Turning Difficulty Into Purpose

DIFFICULTY has no purpose in our lives until it becomes a purpose. Think about it. Difficulty will otherwise cause us to be frustrated and miserable if we don’t agree to be motivated by it.

The test comes when we’re next tempted to lose our cool. Not that turning difficulty into purpose is anything about perfection; it certainly can be about progress.

This is about the gospel power latent in our everyday lives. By latent I mean dormant. It remains latent as long as we go back to our habitual responses of frustration and resentment in response to difficulty. But this latent gospel power is unleashed with spectacular effectiveness when we face our difficulty and make it our purpose; to accept our life, especially the ugly bits.

This is centrally about accepting the lives we’ve been given. It’s about debunking the silent wishes to have another life, or another person’s life.

It’s about making the most of the life we have — making our purpose to live our lives for the quest of our purpose.

The moment we begin to truly accept the life we have, including what perplexes us, we enter chaos with a newfound peace. We no longer need to resolve anything unless we resolve to make situations better because we can.

This is a wisdom we can apply with great effect to any facet of our lives.

As we accept a thing we cannot change, suddenly there is gospel power in our lives to live with the conundrum. And often the next step is God’s healing grace, as the miracle of acceptance falls over us. All for a life that turned its difficulty into its very purpose.