Imagine going out to the desert and seeing a very high mountain in which the ultimate goal is to conquer this mountain by reaching the top. If one side of the mountain was completely smooth and the other side of the mountain was rough, which side would you use in order to get to the top? You could not use the smooth side because you would slide right off. There is absolutely nothing to grab hold to and therefore nothing to help elevate you. Ultimately you would not get anywhere. However, if you went over to the rough side, it’s those very rough edges that you could grab hold to because they would help you get to the top. You would find yourself taking hold of one rough edge in order to grab hold of a higher rough edge. It would only be a matter of time before you discover that the same rough edge that you were once looking up at, trying to grab hold of with your hand, is now under your foot and being used to push you higher up on the mountain. This pattern would continue until you finally reached the top of the mountain, looked back at all the rough edges, and said to yourself, “Thank God for those rough edges because if it weren’t for them, I would have never been able to reach the top of this mountain.” Listen, God is telling me to tell someone that is reading this right now, “Your rough edges are actually a blessing!” It may not feel like it now, but the rough edges in your life are the very things that God is using to help push you to the top. And the day will come when you will look back over your life, standing in the middle of your success, and say, “Thank God for the rough edges in my life. It was those very rough edges that pushed me into the blessing that I now stand in.” Don’t go another day stressed over the rough edges, but thank God now, because despite how you may feel, the fact of the matter is that God knows how to work out your rough edges. If this were Sunday morning at VCC, I’d probably say right here, “Give your neighbor a high five and tell them ‘I thought this was a setback, but it’s really a setup!’”
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