REFUSE
TO BE DEFINED BY YOUR CHALLENGE OR TRIBULATION:
Faced with a difficult situation testing their skill or ability to the limit,
the tendency is natural for many not only to be puzzled and doubtful, but to
think they are some disadvantaged dim-wits, meaningless pawns in a complex game rigged to fail them. In the
Bible, ten spies came back with a hopeless report of their findings concerning
the promised land of wealth and plenty. They said they lacked the capability to
capture and overrun the land. Overwhelmed by how fortified and impregnable they
thought the land was, the ten spies reported they were defenceless grasshoppers in their own eyes,
compared to their enemies who were
merciless giants. The ten spies
allowed their challenge to define
them as nothing but grasshoppers, spineless and weak. Yet trusting the faithful
capability of Jehovah God, two other spies, Joshua and Caleb, refused to be
defined by their challenge, seeing it rather as an illusion.
Refusing to see his
dyslexia, a reading disorder as a handicap, Gary Cohn, 54, president and Chief
Operating Officer of Goldman
Sachs, managed to graduate from American University in 1982. Struggling
through school as a kid in Cleveland, teachers and classmates wrote him off as
an ‘idiot.’ Sharing a cab one day from Wall Street with a man who ran one of
the big brokerage firm in Wall Street, he pretended
to be familiar with the Options business. He read McMillan’s ‘Options
as a Strategic Investment’ book after he got a job with the direct
invitation of this big shot. By 1994, he was made a partner with Goldman Sachs.
Though it still takes Gary Cohn about six hours to read 22 pages today,
according to Malcolm Gladwell, this Wall Street
titan did not end up as a truck driver due to his dyslexia, defying the
cynical prediction of one teacher at school. He refused to let his challenge to
define what he was capable of.
As a married woman,
does it look as if your marriage is a mockery and a slander because of your
inability to get pregnant and bear children?
Despair not! The Creator who makes the barren woman to become a
joyful mother of children will not become a liar in your case. That you are not married when you should does
not make you an old maid left on the
shelf to gather dust! What you consider a delay is a design for your beauty not
only to be desired, but selected and preferred by kings! Have you been laid off your job,
and you are clueless as to how you are going to survive without a regular
pay-check? Perhaps, despite your marketable skills, the thought of going into
business for yourself makes you to develop cold feet. At night, you go to sleep
wrestling with the ghosts of doubt, fear, suppositions and paralyzing analysis,
waking up in cold sweat in the morning, restless and fatigued. As a warning,
let me say this: allowing anxiety and
nagging doubts to seize control of your thinking, and depleting your enthusiasm
is a signal that your challenge or tribulation has put a definition upon your
life. Whatever it is you are going through, surrendering to anxiety is not
a viable option, but a killer sting. At this time, you cannot afford to allow
poverty or lack to define your life, but remember
the Lord your God who gives you power to make wealth! Aspire
if you must, but getting inspired is
the better way to secure a valid
definition of your life when you are challenged. Every challenge you face is a
friend when you don’t allow it to define who you are. Yes, your challenge is
not an enemy because it is simply a sign-post, provoking you to embrace what
you are capable of. It’s an open secret
that you would not have known what you are capable of if you were not
challenged. Truly, it takes
adversity to discover your true strength! But that can only happen when you
seize the initiative to define yourself independently of your pain! TO BE CONTINUED.
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