Don’t Quit Too Soon
It takes three things to make a diamond: time, pressure, and heat. Diamonds are made purely of carbon and formed about a hundred miles beneath the earth’s surface. High temperatures and extreme pressure cause carbon atoms to bond to each other. Over time, this structure locks into place and eventually grows large enough to produce a diamond.
Pressure, heat, and time.
What does this mean to you today? Your trials serve a purpose, so don’t run from them. Stay where you are. When you stay in your trial, you will learn more. You will grow more. You will do more. God is turning up the pressure and the heat so He can bring forth a diamond in you.
This reminds me of the story of the Prodigal Son. I do not know what this young man was thinking when he asked for his inheritance and left his father’s house. I’m sure that he had some friends who were saying, “Man, out there in the real world everyone is having fun—parties like you’ve never experienced. Come on!”
He bought into the lie that the grass was greener on the other side. But after leaving home, he lost everything. He ended up broke, eating slop with the swine in a pigpen. He finally woke up to the realization that everything he had ever wanted was already in his father’s house. This young man had lived on acres of diamonds, and he never should have left.
I have watched young people leave home because they think they can find more fun elsewhere. I have watched people leave their marriages because they think they can find someone better. I have watched people leave their churches because someone offended them. These people go off searching—trying this and that—because the enemy has convinced them that what they are looking for is out there somewhere. But it’s not!
This is why the psalmist asked God to open his eyes. Wonderful things might be all around you, but if your eyes are closed, you cannot see them. God did not leave you without potential. He did not leave you without opportunity. Open your eyes to the good things.
If you know Jesus, you have a Savior who has promised to never leave you or forsake you. You are living right now in acres of diamonds.
“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers.”
Psalms 1:1-3 NIV
Note from the Acres of Diamond book Pastor Jentezen Franklin
