Overcoming Adversity.
by Chuck Borsellino
For the next couple of minutes let's talk about tragedy, let's pull back the covers on hardship... let's explore the costs and the consequences of adversity... you name the burden: it humbles the proud, it melts the muscular, it softens the stubborn. Adversity is a giant that does its greatest damage on the battlefield of our mind (not our body). It steals our hope, it deflates our dreams... it minimizes our goals. Adversity fights a silent and stubborn battle on the sacred shores of our soul. It's won many a battle and has taken many a prisoner. Some have found an escape... some have remained captive for a lifetime. Adversity plays no favorites... it has conquered both prince and pauper, saint and sinner, intellectual and illiterate. Many have fought this giant called adversity... and the truth... while many have conquered it... more have been crushed by it. What's the difference? Prayer, perseverance and a purpose in life that refuses to be swallowed by circumstances.
You know, it's amazing to me what God has done through those who might have been considered "shortchanged" because of a physical or mental disability. Isaac Watts was handicapped with a severe physical deformity yet he became a popular preacher in his day, authored a skillion books of poetry and wrote more than 600 sacred songs. Fanny Crosby, who was accidentally blinded at 6 weeks of age, triumphed over her handicap and composed more than 8,000 hymns. Take a gifted man and cripple him... and you have Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in a prison cell... and you have John Bunyan. Afflict him with asthma as a child... and you have Theodore Roosevelt. Tell him he's stupid because he just failed the 6th grade... and you have Winston Churchill. Tell him he has a mental disorder because he didn't speak until he was 4 and didn't read until he was 7... and you have Albert Einstein. Deny a little girl the ability to see, or speak, or hear... and you have Helen Keller. Afflict a baby boy from Arkansas with cerebral palsy... and you have the mold of a man named David Ring.
So now, let me ask you a question... what's your problem? What's holding you back from fulfilling God's desires... your destiny or your dream? Maybe it's asthma, arthritis or an old athletic injury. Maybe you feel too old, too poor or too exhausted. Can't speak in public you say? What about a man called Moses? Have a "thorn in the flesh" you say? What about an apostle named Paul? Now let me ask you again... what was that problem you were about to mention? I thought so...
