Do you ever feel like your path is blocked by a whole mountain range of challenges? When confronted by a trial, we immediately wonder how to get around it. Skirting the issue just seems a whole lot easier, since working through the problem appears to be impossible.
But what if engineers planned our roads around the far ends of the mountains, instead of investing the effort and resources needed to build them right through the middle? We would clearly be faced with hundreds of extra miles each time we made a trip, wasting precious time and expense. When we’re faced with suffering, the same question arises: how to get from here to there, not only now but also each time in the future. Will we skirt the difficulty time and again, or cut a pathway right through the heart of the problem? Will we let God build the character we need to succeed?
From Free from the Power of Sin: the Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself