Is it really a way of escape?

Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. (James 1:2-3)

Is anyone else like me, trying to get out of something a bit 'prematurely' because they are harder than you expected when you went into it? Trust me on this one, you and I will just find the next challenge a bit harder, so we might as well buckle down and finish this one! There is something that is 'required' of us and we need to see it through, or else face the next 'something' in order to do it all over again.

What is required? I don't know what your particular 'challenge' is right now, but whatever it is, God has a plan in it. That may seem a little hard for some to swallow, especially when the issue at hand seems kind of 'unfair', 'one-sided', or 'too much to handle'. It could just be that God is trying to show us we don't 'handle' these things on our own - we need and will receive his help to get through them. May what is required is our willingness to listen, then trustingly obey.

I've said this before, and I haven't changed my opinion on it - our 'faith-life' can be more than a little challenging at times. We get to the point where we feel the pressures from without, within, and who knows where. In the midst of the pressures, we sometimes want to cave. We want to throw in the towel and just walk away, thinking we will somehow be okay to 'not have finished that one'. It is a hard thing to have our 'faith-life' forced out into the open - revealing to us (and everyone else) our true colors, isn't it?

The 'work' that needs to be done is cut short whenever we 'turn tail and run'. If I had my druthers, I'd try to avoid these trials and tests, but that isn't how it works in God's family. I have learned my enemy likes to provide a way of 'escape' from the trial or test - one that will invite me to leave it way to early. I have to 'plan ahead' for his 'offers of escape' if I want to avoid leaving the path God has me on way too early to accomplish whatever it is he is trying to do within me. How about you? Do you have a plan to avoid the enemy's attempts to give you a way of 'escape' in your trial? I have found God's way of escape is often to walk right on through what it is I am trying so hard to escape. Just sayin!