Ever wonder how you are still standing despite all the ways the enemy has tried to take you out?
What does this mean, you may wonder? Well it doesn’t take a therapy session to understand that I grew up as the only female cousin in a brood of boys until Sarah Beth came along in my preteen years. I was also the only girl in the neighborhood. And a little sister to the best big brother ever to exist. Translation? I’m a fighter, not a lover.
Just playing… I also happen to have a very tender heart. But when that fight or flight response kicks in, it’s a fight from me every time.
Which is why it’s important for me (and you) to remember who the real enemy is. We’re gonna be fighting either way, so we need to make sure we are throwing punches that will actually land and make a difference in how this fight is called.
How is your family still intact despite separations and offenses and unforgiveness?
For those who aren’t quite as Rocky obsessed as I am, let me set the stage for you: Rocky Balboa is blue-collar, down on his luck guy, with an amazing dog named Butkus and who is training as a boxer. But his methods of training are pretty grassroots. Not a lot of fancy machinery or expensive coaches. Then he gets the chance to fight the champ, Apollo Creed (future father of Michael B. Jordan’s Adonis Creed), in Rocky I.
I won’t spoil the ending, but I will say it ends very heroically for Rocky, though not in the way you’d expect. In Rocky II, there’s a rematch between Rocky and Apollo. At the end of the movie, when the big fight is taking place, we see two champion-level fighters just going at it. The crowd, the announcers, the cornermen, the cutmen… everyone is stunned that these two men are still fighting. It doesn’t seem humanly possible.
How do you put your tithe in the offering basket every Sunday, knowing your bank account is already hurting?
Then, one of the announcers says something to the effect of “I don’t know how they’re still standing!” And the other announcer says, “It’s conviction and guts.”
*Pause for dramatic effect because man, this movie is good*
Ever wonder how you are still standing despite all the ways the enemy has tried to take you out? Conviction and guts.
How is your family still intact despite separations and offenses and unforgiveness? Conviction and guts.
How do you keep showing up every day for a job that pays you minimally and a boss who disrespects you daily? Conviction and guts.
How do you put your tithe in the offering basket every Sunday, knowing your bank account is already hurting? Conviction and guts.
How do you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you? Conviction and guts.
How do you surrender control to unseen God when you know you could make something happen according to your own will? Conviction and guts.
How do you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?
Conviction that God is who He says He is, and you are who He says you are. Conviction that the battle is not only the Lords, but that the fight is fixed.
Conviction that if God is for us, who can be against us? That He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all will also graciously give us all things.
Conviction that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Not tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword.
Conviction that in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
How do you surrender control to unseen God when you know you could make something happen according to your own will?
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