TOUGH TIMES ARE INEVITABLE

TOUGH TIMES ARE INEVITABLE,

DON’T PANIC

Imagine life without fire. They say “fire is a good servant but a bad master”. In any case, how would life have been like without it? Think of the so many uses of fire; how would we have been able to by- pass its usefulness and still get the same result?

First, I would like us to take time and discuss fire and its usefulness.

·         We cook, bake, fry, steam, grill, roast etc with fire. How does fire affect the raw foods it’s applied on?

There are several answers to this but let it suffice us to limit ourselves to just about a few for this episode.

·         When heat is applied to the food we would cook to eat, the chains boding the molecules of that food substance are broken down loosening the molecules to be free, thereby making the food substance soft and easy to masticate and digest.

Points:           When we as humans go through the heat of life – high and long enough, some stubborn traits we call life-style, habits and attitude are bound to get some attention. Some traits and negative attributes we so doggedly and ruthlessly hold onto believing that’s just the way life should go have a way of breaking away when life hands us some hard tough tissues to chew. This way we do re-think and look at life differently. This loosens us and make us easily adaptable to life

·         When heat is applied to the raw flesh we would roast or grill to eat, it has its way of dispelling the blood in it which is the life of the flesh, and making it “Humanly” consumable.

Points:           Only the heat of life which I call tough time can convincingly change a man’s perception of life which we may call old habits that are picked up early in life as we begin to grow and those we have been molded into by our environments. I believe strongly that a man’s character traits and emotional traits can change no matter how deeply rooted that is in the man. Fire knows how to do the job which in this case is ‘Tough times’. A lazy man will not be taught to wake up when life’s heat begin to get to boiling point so also a man who so rigidly believes in one style of living as laid down by “tradition”. When he begins to slope down the sleepy paths of life that would ditch him, he wouldn’t need a lecture on how to find an alternative route. That’s what life’s fire would naturally teach you.

·         When we steam or boil the food we would eat or water we’d drink, every pathogenic or harmful micro-organism that’s visible to the eyes are killed.

Point: Many people from the developed nations and the western world who have had a good and stressless life handed them by the civilization of their world would break down at the slightest twist in the order of their easy-going, ready-made, remote-controlled fast-tracked life. If the water they drink is not distilled they would purge. If the meal they eat is not pressure-cooked micro-wave maintained, they will have a fever. So they see those of us from the rugged world as abnormal. Yet, those of us who are raised in the ghettos, who drink anything but clean water and eat anything but balanced diet, believe we are healthier than they are. The same food or drink that would land them flat on the hospital beds is the same delicacies that nourishes our muscles and yet, many of them cannot stand the strain that we would easily walk over. We are healthy and live long. What makes the difference?  We are born into the heat, lived in the heat, trained in the heat and strengthened in the heat. So, what they call tough time is a walk-over for us.

Do you wonder why the marathon race belongs to the underdeveloped mountainous people? Hard life.

However, every human being is born to taste of the heat of life for that’s the crucible where destiny is pounded and the oven where purposes are baked. Jesus said “For every one shall be salted with fire,” Mark 9: 49

·         When iron or steel is brought under sufficient heat, it becomes red-hot, malleable, soft and ready to be molded into any shape its lord desires.

Point: Some of us are too stubborn, heady, puffy and full of ourselves and don’t believe any one should tell us what we don’t want to hear. This has robbed a great number of folks of the blessings of life. Never mind, strong heat knows how to handle stuffs like that.

Tough times are God-made and it is a school of maturity. You can’t trust anyone who hasn’t been through tough times with the real issues of life. He is not yet developed. Tough times are the furnace where true character is developed.

Like the military it is in during a drilling exercise when they have to get words out of someone by tough drills, you break a stubborn hardened man from old ways to assume a new one under intense heat. It could just be God’s way too to get a man’s attention and bend him to fit into God’s will for him.

·         The test of the quality of a gem like gold or diamond is by the quality of heat it absorbed.

Point: There are varying degrees of the quality of Gold. Some are tougher and more durable than others. This too is determined by how much heat went into them.

As gold is a mere metal dug from the earth, powdery and mined with dust, and it takes fire to separate the gold from the earthy impurities, so also it requires fire to heat out debris and all sort of unhealthy junks from our nature. Two people of the same background do not necessarily have the same character. The quality of their character can be fetched from the measure of life’s experiences they have had.

