You Have to be Tough

“Tough times never last, but tough people do!” (Robert Schuller)

Life isn’t always easy. At times it can be extremely difficult.
Health problems, financial problems, family problems, relationship problems, marriage problems, can all present incredible challenges. They challenge our resolve, our attitudes, and our future.  Your toughness determines whether you overcome the challenges or the challenges overcome you.
Jesus wrote, “In this world you shall have tribulation.” Job said, “Mans days are short and full of trouble.” While it is true that life can be tough and full of difficulties and trouble, it is also true that things don’t have to stay that way. There is always a way out of the difficulties you face in life. Listen to what David said, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”
Just because trouble comes doe’s not mean that we have to allow ourselves to be destroyed by them. While the Bible is full of passages that warn of trouble it is also full of admonitions for overcoming them.
Just like building up your muscles, if you are going to be mentally, spiritually, and emotionally tough, you must put in the time, work, and effort to do so.  You must make up your mind that you are going to be tougher than the challenges that come your way.  You must believe that you can overcome and outlast any challenge that comes your way.
The following principles will help you victoriously overcome life’s difficulties.

• Have faith. Believe that things can and will change. Expect God to do what He promises in His word. Believe in healing, deliverance, provision and protection.
• Renew your mind. Change the way you think. Get rid of negative thinking. Refuse to think thoughts of doubt, unbelief, and destruction. Fill your mind with the promises of God’s word.
• Watch your mouth. Death and life are in the power of the tongue. What you speak in life is what you can expect to have. This is a spiritual principle that cannot be nullified. Paul wrote, “confession is made unto salvation.” Begin to speak what you intend to see, not what now is. It is a true statement confession leads to possession.
• Positive actions. Choose to do your part to change the way things are. Become a doer not just a hearer of the word of God. The prophet Jeremiah said, “if you are willing and obedient you shall eat the good of the land.”
• Surround yourself with winners. Your associations are important to hanging tough. Don’t run with gloom and doom thinkers. The last thing you need when facing tough times is to be around people that are down and out. By running with winners, in tough times, they will encourage you to keep on keeping on.
• See the end result. In order to hang tough in trying times, you must be able by faith to see beyond what now is to what can be. Faith sees beyond the present circumstances.
• Don’t stop. Quit should be a word that you remove from your vocabulary. “Quitters never win and winners never quit.” The race isn’t to the first off the line, or even to the fastest runner, it is to the one who endures to the end.