Are you struggling?

“Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.” Hebrews 12:3

A writer tells a story of his struggle during the early periods of widowhood, and how morning after morning how he would ask the Lord why was he still struggling being such a strong believer? God would then answer him as such, “Why shouldn’t you struggle?”

Then came the answer which he didn’t really expect- you’ve got unrecognized pride! Yep, the pride that goes before destruction, and the haughty (raised, lofty) spirit that goes before a fall (Proverbs 16:18). Somehow it hit him that he had thought because of his spiritual maturity he should have been beyond the struggle.

Never forget THE STRUGGLE IS REAL! He’d never been a widow before and needed the experience to be freed and become a true learner, and the only way to become a true learner was to graduate from a struggling one.

There’s no better example than this one I found: a man took home a cocoon, so he could watch the emperor moth emerge. As the moth struggled to get through the tiny opening, the man, deciding to help it, enlarged it with a snip of his scissors. The moth emerged easily, but its wings were shriveled. The struggle through the narrow opening is God’s way to force fluid from its body into its wings (in whatever miraculous way it’s done). The caring snip, in reality, was cruel and hurt way more than it helped.

Hebrews 12 describes the Christian life as a race that involves endurance, discipline, and correction. We never get too far beyond the need of a holy striving against self and sin! Sometimes the struggle which is real is exactly what we need to become what God had intended for us to be all the way from the beginning of creation.

Never forget we experience God’s strength at the same time in which we are enduing the struggle. 2 Corinthian 12 " v8 three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me, v9 but he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

"BLESS God today for the struggle, for its bringing into being a far greater glory to your life.

Reverend Kirkland A. Smith Senior Pastor