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You want to produce "something". But how?

The reward of "no reaction".  Many times in life, when things get rough, or we get uncomfortable, or we have a bad day, we go into "fight or flight" mode.  This can be dangerous when there is no real threat.  "Having a rough day" does not mean you are in danger.  Being uncomfortable with the current season of your life does not mean you are in danger.  I say this because I believe we are so conditioned to react.  We are a culture that wants to medicate everything.  We don't just medicate with medicine, but we medicate with "alchohol", we medicate with "shopping", we medicate with "eating", we medicate with "television", we medicate with "drug abuse".  There are so many things that we medicate ourselves with.  I don't "blame" anyone for that, I'm just saying that it's a toxic cycle.  The fight or flight mechanism in all of us, is there to respond to an immediate threat to us or someone else.  But some of us live out of our "fight or flight" mechanism.  We are always, running avoiding, medicating.  I believe learning to sit through discomfort and rough days, without reacting to the difficulty has alot of value in certain seasons of life.  I believe there are things that we try to avoid that we shouldn't and areas where we try to make ourselves more comfortable, where we shouldn't.  The bible  tells us that there is profit from trials.  It tells us that it will produce patience, which will produce "completeness" in our lives and "supply" in our lives.  I believe many of us lack wholeness and supply in our lives because we refuse to sit in the "uncomfortable" places.  I believe because we are always medicating our trials, we never really produce what we are suppose to produce and we keep going through the same thing over and over and over again.  There are some struggles like that in my life.  These are cyclical struggles, but now it seems like the breaks that I once had from these struggles are getting shorter and shorter.  Like when a women is getting ready to have a baby and the contractions get closer together.  That means that her "break" between the contractions gets shorter and shorter.  I don't know if you have ever experienced something in your life whereas you struggle with it, but it's not a constant struggle, it just pops up here and there.  It seems to calm down and you can go about your life. But then you notice that it's starting to emerge alot more.  Then you are at a place where you feel like you barely get a chance to get back in the swing of things again and that battle is popping up again.  Then you realize that you are not able to just slip back into your normal routine because the battle is front and center and every method you have used, in the past to fight it, is not working.  Guess what?  That means it's time to sit in the battle and rejoice in it because God is about to produce something in you, through it!  And that something is going to lead to greater wholeness in your life and greater supply in your life for every need.  Many of us are trying to produce something in our lives, that "something" can include a variety of things, depending on the person.  But everybody is trying to produce "something".  Producing something means we are being "productive" right?  I think we all, as human beings, have an innate desire to be "productive".  Many times we are trying to produce "something" and it's not happening and we don't know how to make it happen.  Well, if you want to start producing something worthwhile in your life than it's time to start seeing our challenges as "good".  For the first in my life today, I can say that I believe challenges are "good" and trials are "good".  It's taken many years for my heart to get lined up with God on this matter.  The Holy Spirit had to work in my heart.  I always knew challenges were going to come, and I knew God would use them to my advantage but I never really believed in my heart that the were a "good thing" until now.  When you start to see something as a "good thing" rather then something that you just need to "go through" it changes how you respond to challenges in your life. You stop trying to run from them, get out of them, or simply avoid them.  You embrace them.  Lean in, don't lean away.  Hug your challenge today.  Don't try to get away from it, get closer to it.  Get as close as you can.

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