The quality of ceramics is determined by how much heat it took to bake the clay. Tough times are inevitable for it is not an accident but life’s way of defining a pure path for our defined purposes and true roles in life.

The bible says “But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” Job 23: 10.

We were all born into the world the same way and as crude as petroleum, but nature’s way of separating the gasoline from kerosene, spirit from grease is by fire. From the same crude oil that you get mentholated spirit is where you get PVC or plastics. All these are from the same crude oil but we get different product, texture and materials from it. Why is that so? Heat. The quality of heat applied to the crude substance determines what you get out of it.

Certainly, Tough times are inevitable. You shouldn’t panic. The bible says “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” Lamentation 3:27.

Even God attest to the fact that we all must bear our yoke at one time or another; when you bear it is of great significance. If you bear it in your youth maintaining the right attitude through it all, you will cross to the next phase expected of you. If you keep the wrong attitude, you may not come out of the yoke stage in time.

There is no promotion without an exam. It is the “Tough times’ that tries us at every stage in our lives to grant us passage to the next if we waddle through the trying stage well.

Developing from one stage to the next takes Tough time. It is a sure way to qualify you for the next. Unfortunately, many people spend all their lives in this stage never learning any lesson from it so they can move on up.

A butterfly or a moth doesn’t just emerge from egg to fly. They pass through varying developmental stages. Transiting from one stage say larva, pupa or cocoon to the next is not a flash in the pan. It takes struggle. (Struggle is nature’s way to strengthen). At the final stage of its development, the cocoon does not just crack and let the butterfly out. The insect emerge through hardship, struggle, labour and tough time.

Ones, a man saw a cocoon from which the butterfly had stuck out its head and a wing just emerging into life. Seeing it wrangling and going through tough time, the man picked his pen- knife to let out the insect, only to discover to his amazement that the part that struggled its way out is the only part of the insect that has developed. The other parts still in the cocoon was nothing but mere fluid.

This goes to mean therefore that pity is not the key to helping a man who is going through his Tough time now, but encouraging him to finish strong.

Sometimes, your best friend could be that man who threw you out and left you stranded in the middle of nowhere to dig your way through life all by yourself. And your worst enemy could equally be that man who “loves” and cares for you so much that he won’t let you lift so much as a finger to do something for yourself.

We have more obessed people in developed world than in the underdeveloped. Why? Easy life, more problems for the soul.

Everyone who ever mattered and succeeded genuinely in this world had his fair share of tough times. They are building blocks for fulfillment and attainment of greatness.

Check out the histories of great people in time, our contemporary days and in bible times. They all had their chunk of tough times before they got to the pinnacle of their purposes in life.

Take a few people in the bible and maybe one or two in our days just for examples

-          Abraham’s journeys wasn’t a picnic neither was his submission to God an easy task. He had to make tough decisions in his life before he got the name “friend of God’.

-          Job was a man we know little or nothing about his early life. We do know that he had it going for him. When it got to the time when God would promote him, he had to be put to the test. It was tough. Coming out of it landed him on the double portion pedestal.

-          David having been anointed went through tough times before getting to the throne he was ordained for. From time to time as a king he still needed the “Tough time” exam to not only strengthen him as king but to establish him more and to push him higher.

-          Joseph couldn’t have had his brothers come to bow to him had God not stretched him through his trying season of ‘Tough time’. He came out and ruled them all.

The list is long with Jesus capping it. It was said of Jesus that “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross (Tough time), despising the shame, and He’s seating down at the right hand of the throne of God. Heb.12: 2b

Sounds more like Tough time is the pathway to the throne.

Abraham Lincoln, Bill Clinton and countless people in our time rode through the paths of Tough time to the throne.

Tough time is not a vice; it’s a price to pay for the high calling.

Ask the sports men and women who made marks in their fields, they’d tell you it was tough getting there.

Do not panic at the sound of the word TOUGH TIMES, rather rejoice because it is not an end but a stepping stone to the next level. It’s like an examination before the promotion to the next grade.

However, TOUGH TIMES is not a once and all for event, it is the occasional event that heralds the threshold or an opportunity for a lift.

TOUGH TIMES MUST COME if you really matter in life and has an assignment to affect and shape your world. So, DON’T PANIC.