Strength through the struggle
Do you ever wake up in the morning and feel like you’re already surrounded by problems and pressures that are left over from the night before?
You may be overwhelmed with needs, uncertainty, hurt, burdens, to-do lists and regrets and you haven’t even thrown back the covers yet.
What if the strength you’re searching for is in you already and you just can’t see it yet?
As long as your focus stays fixated on the issues and obstacles, you’ll miss the opportunity to let courage control your thoughts.
The Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, has already gone before every one of your battles and equipped you with armor you’ll need for the attacks coming.
And He’s bracing you from behind too. He’s got your back.
Your struggle is less about your own maturity and more about what you believe.
Your help is here. Your supply is here. Your strength is here.
Can you see it?
Though you’re tired by all the trouble, close your eyes and rub the seeds of doubt and disbelief from the corners of your mind. Now look again. Let your gaze fall upon the hills, where your help is mounted up and surrounding the very things that surround you.
It would be nice if God’s help was to keep us from hardships and prevent the problems from ever happening in the first place. But let’s be honest. As long as you strain hard enough, your success will point to your own efforts.
Pride tells us we have all the power and strength and there is no purpose for faith or trusting in a God we can’t see. Yet, the scriptures are stacked with stories rooted in human weakness, soaked in the supernatural strength of God.
Allow your problems to humble you, refine you, and use you more effectively. The places where we are pressed can most likely be where God wants us to plant hope. Compassion permeates from our pain.
You have a Defender who will deliver you with the very thing the devil meant to destroy you. When the enemy has a strategy to take you out, God always has a plan to keep you in and moving forward.
Let God pummel the enemy by bringing so much good from the bad that Satan will regret ever having taken you to that wilderness in the first place.
God wants to show you His faithfulness through your failures and strengthen you through the struggles.
But you may have to see it through your weakness.
So look again! There is potential in your problems and purpose through your pain. You can have confidence in the chaos and confusion. God downpours a great supply in the drought of your need.
You can’t control the circumstance but you can believe in a Father who loves you… still. In the darkest of hours, He is the supply of strength standing on a ground of grace.
Keep trusting. He’s already given you all you need.
It’s our faith that activates God’s power. If you’ve been standing and believing for a while, don’t give up! Press through. Keep praying. Keep asking. Keep seeking, and He’ll meet your faith with favor and His miraculous power.
Often times we’re surprised by our struggles. We can even be caught off guard when it’s the same stuff we’ve been wrestling with for so long. We give the enemy credit for being clever when he throws the same punch to our weak spots. Why?
What if we weren’t surprised?
What if we really did come to expect these kinds of ordeals, not as pessimists but as the prepared?
What if we did come to expect that life was going to push us with pressure?
What if we were ready in advance for things like temptation and oppression?
Plant your feet solid and bend your knees to brace your body for the impact, because I’m warning you from the Word, its coming. If you’re not prepared when the push comes, you will be shoved into a sinkhole of despair.
Let us not be prepared for only the pressures but also for the divine power.
Although we feel alone in our afflictions, I’m here to remind you we’re all in this together. As the persecutions mount and the pressures pound, remember God has already given us victory through Jesus. None of these struggles and trouble will be wasted. They will all work out for our good. We are more than conquerors through Christ who loved us (Romans 8:37). Our perseverance will be rewarded (Hebrews 10:35)
Therefore, my dear [friend], be… immovable” (1 Corinthians 15:58)
I pray that God opens your eyes so that you may see the strength that is already in you. Keep an open and humble heart so that His peace can help you press through to pain and find its purpose and His plan.
Let It Go
So something new can grow
Last night, I sat silently on my porch steps pondering life. A slight breeze swept through the loose strands of a messy knot piled high on my head and a chorus from everything living sang with sweet lullabies to my soul.
The peace of it all captured my thoughts as I marveled at the breathtaking livelihood of life.
