No goal in the world worth having or doing comes without the pain and sacrifice of hard work. But before you reach your goal you’re going to be tempted to take a shortcut. But there’s a catch, in order to take that shortcut, you’ll have to temporarily abandon your values. Because the nature of the temptation is to get you to do the right thing but the wrong way.

A hard worker has plenty of food, but a person who chases fantasies ends up in poverty. The trustworthy person will get a rich reward, but a person who wants quick riches will get into trouble. – Proverbs 28:19-20 NLT 

Three reasons why you should avoid shortcuts in the important areas of your life.

1. Passion

You cannot achieve anything of real meaning if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing. The problem is that we’re not born with passion, instead, we must give birth to passion. Initially for me, being a pastor was a calling and a job but it was not something I was passionate about. But the many years of hard work, sacrifices and perseverance have birthed in me the passion to do what I do. So much so that there’s no other thing I’d rather be doing. If you give in to the temptation to take shortcuts, you’ll never birth one of the most important ingredients that lead to both success and happiness, passion.

2. Strength

In fitness, the tougher the workout the more strength you build. When you decide to shortcut the process, you don’t get stronger you get weaker. The same is true about the rest of the areas of your life. Take a shortcut and grow weak, work hard and grow strong.

3. Perseverance

The more you invest yourself into something, the harder you’ll fight to succeed. The more sacrifices you’re willing to take the more you’ll be willing to persevere. And anything worth doing requires perseverance because on the road to success there will be a lot of adversity, setbacks, and discouragement. For those who take the shortcuts, these are knockout blows. But for those who have built perseverance, instead of knocking them down, they use these hardships as fuel to work harder to succeed.

Shortcuts may make you feel better in the short term. But in the long run, they’ll stunt your growth and weaken your passion, strength, and perseverance and then they will rob you of the success that God created you to walk in.