The Fight To FlourishSample

The Fight to Keep Fighting

A flourishing life doesn’t just happen. Progress requires effort and energy, stamina and sweat, persistence and perseverance. Hiding in our hurt or pain is natural, comfortable, and familiar. It’s harder to choose to walk toward what’s painful, but He wants us to keep walking through the pain instead of numbing it. If things get hard, it doesn’t mean we back down; it means we push through. Running away from difficulty will keep us from the growth we were meant to experience. 

When Lenya went to heaven, my husband Levi and I made a conscious choice to fight through the grief. We had to fight to honor each other and to give each other grace in our grief. We fought as God worked to heal our beat-up hearts, whatever that looked like and however long it took.

So often when we endure pain, we want to run from the very One who designed us, knows us, and has a plan for us. But God wants us to run to Him. He loves us and He knows what we need to know: that our source of healing and power and strength comes only from Him. 

Whatever your struggle, don’t run away from Him; run toward Him. He is big enough and strong enough and loves you enough to handle it and to heal you. He is the only answer to the ache within your soul and your struggle. If you can lean in, embrace the challenge, and fight through the hard things, you will start to see the joy in the midst of the heartache.

As we fight to flourish we must admit that we are weak on our own and need the power of God to engage in battle. When we make His strength our strength, we’ll be able to fight forward and to truly flourish on the way. 

Respond

What choices can you make to flourish in your relationship with God? 

How does your relationship with God strengthen you? If you don’t have a relationship with God, how will you choose to respond to His invitation to know Him?

What does it mean to fall in love with Jesus? How does God’s Word and prayer help you love Jesus more deeply?

Prayer

Father in heaven, thank You that You don’t just call me to do the hard things, but that You use those difficult things to change me and to deepen me and to remind me how much I need You.  

Please help me see that the hard things I face today aren’t an obstacle to flourishing, but that they are part of the beautiful and wild and messy process. Send me into my day today, with an intensity in my heart to love when it’s hard, to give when I’m not being given to, to honor You and others no matter how I feel. Help me fight in Your strength today. I love You God.