At my local tennis club, the following quote posted in the walkway to the courts caught my attention.
“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.”
It’s a rule that applies to any endeavor in life, whether playing tennis, staying fit, getting along better with others, or growing in spiritual mindedness. Challenges to our status quo is healthy. They force us to question our standards and look for other options. If we accept challenges as positive experiences, we not only question our current ideals, we search for better ones, adopt them and act on them. And progress is the result.
Challenges are not to be feared, but to be embraced. When viewed correctly, they make us better thinkers and better people. They break us out of ruts that are ready to be left behind. They can be stepping stones to greater good.
It’s not necessary to fear challenges. They are not stopping points to dread, but launching points to greater heights of demonstration.
Life is good. Life’s good is perpetual. It’s always present and to be experienced in ever-unfolding expansive, broader and wider forms.
Challenges are often what snap us out of apathy, ignorance or laziness that hold us back and would keep us from experiencing more and more of God’s blessings.
So, embrace that challenge that is looking you in the face today, seek out its blessings, leave limited concepts behind, grow spiritually, and go where God is taking you! It’s a much better place than you’ve ever been before.
What a blessing to read this as I awaken.
Thank you Evan.
Yes challenges can be stepping stones to greater good. We all face challenges in life. Rather how boring life would be without challenges. If we accept, face and overcome challenges, we move closer to God, whose strength we seek. We grow in the virtues of patience, perseverance and trust in the all powerful care of God, who never lets us down. Its a step forward in spiritual progress. “If we trust in God, never doubting, He will give us all that we need every moment.”
Thanks Evan.
I am grateful for today’s blog. I needed this.
“if not now, when?”
“if not you, who?”
“if not here, where?”
???
Besides, it gives us something to focus on and do. Great post. Thanks.
What helpful thoughts, Evan. Thank you. Sometimes our challenges can seem overwhelming, but if we try to turn our stumbling blocks into stepping stones, we are on the right path and we progress step by step.
Do you think this is what Mrs. Eddy meant when she wrote in Science and Health: “Trials are proofs of God’s care.”??
Boy did I need this today! Changes in our curriculum after 27years of teaching, some challenging behaviors in the classroom have definitely forced me to struggle out of routine and grow professionally and spiritually. Thank you for reminding me that growth is good and blessings always follow. A few teachers out there probably know what I’m talking about!
Mortal Mind bogs us down to accept without thinking about it other people’s ideas and therefore closes our God given willingness to think for ourselves. Take the news media for a good example of this. It constantly stresses the negative and hardly accents the positive causes all sorts of diseases and innuendoes such as the ZITA illness from Mosquitos. In my day over 100 Mosquitos bit me and nothing happened. No illness, no handicap, just a little itch and then went away.
Thanks for this post! Things seem to be changing rapidly for me at the moment, and it’s been kind of bumpy lately. Working to know God is with me every step of the way! I am so grateful to know S/He is in control, and I don’t have to come up with answers, plans, or strategies myself – I just have to listen to hear what God guides me to do.
There’s a great hymn in the supplement that has some great lines about this:
“No storm can shake my inmost calm While to that rock I’m clinging, Since Love is Lord of heav’n and earth, How can I keep from singing?” (Hymn 449)
Also, one of my favorites from the original hymnal, # 148:
In heavenly Love abiding, No change my heart shall fear;
And safe is such confiding, For nothing changes here.
The storm may roar without me, My heart may low be laid;
But God is round about me, And can I be dismayed?
Wherever He may guide me, No want shall turn me back;
My Shepherd is beside me, And nothing can I lack.
His wisdom ever waketh, His sight is never dim;
He knows the way He taketh, And I will walk with Him.
Green pastures are before me, Which yet I have not seen;
Bright skies will soon be o’er me, Where darkest clouds have been.
My hope I cannot measure, My path in life is free;
My Father has my treasure, And He will walk with me.
Hymn 148, In heavenly Love abiding, has been one of my favorites too for a many many years. “For nothing changes here” will forever be an inspiring concept regarding eternal Truth. Thanks Ellen for sharing.
Thank you for this post, Evan! It’s exactly what I needed to read and declare for myself today.
Wonderful post for me to hang on to today!! Disease is an OPPORTUNITY to find out who we really are, as so lovingly stated by Evan (maybe not exact words). You simply state things so beautifully!
Thank you Evan for this refreshing blog.
I used to just cringe in despair when an opportunity to prove Truth’s certain power came along.But as I rejoice that God is always caring for me and leading me onward and upward I’ve loosened up and enjoyed the benefits of proving Love is always in control.
Evan thank you so much for today’s blog. Bevi, I too thought of Mrs. Eddy’s statement re trials. I keep at my chair all the time Evan’s July 1, 2015 blog titled “Look for the blessing amidst trial.” That long blog is a blessing. for which I am very grateful. Ellen, Hymn 148 is a favorite of mine also.