Have you ever noticed how your life runs in cycles? Kinda like a wagon wheel. Sometimes you’re on top and sometimes you’re on the bottom. Good news is, when you’re down, you won’t stay there as long as you keep going forward. Stop there and it’s all over, but as long as you keep moving forward, you WILL be out of the mud hole. Bad news is, if you’re on top…oh well, we don’t have to go there.
Everything cycles. The earth cycles, seasons’ cycle, the moon cycles, the economy cycles…everything that is alive cycles. We love to talk about those times when we were on top…shining…but it’s the low times that make or break a person. Character is built, not by successes, but by struggles. Every truly great person I can think of had to go through some really tough times to become the person they had to be to do the things they did. Therefore…it really wasn’t what they DID that was as important as who they had BECOME.
People have done some incredible things that changed the course of history, and for that we should be eternally grateful, but I am convinced that God is more interested in who we “become” as to what we “do”. He can pay a man’s taxes through a fish and speak to an obstinate prophet through the mouth of a donkey…God can DO something through anything just fine. God using me is not a problem. God has used some mighty shady characters to get His work done! But when it comes to who we BECOME, now that’s where God’s hands are sometimes tied. Our will must agree or God cannot work.
That’s where the cycles come in. Everyone and everything goes through them and what or who we become as a result of it is often up to us. The Bible says a righteous man falls 7 times and gets back up. It’s not the falling that’s the problem…it’s the refusal to get up again that buries a person. Cycles are just a part of life and what we do when we go through them determine who we become in the end. Some of the best things that ever happened to me are things I hope to God I never have to go through ever again. Looking back though, it’s easy to see that the adjustments in character that came as a result of what I went through were greatly needed.
We desperately need to get it through our thick heads that God isn’t so interested in what we do FOR Him but who we become IN Him. If we ever catch on to this truth, we’ll stop trying to get delivered out of our circumstances and instead, start allowing God to work on US while we’re IN THEM. Knowing this, that our circumstances WILL CHANGE as long as we move forward.
Maybe your wagon wheel is just about to make its upward turn? Hang on baby! Better times are coming! Let’s just pray we all become better PEOPLE in the process!