The Multiplier Effect

The Courage to Outgrow What Once Served You

“Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.” Hebrews 12:11–13

Recently, I’ve found myself back inside lessons I thought I already knew: endurance, surrender, discipline, healing, letting go of what I can’t control and taking responsibility for what I can.

None of these ideas are new to me.

But the version of me being asked to practice them is.

Growth isn’t always some massive revelation. Sometimes it’s being asked to live something you already know at a deeper level.

The Evolution

Growth doesn’t always mean learning something new. Sometimes the next version of you requires applying something you already know at a deeper level. The lesson may be familiar, but the depth of the training changes.

Endurance evolves with you. What once required you to survive may now require you to heal. What once required discipline may now require surrender. What worked in one season may become the very thing you’re being asked to release in the next.

Every season has a new multiplier. Continued growth requires the humility to keep asking what is serving where you’re going and what you’ve outgrown. The goal isn’t to arrive at a finished version of yourself. It’s to remain willing to be trained, strengthened and changed.

When You Know You’ve Outgrown Something

Recently, that evolution meant looking honestly at a habit I knew had become a multiplier in my life.

Not because everything was falling apart. Actually, almost the opposite.

I could see where I wanted to go. I could see what I was building professionally and personally, the level at which I wanted to perform and the person I needed to become to get there.

And I knew this habit wasn’t coming with me.

The discomfort wasn’t in changing it. The discomfort was in continuing to stay somewhere I knew I had already outgrown.

There comes a point when continuing to negotiate with yourself becomes more exhausting than finally making the decision.

For me, there has been freedom in that decision. Freedom in finally choosing to show up for myself.

Not perfectly. Not because everything suddenly becomes easy. But because there is something grounding about knowing where you’re going and making decisions that align with it.

Endurance Takes on New Meaning

Hebrews 12 begins by telling us to “run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

I’ve always thought of endurance as one of my strengths: keep going, work harder, figure it out, get back up.

But this season is asking me to understand endurance differently.

Endurance isn’t just how much discomfort you can tolerate. It’s your ability to stay in the process long enough to be trained by it.

Hebrews moves from endurance into chastening. That word can sound harsh, but its meaning here carries the idea of correction, instruction and training. It’s formation.

Verse 11 makes an important distinction. The peaceable fruit of righteousness comes “to those who have been trained by it.”

Not simply those who experienced it.

Hard things don’t automatically make us stronger. We have to decide what we’re going to allow them to produce in us.

Instead of only asking, Why is this happening? I’m much more interested in asking:

What is this training in me now?

When Strength Needs to Become Healing

For a long time, I could look at things that had happened in my life, things that hurt me and circumstances that made me feel like I had to work incredibly hard for everything, and use them as fuel.

And it worked.

Hard things can make you driven, independent, productive and incredibly capable under pressure.

But there’s another layer to that lesson.

Being able to perform through something isn’t necessarily the same as healing from it.

I think many high performers become incredibly good at functioning while carrying things.

We work. We stay busy. We control what we can. We find ways to turn the volume down. Then we wake up and perform again.

Some of those strategies may have genuinely helped us through an earlier season.

But continued evolution requires us to keep asking:

Is what helped me then still serving who I’m becoming now?

That’s where humility comes in.

Sometimes growth isn’t adding another strategy, another goal or another level of discipline.

Sometimes it’s releasing something.

Make Straight Paths

This is why I keep coming back to the progression in Hebrews.

After talking about endurance and training, Scripture tells us to strengthen the hands that hang down, strengthen the feeble knees and make straight paths for our feet so that what is lame can be healed.

It doesn’t tell us to become better at running injured.

It points us toward healing.

That requires a different kind of strength.

Sometimes strength is pushing forward. Sometimes strength is surrendering. Sometimes it’s recognizing that you’ve outgrown something that once served you.

And sometimes it’s being willing to say:

I don’t want to carry this into where I’m going next.

That’s where the multiplier effect begins.

One change starts affecting everything else.

Clarity changes your decisions. Discipline changes your execution. Healing changes your relationships. Releasing bitterness changes how you lead. Following through changes the way you trust yourself.

And confidence doesn’t always have to come before action.

Sometimes confidence is the return on action.

You make the decision. You show up for yourself. You return to the path. Every repetition becomes another piece of evidence that you can trust yourself to keep moving forward.

A New Depth of Surrender

Later in Hebrews 12, we’re told to pursue peace and not allow a root of bitterness to grow.

I’ve gone through different phases of this lesson too.

I shouldn’t have had to go through that. I shouldn’t have been treated that way. I shouldn’t have had to work this hard.

Some of those things may have been true.

But I’ve learned that being justified in my hurt doesn’t mean bitterness deserves a permanent place in my life.

And this isn’t a lesson I learned once and checked off the list. I’ve had to come back to it at different stages of my life, each time at a different depth.

What am I still carrying? What am I still trying to control? What am I being asked to surrender now?

For years, some of my drive came from what had happened to me.

Today, I’m much more interested in what God can build through me.

That’s evolution.

Not erasing the past. Not pretending it didn’t shape me. But refusing to allow an old version of the story to determine the next one.

Stay in the Training

There is one word in Hebrews 12:11 that I keep coming back to:

Afterward.

Training has a delayed return.

We don’t always experience the fruit immediately. Sometimes we have to stay with the decision, the discipline, the surrender or the healing long enough to see what it produces.

That’s endurance.

I’m not trying to arrive at some final, perfected version of myself. I’m learning to stay open to the next level of training.

There is gratitude in that.

Gratitude for the awareness to recognize when something isn’t serving where I’m going. Gratitude for correction. Gratitude for the ability to choose differently. And gratitude that growth can keep revealing new depth in lessons I thought I already understood.

Hebrews doesn’t tell us to wait until our knees stop feeling weak.

Strengthen them.

It doesn’t tell us to become better at carrying what hurts.

Let it heal.

And it doesn’t tell us that because we’ve learned a lesson once, we’ll never encounter it again.

Maybe growth isn’t about finally mastering the lesson. Maybe it’s about being willing to meet it again at the depth this season requires.

So the question I’m asking myself isn’t, What do I need to change about everything?

It’s much simpler:

What have I outgrown in this season?

Identify it. Humble yourself enough to release it. Make the path straight.

And keep evolving.