It is Spring and technically a time of new growth, yet there in the boughs of towering tree was a lifeless limb caught up in it’s spindly vines.
It’s likely a storm had severed this part. The tangled timber was more of a stick now… the color had drained from its bark, but the branches weren’t ready to let go.
Isn’t that just like life sometimes?
A storm sweeps through, devastating our status or symbol of life. The winds snap off a chapter, but our arms cling to the kindling because we fear letting go.
When a field stops producing fruit, we have to accept what has refused to come back to life; we have to let it go.
Disappointment. Divorce. Death.
With a very tender heart and deep compassion, I offer only a trail of my own tears when I whisper these words to you.
Our mind likes to circle a barren crop, hoping a seed will magically produce by staring at it long enough, when we need to cut it down, pile it up, and let it burn.
As tears sizzle over the embers.
True, God sometimes chooses to resurrect something that has died.
And other times He wants us to call it what it is – dead – and let it go, knowing that He is good. And He is for us.
We’re reminded in the book of John that God prunes branches that bear no fruit so that they will sprout more. And what does not yield produce over time is “thrown out like a branch, and dries up; and such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and are burned up.” – John 15:6
Life is about growth.
God is all about the fruit.
You can huff and puff, but trying to resuscitate what’s not coming back to life just leaves you out of breath.
Sift the seeds of your life through the threshing floor of Christ to separate the dead from the living.
Don’t overlook the wholesome hindrances that have overstayed their season; sometimes these are the hardest to let go of because they are easier to rationalize. They’re not wrong; they’re just not right, right now.
Perhaps our ego may need to be shown the exit door first.
What doesn’t reap a harvest, what fails to resurrect in the sunshine and showers, finally needs to go.
That doesn’t mean you forget.
Some things are too sensitive or significant to let slip from memory.
These words are woven with empathy when I say, if it is gone, let it go. If it is possible to move the reminder from your sight where it has become a monument to your sadness and loss, pile it up and carry it off.
His wings will shelter you in the shadows and keep your sacred heart safe in the storm. He does not leave a life empty.
He will either restore the sterile or plant something brand-new. Know with all your faith that a fresh seed will sprout soon. Hold on to your expectation that it will be more than you can imagine.
His promise is to fertilize a flourishing future for you. He nurtures and cultivates the soil with great care and comfort.
Give it space. Sunshine. Water it with your tears if you must. And you will surely live to see His faithfulness sprout out of the seasoned soil.
Our breaths are too brief to spend another inhale grieving what could have been. Release your fears. You are stronger than you think.
Stretch out your arms and don’t let the storms scare you from pain.
Let go of what is broken and trust, for it is to your Father’s glory that you bear much fruit.
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.” Psalm 1:3
Courage
It carries those left living
The best view
Take Risks
34 lessons I’ve learned over the years
marking my 34th birthday
In 34 years, here’s what I’ve learned…
- Love is the answer; being right rarely is.
- We spend way too much time in the work of crafting ourselves, and far too little time just being ourselves.
- The greatest adventures come from wrong turns, so don’t let fear stop you.
- Discipline is important to achieving dreams. Grace is even more important.
- You can start over whenever you decide to.
- Your childhood gives you character but it doesn’t control who you become.
- Worrying about something that might happen is wasted energy.
- If you want to be successful, surround yourself with successful people.
- Success is not defined by status, money, education, career or another person but by the peace in your heart.
- Money doesn’t give you character. Failure does.
- When someone shows their true colors, don’t try to repaint them.
- Anger isn’t nearly as impressive as patience. Nor is it as effective.
- Listen more and talk less.
- Boyfriends and husbands are lovely. Close girlfriends are gold.
- You have to go home with your heart, so love freely but keep the key.
- Vulnerability is the strength that separates the strong from the weak.
- Everyone has a story. Make time for the adventure.
- The more mistakes you make the more you learn. Take risks.
