Quit Gritting Your Teeth

People that know me know I’m not a morning person.
In no way, shape or form do I love getting up early.
Once I hit my bed, I’m in it for the long haul.
But there does come the occasional time when, for whatever reason, I wake up well before my alarm.
Tuesday morning was one of those mornings.
It’s super easy for me to shrug these early mornings off and roll back over, but I’ve come to learn that there’s usually a meaning behind my waking up early.
So as I sat in my room I was drawn to my copy of The Message and Colossians.
It’s been a while since I’ve woken up early to read, so waking up as early as I did, I knew I better find out what for.
Typically I find myself doing my reading at night, but lately even that’s been sparse.
As I read Colossians chapter 1 I enjoyed chewing on all the meat of it.
But I focused in on verses 10 through 12.
“We pray that you'll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in His orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work. We pray that you'll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul--not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that He has for us (MSG).”
What a passage.
Did you catch all of that?
I can’t even begin to touch on everything that passage says.
I may be the only one who needed to read that Tuesday morning, but I think we all have times in life where we just get frustrated and want to give up.
We’ve gritted our teeth, we’ve dug in, we’ve trudged ahead, but we’re still not getting anywhere.
Other options are trying to grab our attention and pull us from our task and we’re ready to just throw in the white flag.
Maybe we’re just stuck three feet in the mire and can’t see any way out, but there is a way out.
Now everyone will tell you to grit your teeth and pull through, but I believe that Paul is telling us something else.
He’s saying to stick it out, but us gritting our teeth won’t work.
Gritting your teeth is grim work, because your teeth will wear out. And you’ll loose the strength to carry on.
But we still have to stick it out over the long haul.
Yet as Paul points out, it’s not our strength that will get us through our troubles -- it’s the “glory-strength God gives.”
It’s the strength that Ann Tubbs has found in her sewing ministry.
It’s the strength that Steve Burke has found for his ministry in Guatemala.
It’s the strength that Dan Ramsey had as he faced his last days here on earth.
It’s the strength you can find in cancer wards around the country.
It’s the strength Mother Theresa had to carry on caring for complete strangers up until her death.
It’s not any super power that these people were born with. It’s something outside of them.
It’s the “glory-strength God gives.”
And the more we learn about how God works, the better prepared we’ll be for doing our work.
Each of these people knows how God works.
They know there is something beyond them that gives them the power to push on.
We just have to come to understand the power source and understand how to plug in.
My cousin was married Saturday and joins a long list of my friends and family members that made a commitment to another person this summer -- for the rest of their life.
I know her and her husband will face trials. They’ll face difficulties.
They may even wake up one morning wondering, “What if I hadn’t married this person? What if I remained single? What if I married Joe or Bob?”
But they’ve made a commitment for life.
And they both know they can’t stick it out for the long haul without the “glory-strength God gives.”
My dad’s mom told me on one of my last visits with her, “No matter what happens when you get married, you have to grit your teeth, push on and always remember the commitment you made to your wife -- ‘till death do us part.’ And you can’t do it alone. Your teeth will eventually wear out and you’ll have to depend on a source much greater than you to get you through the rough and tough times.”
“It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes us strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that He has for us.”
Life wears down on us, but it is God who gives us the power to take part in every wonderful, beautiful and amazing thing He has planned for us.
So don’t quit. Don’t give up and quit wearing your teeth out.
Give your problems up to someone much greater than you and let Him carry your burden so you can push on and see your task through to completion.