If you are going to overcome your challenges you have to become stronger than your challenges. Don’t hope your circumstances go away, rather work on overcoming your circumstances with God’s power. My good friend Chris Page once said, “Some mountains are meant to be moved, but some mountains are meant to be scaled.” If we are going to scale our mountains we have to challenge ourselves to become spiritually stronger.
Here are what I call the 3 B’s to become spiritually stronger.
1) Back Up
The first step to focus on God’s power rather than your problems is to back yourself up from your problems. Stop accepting that your problems are too hard. Slap yourself into the right perspective. Sometimes you have to have a come to Jesus meeting with yourself. You have to awaken to the goodness of God and not the trials of the world. You have to deal with yourself before you can deal with your situation. Practice self-control by not allowing yourself to overreact out of fear. You can do this by putting on some worship music to snap you back into God’s presence and power. Or maybe open your Bible and start to read about the promises of God. Or simply start to speak life over your situation and stop worrying about the challenges.
Proverbs 25:28 (ESV)
A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.
2) Build Up
Build yourself up with faith giving opportunities. The reason why we slip into discouragement is because we aren’t very good at being proactive about keeping ourselves encouraged. You need to have a system that puts guardrails on your life. Keep yourself from falling off the path to progress by making sure you are inputting Godly resources and opportunities in your path. For example: if you only go to church when you feel like it, you’ll probably sleep in most of the time. If you only read that faith-based book when you have some extra time, you’ll never have the extra time. You have to be intentional about doing things that will build your faith even when you don’t feel like you need it, that’s what keeps you from “needing it.”
Jude 20:25 (NIV)
20 But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faithand praying in the Holy Spirit, 21 keep yourselves in God’s love as you waitfor the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
3) Buddy Up
We were created for community. We are simply better together. God designed us to be in relationship with others who will help us in our time of need. Everyone needs someone. It’s vital to your spiritual growth to have buddies that will pour into you and encourage you when you need it. We aren’t designed to go solo and work things out alone. There are no Rambo type people in God’s community. We need each other in order to be all we are capable of being. Make sure you have people in your life that will hold you accountable, encourage you, and challenge you to be, do, and have more.
Proberbs 27:17 (NIV)
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
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