Do Hard Things

Okay, so I am reading the book "Do Hard Things" with is a book written by teens to challenge other teens to push themselves to their limits...to not settle for the bare minimums that most adults set for them...to start becoming what God wants them to be NOW...to gain experience...to grow. I am loving it, it is making me think about my teaching and dealing with teenagers everyday and how I can do them a disservice to go easy on them. I need to keep challenging them, and pushing them, and encouraging them to reach out and stretch, for that this the only way they will know their true reach. I highly recommend it for anyone who works with teens or is parenting them. Anyways...

They are currently taking about stepping out of your comfort zone and pushing past that first step. It really is the hardest one. They talked about a cartographer in England who was mapping North America and in places he never went he wrote things like "Here be giants," "Here be fiery scorpions," "Here be dragons." Now I haven't seen all of North America, but I have never seen any of those things in my travels. Now imagine being that next cartographer charged with mapping North America, you would be more hesitant and fearful of THINGS THAT ARE NOT REALLY THERE. It is the fear of the scary things, not the scary things that most often stop us from DOING.

How many times have you not done something out of FEAR that something might happen? Our imaginations are powerful things and we can come up with some real far-fetched concepts and stories that can hold us back from doing things. Does that mean we shouldn't lock our doors at night, or anything like that? Of course not, but if you feel God urging you to do something, if you know that something is right, and the only thing stopping you is the fear of something unseen. You need to overcome that fear and do it. Even when we fail and we fall flat on our faces, very rarely is the outcome as bad as the vision our mind has played out hundreds of times before.

Corrie ten Boom said, "Never be afraid to trust and unknown future to a known God." It comes back to your trust in God...how big is He?...How much does He love you?...Does He care for your everyday struggles? Do you have faith that He will catch you if you fall, or that He will let you fall so that you learn how to take a few bumps and bruises along the way, or just to see that the fall wasn't as bad as you thought anyway. But it takes that faith of the first step...once you have taken it, each on there after is easier...but it is hard to leave the comfort of the boat. Someone recently asked me if I had a quote I could share on the importance of doubt in faith. I didn't have one for them (if you do, leave it as a comment, I would love to read it)...but here are my thoughts on it...If there is no doubt, there is no room for faith in God. I have never met a person who had put every bit of their flesh and "rational" mind aside enough to have NO doubt when they are stretching themselves, it may be minor or just a little glimmer, but there is some doubt there. If there isn't are you really trusting Him? If you could do it on your own without God's help, then your faith is in you and not Him. So if you are stretching and pushing and growing and trusting, you are doubting, but you are also defeating that doubt. That is the important part. Mark Twain said "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear." The same is true for faith and doubt.