Knowing the way often stands in the way

​Often, what stands in our way of forward progress isn't NOT knowing which way to go, it's knowing which way we HAVE to go.

I've run several long races in my life. The hardest part about running those races wasn't the unknowns, it was the knowns.
It was knowing ahead of time just how hard the road or the trail ahead was going to be.

Pastor Daniel Floyd says, "pressure will refine you or confine you."

It's true. When you run a marathon, it will refine you. Even if you don't finish the race, you will be a changed person. You WILL be refined.

But change doesn't happen without hardship, and knowing hardship lies ahead is often what pressures a runner into skipping the starting line altogether. It's what confines them.

Trust me, I know that one from experience, too. I've experienced it in running and I've experienced it in life.

When you've experienced challenges and adversities and traumas in your life, you live certain the life ahead of you will contain more of the same. It's a certainty you can't shake.

And just maybe it is certain.

But I am a walking testimony to another side of that certainty. If those challenges do lie ahead, they will refine me. Just like the ones behind me have refined me into the man I am today.

It's true, those adversities behind me have created pressures in my life. They've created anxieties and fears and guilts and shames.

But none of those things, none of those emotions rob me of the choice.

Refine or confine.

What stands in the way is the way. No one or No thing is going ahead of us to clear the obstacles out of our way. It's just the nature of the way.

So we get to choose, stay or go.

I say go. The worst thing that can happen is you will be refined.