turns out, generally has no more medical meaning than the phrase ‘life is not perfect.’ It is a word meant to convey a highly subjective psychological condition.”
He argues that “stress is the most overused and misused word in the English language.” Legault quotes Dr. Scott Shepherd, author of Who’s in Charge? Attacking the Stress Myth: “The word stress now seems to stand for all kinds of things. Stress has gone from a physiological process, during which certain hormones are released into the body, to some vague, malevolent force running rampant in life. In fact, stress now means so many different things, I don’t think it means anything at all. And yet we blame stress for most of our problems.”
The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health says that 40 percent of American workers report that their jobs are very or extremely stressful; 75 percent of employees believe that workers have more job stress than the previous generation. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that more than 9 million Americans age 18 to 54 suffer from anxiety disorders.
Legault mentions that before the 1950s, stress as we know it essentially didn’t exist. Now it is everywhere. He quotes Dr. Sydney Walker in his book, A Dose of Sanity: “A reasonable amount of stress is good for you. In fact, lack of stress may be more harmful to physical and mental health than high stress levels.”
He quotes several experts who agree that “anxiety and stress should not be treated as a symptom to be removed, but embraced as a necessary stimulus for all productive work.” Psychologist Rollo May opines that “anxiety is associated with creativity. When you’re in a situation of anxiety, you can of course run away from it, and that’s certainly not very constructive. … What anxiety means is it’s as though the world is knocking at your door, and you need to create, you need to make something, you need to do something.”
Smile Through Trial
John 16:33 says, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” You are going to have challenges—even tribulation. This is the key to going through those the right way: Be of good cheer and keep your mind on Christ. Realize this is all about helping you to become an overcomer.
The chapter in Biblical Manhood titled “Smile Through Trial” talks about how to handle the little tests that come up every day. Handling those gracefully will prepare you to handle bigger tests that are guaranteed to come down the road. If you get overwhelmed by the little tests, you’re moving in the wrong direction. You want to have the capacity to overcome bigger challenges.
Biblical Manhood says that when something comes up, “[t]his is a tool to measure yourself: Check your response to the little test to see how you would do in a big one. But it is also a tool to help you grow. Every time something goes worse than expected, you have an opportunity to respond positively, to be of good cheer. When that moment comes, don’t just grit your teeth, suffer through it, and grumble about it afterward. That moment is presenting you with an opportunity more valuable than you probably realize: the opportunity to build resilience for a bigger trial down the road.”
When difficulties come, you could whine, complain, lose your temper, even turn away from God and say, I just want to go back to Egypt. Those are natural responses. Or you can redirect your thinking and say, This is an opportunity for me. Embrace that challenge! Winston Churchill said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Learn to see present challenges as preparation for greater ones.
It’s important to look for solutions if you have a problem. That is not the same as looking for a short cut or an escape route. Sometimes God wants us to go through that challenge—sometimes we need to!
Building Your Body
This is one of the mental, emotional and even spiritual benefits you can learn from exercise. Exercise is hard, but every time you embrace living on the edge of your comfort zone, you expand your capabilities. What was unbearable last month is now comfortable because you have pushed through that challenge repeatedly.
This lesson is recognizable in how God created your muscles to grow. The microtears in your muscles that cause soreness actually stimulate muscles regrowth. When muscles rebuild, they become stronger and more pliable. When you apply the same stress to that muscle the next time, the damage is less than it was the before. You will be less sore and be able to recover more quickly. You will have the capacity to do more than you could the previous time.
God created our bodies to work and endure hardness. If you are not doing that, then you are regressing. The way muscles respond to heavy use is a marvelous wonder! You use muscles, and they get stronger! The only way to alleviate soreness is to exercise again. That soreness is a sign that you will become stronger. The same thing is true spiritually; that is why God says to have joy in trial!
How Much Can You Handle?
1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
I once spoke with an older woman who was going through a serious trial and she said, “I’m pretty sure that God got me confused with someone else, because He is giving me a lot more than I can handle right now.” The reality is, we can handle a lot more than we think. If God just dropped someone in the middle of a trial, they would crumble. Instead, He gives you difficulty a little bit at a time. As you adapt, you’ll learn that you can handle one level—and take on more.
Trials should help us grow in what we can handle. Keep life’s difficulties in the context of the magnitude of our reward. The God Family Vision says, “Sometimes we go through difficult trials, but realize that even if we had to scream and crawl and drag ourselves across this Earth until Christ got here, and we still made it into God’s Kingdom, it would be worth it.”
Paul had this vision and said that “we glory in tribulations” (Romans 5:3). “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake” (2 Corinthians 12:10). That is not just enduring hardness; that is embracing it. Be of good cheer because of that tribulation! Don’t wish it were easier; make yourself better. The more you face a challenge head on, the less you fear it. The more you learn from mistakes, the better prepared you’ll be for the next challenge.
“Make yourself a person that handles hard well. … If you have a meaningful pursuit in life, it will never be easy.” Whatever you’re going through, embrace it. Be excited about it. Handle that challenge the best you can and use it as an opportunity to make yourself more resilient, more capable and better able to take on future challenges.