IF OUR LIFE IS ALWAYS EASY, IT IS BECAUSE WE ARE CALLED TO A LESSER PURPOSE!

“You may have had unfair things happen to you, but the depth of your pain is an indication of the height of your future”- Joel Osteen

The enemy wouldn’t be attacking you if something very valuable wasn’t inside of you. Thieves don’t break into empty houses! You’ve got a purpose. Rick Joyner said, “If our life is always easy, it’s because we are called to a lesser purpose”. A happy life consists not in the absence but in the mastery of hardships. Life’s adversity is simply a proof that the enemy considers your assignment very achievable. Circumstance does not make the man; it only reveals him to himself. Every problem introduces a person to himself! The journey of life is not always easy, but the challenges and lessons are what build us up to be the person that we are. Max DePree said, “We cannot become what we want to be by remaining what we are”.

Dr D.K Olukoya once said, "Sometimes, what a man needs to get ahead in life is a powerful enemy". Enemies in your life are a good thing. You don’t have to go searching for them, but when you find them it can often become a blessing in disguise. Robert Brault once said, “The Lord gives us friends to push us to our potential and enemies to push us beyond it”. Your friends will give you comfort, but your enemies will give you a future. John Aughey said, “God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them, but to cleanse them.” That which does not kill us makes us stronger!

A greek poet, Homer said, “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant”. Every adversity in life advances us into the next level. For you to succeed in life, you need an enemy, but for you to succeed greatly, you need a great enemy. There is no education like adversity. We would never be all that we are to become if we avoid all the risks and discomforts outside our comfort zone. If you stay in your comfort-zone, you won’t be able to see what the world has to offer you. The struggle of today is a prerequisite for our survival tomorrow. Our response to adversity will either leave us better or bitter, groaning or growing. William Arthur Ward said, “Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records”.

Arnold Schwarzenegger redefined the meaning of strength, when he said, “Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” When you have a winning attitude, every challenge becomes an adventure. A winning attitude converts a Mess into a Message, Scars into Stars, Trials to Triumphs, Bitterness into ‘Betterness’, Frustration into Fuel, Misery into Ministry and Adversity into Advancement. Viktor Emil Frankl said, “What is to give light must endure burning”. When the amiable Mandela was being interviewed on how he felt to have become an extraordinary man as a result of his being the first President of South Africa, instead of bluffing on his major feat, he redirected his interviewer to the secret of his awesomeness as he said, “I am not extraordinary because I became the president of South Africa, I became extraordinary because I went through extraordinary circumstances”.

Maxime Legace said, “You must go through that short-term pain to reach long-term gains. A meaningful life is about growth, not comfort”. Bacteria that are not killed entirely by an antibiotic will mutate and become resistant to it. People who go through the hardship and adversity tend to improve their performance. Some people just go through life, but mastering your adversity makes you grow through life. Ernest Hemingway said, “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”. Many times, tough times help to discover the strength we never knew was within. Kahlil Gibran said, “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”.

Niccolo Machiavelli said, “Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great”. Life is full of stories of ordinary people that surmounted great challenges and overwhelming odds to make a mark in life. Charles Dickens was lame; Plato was a hunchback; Franklin Roosevelt was crippled by polio; Hellen Keller was the first deaf-blind person to graduate from a college and earn a Bachelor’s degree; Winston Churchill had a devastating form of speech impediment (which he never completely recovered from); Beethoven who wrote one of the most beautiful music compositions was deaf, and Albert Einstein, one of the greatest geniuses and scientists that ever lived could not speak until he was four! Christopher Columbus said, ‘’By prevailing over all obstacles and distractions, one may unfailingly arrive at his chosen goal or destination.’’ In spite of adverse circumstances, many ordinary people have risen to be great. The key is in our decisions, not our condition. Your circumstances don’t make you inferior, your responses do!

I really want to use this platform in reaching out to the youths. Don’t ever allow your condition to determine your destination, and if you have ‘bought’ that lie that you’ll never amount to anything, the truth is that: YOUR LIFE IS BIG – far bigger than you’ve ever imagined. Where you are coming from is not what defines you, but rather where you are going in life. Our response to adversity will either leave us better or bitter.

You must endeavour in life to ensure that where you are going in life does not in any way look like where you are coming from. No matter what you are going through in life, you can rise above your background. You may succeed when others give up on you, but you will never succeed if you give up on yourself. Whatever becomes of you is your responsibility. Don’t ever allow your conditions to determine your destination. No matter where you are from, no matter what you are passing through, no matter how obscure you think you are, no matter your limitation, you can rise beyond your challenges.

“Your circumstances don’t make you inferior, your responses do”-Gbenga Adebambo