As heirs of The King, conditioning our minds is so very much an act of consciously choosing the story we tell ourselves about any situation. When we control the story playing between our ears we control our expectations and our actions. If we do not think our thoughts correctly how can we work or act correctly? Its hard going through life when we fail to recognize God’s normal operating procedures and expect to be treated differently simply because we want to bypass difficulties and hard work. Thomas Edison is credited with saying “Most people miss opportunity because it is often dresses in overalls and looks like hard work.”
If we do not expect to endure hardships patiently we may abandon our Lord when he does not see fit to remove our hardship. If we do not expect to have to put in time and effort in order to get results, we will avoid putting in time and effort – and we will get the appropriate results – more hardship than we originally avoided with none of the benefits we could have had.
Is this Biblical? You tell me. “The way of a sluggard is like a hedge of thorns (hard going, with nothing to show for the effort but pain) but the path of the upright (in this case, a non-sluggard) is a level highway.” (Proverbs 15:19, ESV)