Crisis Growth

The "growth" that comes in a crisis will stop when the crisis stops—unless it leads us to make lasting changes...

But eventually crisis fades, and spiritual urgency fades along with it. We need to help people learn how to make changes that will outlast the crisis.

It's as if in normal life we step onto a treadmill and begin running after something—money, security, or success—when adversity knocks us off. Suffering enables us to see the folly of chasing after temporal gods, and when people suffer, they often resolve to not return to their old way of life when things normalize. But you have a finite window of time to make changes, otherwise you drift back to old patterns.

Soren Kierkegaard wrote that "affliction is able to drown out every earthly voice … but the voice of eternity deep in the soul it cannot drown."

If you have courage to make changes in your life, something can happen in your soul. The Spirit will bring the courage if you keep asking while the experience of adversity is fresh. Ultimately, adversity can produce hope because of a reality much larger than you and me.

John Ortberg, Leadership.