Push

When God pushes you to the edge of difficulty trust Him fully because two things happen. Either he’ll catch you when you fall, or he will teach you how to fly… - unknown

Push begins to be defined as to exert force on someone or something. We can push people. We can push ourselves. We can push buttons. But sometimes God can push us and we are not always alert to it. It can be as small as a very uncomfortable situation in life. That job you hate. That rent suddenly going up. That “no” you were hoping not to hear. These are different ways God is slowly pushing us forward, but we don’t always recognize it. That’s not our fault. What if we think that no means fight harder? What if we think that job we hate means pray for a rescue. It doesn’t usually occur to us until we find ourselves in a better situation and we realize if we were not “pushed” to the point of being uncomfortable and made to search for a new job we would have been stuck not growing. 

Growth takes us to the next level, like push takes us to the next position. It involves moving. It also involves work. It involves action. Both are also action words. There are things that can keep us stuck from moving forward. I can’t give you the full list because I’m still learning myself. Hopefully I won’t have to figure it out. But one thing I did excel at was letting the past keep me stuck. If you’re like me you are comfortable with the familiar. Remembering the good old days would take me to my happy place and I wish I could go back. I would search for similar situations that felt good. The problem with that however is, you got it, it’s the past. You stay stuck. She no longer wants to be your friend. Chasing her down won’t help. Looking for someone just like her won’t help either. But figuring out what went wrong and understanding the situation will help. Not exactly a joyful moment but it leads to a joyful future. 

And that’s the thing. Looking to the joyful future is what we can keep our eyes on. You can’t run forward with your eyes looking behind you. You are bound to run into a wall. My little brother found this out the hard way riding his tricycle. It’s one of those random things that never left my memory. Most likely because God was trying to remind me to look forward. “You say you hate pain then watch where you’re going” Makes sense right. But then why does the future scare us. For me its the unknown. What waits for me up ahead. What is it for you? Frankly mine is a pessimistic point of view. Why focus on what could go wrong and not what could go right. That then causes me to take steps backwards. So yes. I have been pushed…often. God pushed me into finding my strength after the loss of my husband. He pushed me into buying my first home by raising my rent ridiculously high. He pushed me past what I thought were my limits when I had a take care of a newborn alone with two other children. But I now turn back and smile because these were steps I was afraid of taking. Or things I thought I couldn’t handle. But that push brought me to a new level. Now it’s your turn to list moments you went past your “limits”.