choosing the hard things...

Go stand at the crossroads and look around.

    Ask for directions to the old road,

The tried-and-true road. Then take it.

    Discover the right route for your souls.

-Jeremiah 6:16 (the Message) 

I love, love, love, the snot out of people but sometimes they are the death of me. 

Let me clarify… I love loving people. However, I do not love to hold them accountable. I’d much rather hold their hands, wipe their tears, pray over them & fluff them up with encouragement than point out something that is holding them back from experiencing the fullness of God. To be honest, the thought of having to confront anyone, even on the smallest thing, totally throws off my groove. So much so I’m likely to have a stomach ache for a week & I might even avoid them… like the plague. 

This is a character flaw. I’m working on it. 

Very often in my non-confrontational life, I have found myself watching helplessly along the sidelines as people I love, choose some very unhealthy, ungodly things for their lives. I know with my head that if I truly loved these people, I would open my mouth & say, “Because I love you & because I want God’s best for you, I am concerned about __________. Can we talk about that?” My anxious heart just gets in the way…. I am fearful of the rejection. Terrified of being looked as an insensitive, hypocritical, judgmental, jerk face. Cause I do NOT want to be one of those people. Ever.  

Recently, I’ve had a come to Jesus moment in where I have felt the Holy Spirit pushing me to be brave. Brave in my faith & brave in my love for others. It has been because of this desire to be brave that I’ve been taking scary steps to truly come along side & love on people & in turn, I’ve been working on a non-confrontational way to ask the tough questions about why they are making such life-altering decisions. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, the most common response has been, “I’m happy & God would want for me to be happy.” 

Really?

Is this what God wants?

For us to be happy?

I beg to differ.

God.

Wants us to be holy. 

Life is hard people. I get that. If I’m completely truthful, I want to take the easy route… the selfish, I just want to be happy route. Every single day of my stinkin’ life. For reals. What kind of psychologically messed up person would I be if I chose the hard way when the easy one is readily available right? 

& here’s the dealio. The hard ways, the God’s ways don’t always make sense. 

This played out in a very tangible way for me last night. 

I’m in a little bit of weird place in my life where I feel like I am at a crossroads. Like I'm at a place where I can choose to do hard things. Or take the easy way out. 

Because of this & the dire need I was feeling to spend some time alone with God, I had decided to take a nice long bike ride off the trail to my friend Jackie’s. She has a lake & kayak that was calling my name. 

So I took off… the 4.689 miles there, over rolling hills & twisty turns. 
 
I'm not gonna lie. It was really hard work. The hills were hard & the turns a little bit scary. My lungs were burning & my legs were screaming for me to stop. 




But I just kept going… & at the end… 

 












I got to experience an hour of this. Sigh. 


& on the way home, not only was the road completely downhill but two fabulous ladies from my church happened by in their car & shouted encouragement as they passed by… or maybe it was more like they harassed me as they passed by but whatever… this is my story. 

Anyhoo… 

The whole thing got me thinking. When we choose to avoid the hard things in life, we miss out on the beauty of God’s best for us.
Oh I know there are so many beautiful things that suggest that they will give us happiness… friends, family, relationships, our homes, our jobs our ___________. (you fill in the blank). But the true truth is that these things are simply temporal. They can be disappointing. & while they offer something to us in the here & now, they could very easily be gone tomorrow. There are just too many variables. When we choose to put them ahead of God, when we choose the easy, temporal, happy way we miss out on what lasts. 

May it never be. 

May we do the hard work.
Take the big hills.
Take the sharp turns.
That we... may be holy. 

The Lord is not only tender and merciful and full of compassion, but He is also the God of justice, holiness and wrath…Compassion is not complete in itself, but must be accompanied by inflexible justice and wrath against sin and a desire for holiness. What stirs God most is not physical suffering but sin. All too often we are more afraid of physical pain than of moral wrong. The cross is the standing evidence of the fact that holiness is a principle for which God would die. God cannot clear the guilty until atonement is made. Mercy is what we need and that is what we receive at the foot of the cross. 
–Billy Graham, The Holy Spirit: Activating God’s Power in Your Life