DON’T QUIT BECAUSE IT’S HARD
I was working out the other day and was about to do my first set up dumbbell upright rows. As I began to lift the dumbbells I felt a sharp pain on the outside of my right elbow. A couple weeks prior, my family and I were building a storage shed on our property. And during the building process I developed a decent case of tennis elbow. I don’t even play tennis. What are the odds? Even though I had a little elbow pain I was still working out, because not every movement angered it. But when a movement did anger it, I would stop. And so when I felt the sharp pain I lowered the dumbbells and walked over to put them away. But before I could set them down I felt God say, “Don’t quit because it’s hard”. He was not talking about the workout. But in this moment the workout represented life. So still holding the dumbbells I stood back up, walked back to my position and worked through the pain. And the more reps I did the less intense it got. I did my three sets and then put the dumbbells away.
After the workout I was thinking about this message, “Don’t quit because it’s hard”, “Don’t quit because it hurts”, “Don’t quit”. There is the passage in Hebrews 10:35-36, that says, “Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.”
It says, do not cast away, to cast away is to throw off, chuck, ditch, let go of, release. For you to cast off, you intentionally have to let it go. Therefore it is within your power to cast away or to hold on to.
Then it talks about confidence, don’t cast away your confidence. Confidence is the belief that you can do or accomplish something. Confidence is largely created by experience. Because I have done this before, I know that I can do it again. I love this connection between confidence and endurance. He says, Don’t cast away your confidence because you have need of endurance. Confidence enables you to persist in taking action despite conflict, obstacles and opposition.
What would cause you to cast off confidence? If confidence is the belief that you can achieve something, then casting away your confidence would be exchanging that belief for another belief. To cast away, is to free your hands to grab hold of something else. And if you are throwing away your confidence then you are picking up doubt. Doubt is simply the belief that the vision you hold in your heart won’t work out. How does that work? How do you go from the belief that you can, to then throwing all hope of a good outcome out the window and wanting to quit? I will tell you how, it’s when you find yourself waist deep in conflict, problems, people issues, pressure and stress.
When you get emotionally connected to the negative, it becomes the center of your attention. What you focus on is what you feed your soul on. And let me tell you, toxicity never nourished anyone. When you find yourself wanting to cast away your confidence you will also find yourself wanting to slow down and stop pushing forward. This is when you need to readjust your focus. Wanting to stop means you got off target and are running in circles in your mind over a negative scenario. When you get emotionally connected to an idea you begin to believe that what you see in your mind is going to happen. If you don’t like what you see, stop looking at it.
The writer of Hebrews says, “Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great reward. For you have need of endurance”. Endurance is the byproduct of intentional, focused, consistent effort. Endurance is the ability to go, and to keep on going, to make it to the finish line, regardless of what it takes and what it costs. Endurance is the developed physical and mental ability to make it to the end. That means you must condition yourself to be able to achieve the mission that God has given you to achieve. Therefore we get up in the morning and read. We read the Bible, and then we read a book that helps further develop our thinking, mentality and skills. We take time to plan, and then we execute that plan. We take time to exercise. We train to ensure that we keep moving forward. We live a Self-Disciplined life because we are people of purpose. We are not wandering around aimlessly. NO, you better believe that we have something specific that we are aiming at.
Whatever God has called you to, He has given you the ability to accomplish, but you have to work it. So don’t quit because it’s hard. Just train harder. We are a force put on this earth to manifest the true reality of the kingdom of heaven. We are the TRANSFORMED and you better believe that we are meant to lead the way.