Hard Places

During my first year of ministry, I told my pastor, Roy Hicks, Jr. the spiritual ground where I was attempting to plant our new church was hard.  I was hoping for sympathy.  Instead, I received truth. Roy said, “Don’t focus on the ground.”  I have never forgotten those words.  

When Roy spoke, I knew the Lord was lovingly correcting me.  I had become obsessed with the challenges of planting a new church.  In the challenge, I had forgotten it was the Lord who was responsible to bring the breakthrough, not me no matter how hard I swung my spiritual hoe.

Some of you have been called to hard places.  Marriages, ministries, business and individual lives will each have hard and challenging seasons where it seems that no spiritual tool you bring to the hardness is making a dent. The nature of these hard places and their accompanying seasons can fill your thinking to such a degree that you begin to focus primarily on the hardness of your circumstance instead of the goodness and power of God. God wants to change how we see our challenges.

Hard places are like a stage – they are the setting for a miraculous display of God’s power.  Everyone who is currently watching your life can see that you will not be able to break through the restricting crust of your situation in your own strength.  When God comes in His perfect timing and with His amazing power, He will crack the hardness of the opposition and reveal the beauty hidden just under the surface that awaits your discovery.  Stay faithful.  God is never late.