FOOD FOR TEENS: DO THE HARD THINGS FIRST TO LIVE AN EASY LIFE LATER

Hello beloved teens, I welcome you into this fruitful month of July. May you continue to increase in the grace and wisdom of God. Amen! 

Someone said something that really resonated with me, he said, “Being rich is hard work, being poor is hard, chose your hard.” A lot of people want a good and easy life but they are not willing to do the hard work, which is the real reason why many have failed or better still have not succeeded as they would have loved to. Majority of people know what it takes to succeed as they would, only few people are willing to do it because of that initial ‘hardness’ that must be encountered before success. Hebrews 4:11 says, “Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest.” The mindset of avoiding hardness in life must be eradicated if we want to go far. We must go through the hard to get into the easy or ‘rest.’ 

After careful observation from prominent men in scriptures, I discovered several hard things that they did that helped them to succeed in their purpose on earth:. 

1. Regular prayers: Mark 1:35, “And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.” Jesus was always known to wake up early and commune with the Father; this was one of the secrets of success in His earthly ministry. He would go before the Father daily and there He would pray the will of God for that day and when He comes out, He manifests that which the Father had revealed to Him in the secret. Matthew 6:6 says, “But thou when thou prayest, enter into the closet, and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy father which is in secret; and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” Learn to start you day with the Father. 

A lot of times we find it difficult to start our day with prayers, because it sometimes looks like a lot of work but we need to understand that the time spent in prayer unto the Father is always the most productive time of our day. A lot of times we are refreshed, we receive direct instructions on some of the most critical decisions to make. We create room for the Spirit of God to have free course in our affair. In all honesty the time we spend praying every day is the time we spend sharpening our sword so that when we face the day we can bring down all its affairs to submit to us in Christ Jesus. No wonder Ecclesiastes 10:10 says, “If the iron be blunt and he do not what the edge, then must he put to more strength; but wisdom is profitable to direct.” Learn to do the hard part each day by praying in the Spirit and the rest of your day becomes subject to you without much labour. 

2. Study and Meditate Scriptures Regularly: This is also another hard activity for a lot of believers to imbibe but in it lies the key to a blissful and easy life. When one is ignorant of God’s word, his/her life is always unnecessarily difficult and full of sorrow and wrong decisions, no wonder 2nd Timothy 2:15 tells us “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needed not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” When you imbibe the habit of always studying/meditating God’s word, you will never be ashamed. 

When I first made up my mind to study and meditate the Bible, I would discover that every time I picked up my bible to study, I immediately fell asleep. I could read novels of over a thousand pages through the night and wouldn’t sleep but the Bible was a whole different ball game. But I kept at it, and endured that difficult process. Now I delight in the word of God, it is one of my favorite activities every day. David said in Psalm 119:18-19, “Open thou my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.” There are many things in this world that you and I know nothing about, but when the Lord opens our eyes to behold His word, we begin to identify the hidden riches of secret places and by the direction of the spirit of God we know how to possess it while others stumble in darkness. 

3. Go after educational Knowledge: Another very important thing that many have avoided because of its hardness is educational knowledge. A lot of people dropped out of school because they thought acquiring knowledge was too difficult, others looked for easier ways to get through their education without adding knowledge to themselves. Majority of the most studious people in school always end up been successful why? Because they chose to do the hard things early in life. Learn to go after the right knowledge, no knowledge is wasted, desire to know new things, desire to gain new skills, be interested in taking up courses to improve yourself, don’t ever let a day go by without adding new and relevant knowledge to yourself. I observed that the more we discover knowledge the more we discover God in nature. Psalm 107:23-24, “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the work of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.” 

Look at some of the greatest men God used in the Bible, they were the most educated e.g. Paul, Moses etc. It was no coincidence that those people were useful to God, because the knowledge they had, helped them to become more effective in the purpose God gave them. Imagine the depth of Apostle Paul’s knowledge of the law that He was able to perfectly understand and explain it to us gentiles who were originally not part of that culture. 

I would have to stop here, even though there are numerous issues we could cover on this topic but the most important lesson I would like us to learn is to do the hard things first, because after a while it becomes easy and this is what makes great men, our ability to endure hardness until we see the gold we desire. 

God bless you, see you next month.