When I say bring it on, I'm saying, look, I've got confidence in Christ.
I say bring it on, I mean that God's going to use this for good.
I say bring it on because there's a resiliency and there's an endurance that's getting built
into me because this thing is hard.
When I'm tired, when I'm frustrated, I feel the frustration starting to come, I say bring
it on.
I say it daily because there's frustrations every day.
It really helps me, it helps me take my eyes off the problem and put my eyes on my capacity
to withstand what it is that's coming my way.
When I say bring it on, I'm saying, look, I've got confidence in Christ.
I say bring it on, I mean that God's going to use this for good.
I say bring it on because there's a resiliency and there's an endurance that's getting built
into me because this thing is hard.
I say bring it on because I will get wisdom, I'll know what to do through this circumstance
that I couldn't learn any other way, and I say it out loud instead of, oh no, I can't
believe this, are you kidding me?
Instead of saying that, why not say bring it on?
Nobody's going to help sometimes in our situations with our reactions to those circumstances
except us.
We have to decide in our spirit, are we going to have a take it on mentality?
Are we going to have a bring it on mentality?
Are we going to have, I've got what it takes here, or are we going to just collapse, get
all mad, blame God, and blame others?
Well, I'm challenging you that this little phrase can be helpful.
If it's not, then quit listening to this because you'll be bored, but it's been helpful
to me.
Bring it on.
It builds confidence, takes your mind off the problem, and it puts the problem into
a solution in your heart that you have the resiliency to do what needs to be done to
tackle any situation you're in.
There's this Bible verse, James 1, if you have your Bible, look at James 1, 2, 3, 5,
because this is the capstone of what I'm talking about from a biblical perspective.
James says, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing
that the testing of your faith produces patience, but let patience have its perfect work, that
you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally without reproach,
and it will be given to him.
Bring it on.
Bring on the joy.
What does he mean, man?
This is crazy.
He says, Brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.
So is he saying that we're supposed to be joyful about hard circumstances?
No.
Are we supposed to be joyful about hardships?
No.
Are we joyful about losing our marriage?
No.
Are we joyful about being rejected?
No.
Are we joyful about losing our job?
No.
That's not what he's saying.
He's not saying count the circumstances that you're going through as joy.
Listen to what he says, because there's one verb.
One verb changes the whole meaning of the passage.
He says, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing.
That's the verb.
Knowing that.
Knowing what?
Knowing that.
That knowing is the key to everything in the verse.
Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, but let patience have its perfect
work that you may be perfect and complete and lacking nothing.
Let me ask you.
Do you want to be perfect?
Do you want to be complete?
Do you want to lack in nothing?
Do you want that?
When you can have joy knowing that these bad circumstances or bad people or a diagnosis
of something that you have in your body, like cancer or something, that's not what you're
joyful over.
You're joyful over the fact that God counts you worthy to go through something that's
really hard because of the person he's creating you to be.
Because of the new person that he's making you to be.
In other words, you're not going to have the wisdom you need to be successful unless you
go through suffering that creates wisdom.
And in this case, I'm talking about joy.
The next one I'm going to talk about is joy.
talk about wisdom, but joy really does come when you know that your faith is being tested
and if and on the other side of the circumstances that you're going through, God's making you
a better person.
God's making you perfect and complete and lacking in nothing.
We're joyful because we know our faith is getting tested and strengthened.
We are joyful because we know we're being developed into patience and endurance.
We're joyful because we know that we're being perfected.
We're joyful because we know we're being made complete.
We're joyful because we know we're being developed into a man or woman who lacks in
nothing.
Isn't that amazing?
That your joy is not in what's happening to you.
Your joy is what's going to be made in you through going through the things that are
happening to you.
I already got to say years ago that it's not things, it's not so much things happening
to you, it's things happening for you.
And so I was in a conversation with a guy today who was sharing about his brother, stuff
happening with his brother, mistakes that he had made.
I said to him, I said, you know, I know a lot of guys that have gone through a lot worse
than your brother's going through and at some point they're going to wake up, they're going
to wake up and they're going to say, I want to change.
I'm going to quit blaming my parents.
I'm going to quit blaming my job.
I'm going to quit blaming the fact that I don't have any money.
I'm going to quit blaming, blah, blah, blah, all these blame game things that people do.
And they'll wake up and my prayer was, I pray Lord that you would take some icy, cold, spiritual
water and just splash it on the face of this guy's brother and wake him up.
He's hurting tons of people.
He's addicted to drugs.
He's gotten two girls pregnant.
He's a mess.
The guy's a mess.
Grew up in the church, has had every opportunity to make good decisions and he continues to
make poor decisions.
That guy needs to learn how to say, bring it on and find his confidence in Christ and
see that through these things that he's gone through, most of which are his own doing,
he created the problems.
God can use him, facilitate within him a new spirit and a new future if he'll choose the
Lord's way.
I want to share a story.
Jerzy Grgorek was an alcoholic and high school dropout before he was 18 years old.
He lived in a tiny hovel of a house in communist Poland.
He hated what communism had done to his people and despite his early failures in life, he
decided to join this dissident movement in Poland called the Solidarity Movement and
he fought against Soviet communism in the 1980s.
By 1986, he migrated to America because he had lost everything.
He had lost his career.
He had lost his home.
He came to America to rebuild his life.
Jerzy went on to win four world weightlifting championships and establish one world record.
In 2000, he and his wife, Anelia, founded and coached the UCLA weightlifting team.
Jerzy and Anelia went on to earn MFA degrees in creative writing and the National Endowment
of the Arts awarded Jerzy the Literature Fellowship in 2003.
As a popular speaker, coach, and blogger, Jerzy coaches from the vantage point of facing
and overcoming hardship as the key to success.
His most famous saying is this, easy choices, hard life.
Hard choices, easy life.
You know what Jerzy's saying?
Jerzy's saying that when you make the hard choices, you decide to get up in the morning
and you're going to work out, you're creating an easier life.
When you make the hard choices not to sleep around, you don't get anybody pregnant, you're
setting yourself up for an easier life.
You make the easy choices, like, you know, have sex with everybody, go get drunk, which
is what he did before, you're actually creating a harder life.
If you're harboring unforgiveness towards someone who's hurt you, that's easy, that's
not hard.
Anybody can do that.
Anybody can withhold forgiveness, that's the easiest thing to do, and you're just creating
a hard life for yourself.
But if you start to forgive, which
is harder to do, your life actually goes easier.
You see, that's the same thing that's being said in our passage, that we count it all
joy when we go through various trials because we make the choice to be joyful about the
fact that God's perfecting us and completing us and giving us patience and endurance.
And that's an easier life.
Harry Fostick, a 20th century Protestant pastor, once said,
He who knows no hardship will know no hardywood.
He who faces no calamity will need no courage.
Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in
the soil of a strong mixture of troubles.
So say it.
Bring it on.
Bring it on because you know there's joy on the other side.
Bring it on because God's making you complete, God's giving you endurance, God's making you
a stronger person.
I hope that's helpful to you today.