Week six devotional

Lie #6: I’ll always struggle with my weight, relationship with food… insert your biggest struggle here.

If you rest in statements like this, this lie will become a truth for you. Statements like this are excuses that are masked as confessions. We feel like we’re being honest and vulnerable when we say things like this, but what we’re really doing is telling ourselves that it’s okay and we don’t need to do anything to fix the problem.

As someone who has made statements like this about things in my own life, I can say this with full confidence: As long as you are saying things like this, you will not progress in those areas.

What I’m not saying here is that you will never have struggles again. I’m not saying that they go away, and you never have to face them again. What I am saying is that you can actively choose to fight against them everyday, and after a while, you will find freedom from them. They may still creep up and rear their ugly head now and then, but overall those struggles will start to diminish when you change your perspective and start to believe that you can overcome them.

2 Corinthians 12:9 “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”

Let those words sink in. God’s power is made perfect in your weaknesses. He uses our shortcomings and our weaknesses to reveal himself to us. So when we make these statements about our struggles and say that we can never find freedom from them, we are basically saying that God isn’t big enough to overcome them. I love this verse for so many reasons, but mainly because it reminds me that he uses my struggles for good. He uses them to make me stronger; to bring me closer to him; to highlight for me how much I need him; and he uses them to reveal himself not only to me, but to others when I’m able to share my story of how he worked through me during those struggles.

Let’s keep reading in 2 Corinthians. “That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

If this is one way that he reveals his strength through us, we can delight in our struggles when we fully trust him to heal us and to provide freedom for us.

This week, I want you to share your struggles with him. What struggle did you insert into this week’s lie? “I will always struggle with _____.” Whatever words you insert into those statements, I want you to give them to God this week. I want you to let go of them and put them in his hands and trust that he can help you to find freedom from the things that are holding you back. Whether it’s food, your weight, body image, exercise or completely unrelated to fitness. Give them to him and pray to him when those struggles come about. Take a minute to write out a prayer for yourself and turn all of them over to him.

We’re going to dig a little deeper into this lie about our struggles next week. This is too big of a lie to only talk about it once, so there will be a part two for this one next week. But for now, that’s your homework for this week.

Y’all, you have completed FIVE weeks of workouts. That’s amazing. That’s 25 workouts if you’re counting. You’re past the point of time that it takes to form a habit. If you’ve missed a few here and there, don’t beat yourself up. This journey doesn’t end at 8 weeks. This is a marathon, not a sprint. Let’s get right back on track and start week six out STRONG.

Here we go!