- Dimming your light to make others feel more comfortable doesn’t serve you. Or them.
- Go neither right nor left at the fork. Go right up the middle. Choose the narrow path. Take someone with you.
- After thinking I would never fall in love again, I did.
- No one has it all together. Forgive people. Even your exes. They’re just winging it, too.
- There’s not just one person for you. Love takes a commitment. If you’re both willing, you can make a relationship work. Soul mates are made over time.
- Another person will never complete you. Only you can do that.
- If you’re not happy with yourself, you’ll never be happy in a relationship.
- No amount of designer handbags or shoes is going to make you happy in the long run. The same goes for chocolate chip cookies.
- The way people treat you is probably more about them, not you.
- Boundaries are about self-preservation, not about alienation.
- Black and white is an illusion. Life is gray.
- Help out someone less fortunate for the joy of doing it. Then keep it to yourself.
- Small minds focus on problems. Big thinkers focus on solutions.
- Working hard doesn’t mean working smart.
- Failure only happens to quitters.
- Believe everyone has good intentions… even God.
What’s holding you back?
I’ve got this guilty love affair with sugar and The Bachelor on a Friday night, especially this season when Mr. Single status is representing my home state.
Sadly, I get sucked into the vortex of other people’s love lives; emotions are high, and the entertainment value even higher. Romance unravels, hearts get broken, and thankfully, it’s not mine.
With a carton of coffee caramel ice cream in hand, my heart securely single and the final three love struck ladies left on screen, a shocking elimination silenced living rooms around the world (maybe that’s a bit dramatic).
As the girl getting the goodbye swept away tears, her painful profession reverberated in my ears, “The whole reason of putting my guard up was to deflect this feeling that I’m feeling right now.”
The harsh truth shuddered my skin and skidded all over the tarmac in my mind.
That night alone in my house, a spring of tears erupted and rushed over me like a levee had broken. A sense of sadness over the reality of staying single collided with the grace of a guarded, grieving soul.
I understood her pain. I too had been wading through long seasons of loneliness just so I didn’t jump into a disastrous marriage on lame legs. And then I had deducted that when you’re the only one holding your heart, hurt can’t rip it out.
I had the equation for life all wrong.
The concept of Christ is giving your life over to love and trusting God to raise dead bones from the grave.
Staying single seemed wise to a girl with deep wounds. Year after year, I called it being brave. Yet, I think sometimes we clothe sheepish fear in a big, bad wolf costume and call it courage when it’s really just a coward’s heart dressing up.
Sometimes we get so used to struggling in life that we’re crippled when the striving stops. That woman’s words cut through my comfortable core and struck seeds of control, fear, and shame.
We hold back our hearts with the past, but God wants to rebuild better than before.
As I sat there processing the pain and honesty, it began to tangle in this big knot called hope.
Chances are, you have dug a hole and hid some things too.
In the Parable of the Talents, the guy who buried what he was given got nothing at the end of the story (see Matthew 25: 14-30). Those who walked the line of risk with their treasures were returned double the portion.
Shaking my head. Kingdom transactions don’t make earthly sense.
God’s healing power takes broken, disappointed, desolate places and makes them stronger, encouraged, full – and free!
This should be all the more reason we use everything we’ve got.
So what’s holding you back?
Don’t let the past prevent you from accepting that God mends to multiply in dividends that will satisfy the desires of your heart.
A great leader takes us where we ought to be
Keeping perspective on the purpose
Who says the first of the year is the only time we can begin new things? It’s Spring. A season of renewal and the perfect time to make a fresh start on those dream/goals most of us have abandoned since the first of the year.
I am right there with you.
So I blew off the dust on my crumpled up plan and renewed the vision by starting with one step. This new website. Then I took another step. A video blog.
It’s difficult to persevere in our discipline when progress is slow, distractions are mounting and the dream is yet too far out to see. Here’s an idea that may help you get back on track with your purpose.