What To Do About Our Challenges This Year

 As I begin to think about this near year and what it might hold, I am again reminded of the presence of challenges. So often, we celebrate a new year and welcome it as a chance for fresh starts, new beginnings, grand possibilities...but we are soon after met with the stark reality that all our hopes for great adventures and personal growth will be wrapped up with numerous challenges. 

 We often like to forget about the presence of difficulty in our world. We savor the mountain-top moments and detest the valleys in our lives, causing us to resent the trials we face and see them as unnecessary interruptions instead of needed guideposts. Our world has trained us to take on challenges on our own terms (weight loss, personal limitations, travel adventures, etc) but, when it comes to taking on un-planned challenges, we freak out and we run. We try to avoid them. We try to hide from them. Get away from them. Anything except walk through them. We have gotten used to doing life our way. But this is not God's way. 

 The Christian life is so much about paradoxes and reversals. The things which we deem "logical" are actually the most ill-logical to the human mind. That which we consider "irrelevant" in our eyes is usually what is most relevant in God's eyes. When we make the choice to follow Jesus, we are handing over our need to pick and choose what we think is best for us. We have just then given up our necessity to interpret life as we see it and have now been put under the obligation to conform our will to His. This means that He now holds the power to choose our direction and our destiny, and we have no control over the affairs of our life and what our futures hold. Thus, things are allowed to happen to us that often make no sense to our finite perspective. They can only be explained by the spiritual. 

 Looking back on 2017, there was so much that happened that was unexpected. "Do hard things" seemed to be the mantra for me all year - face what you don't want to deal with, have that hard conversation you've been putting off, walk into your fears bravely when all you want to do is get away. I could never have imagined the hard moments that lay in store. However, at the end of the year, I could look back and say, it was good. It is yet well with my soul even though the storms blew hard and threatened many a time to take me down with them. God never let go. He remained good. 

 Stepping into 2018, I feel in my soul a carry-over effect - as if the bravery it took to trust what I could not see or understand in the past year has infused me with a confidence to believe God in even greater ways this year. Like you, I have no idea what is in store for 2018. Whatever plans I make could so quickly be altered. But I do know that I am determined to welcome the challenges God allows with new perspective. I'm determined to say "yes" to God in deeper ways, for harder things because I know that's the only way I will change and grow. I am committed to doing what it takes to remind myself that all the difficulties that I encounter are stepping stones into depths of grace, insight into the inner workings of my heart, and reminders to me of just how much I need a Guide to show me the way. I cannot trust my heart. All the talk today about "follow your heart," and "do what feels good" lead me into nothing but disappointment and heartache. If I stand any chance at living the Light in a big way this year, I have to forsake myself and take up my cross. This may mean I walk through some dark valleys. But what do I have to fear if the God of angel armies is at my side? He is, indeed, a good Father. He loves me enough that He allows me to struggle so that I may taste my own futility and be brought to my knees in humble service to the One who walks before me.