Climbing: When Faith Gets Harder and You Have to Shift Down

A Cycling Devotional

Cycling has flat sections where you can cruise. But then comes a hill. Suddenly the easy pace doesn't work anymore. You have to shift down to an easier gear. Your cadence slows. Your effort increases. The comfortable rhythm is gone.

Most cyclists hate hills. But experienced cyclists know something: hills make you stronger. They're where you develop power, endurance, and mental toughness. The riders who refuse to climb stay comfortable and weak. The ones who embrace hills become truly strong.

Spiritually, this is what trials do.

Your faith can cruise along comfortably for a while – everything's working, life is good, following Jesus feels easy. But then something difficult happens. Loss. Illness. Betrayal. Questions you can't easily answer. The comfortable rhythm is gone. You have to downshift to a harder gear. Your faith gets harder.

Many Christians get angry at this. They want the cruise sections to last forever. But trials are hills. They're making you stronger.

Romans 5:3-4 says: "Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope."

Glory in suffering. Trials produce character. Hills make you stronger.

James 1:2-4 says: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

Testing produces perseverance. Trials produce maturity. Hills produce strength.

1 Peter 1:6-7 says: "In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed."

Refined by fire. Proven genuine. That's what hills do.

Tomorrow's Practice: If you're currently on a hill – facing a trial, experiencing difficulty in your faith – stop resenting it. Instead, recognize it as opportunity to become stronger. Ask yourself: what is this hill teaching me? What character is being developed? Instead of just trying to survive the hill, embrace it as strength-building.

Reflection Question: Do you resist spiritual hills (trials and difficulties) as unwanted obstacles, or do you embrace them as opportunities to become stronger in your faith?