Resilience

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Resilience

By Connie Hartman

The word resilience has been a theme in our home over the last few months. The Holy Spirit continues to bring it to the forefront of conversations and gives us opportunities to practice it (yay for us). It came to mind again on Sunday while hearing Pastor Charlie teach on Nehemiah 2.

Fear is possibly the #1 weapon our enemy uses to keep us from pursuing God’s plans, passions, and dreams for our lives. It paralyzes us, convinces us that we’re not good enough, smart enough, strong enough, creative enough, whatever enough to live out our God-given callings. It will see every small hiccup or bump in the road as huge obstacles and signs that we have failed. Fear lies.

What does it take to beat back fear and relentlessly keep moving forward? Prayer for sure. Wise, godly counsel-yes. And a good measure of resilience, a determination to keep getting back up, bouncing back, and pushing on.

But resilience doesn’t just happen. It’s a muscle to be exercised and a continual choice to be made. It’s not glamorous. It looks like deep breaths, hard conversations, and continuing even when you’re tired physically, mentally or emotionally.

While God will open doors and pave paths for us when He’s orchestrating His will for us, He also does not exempt us from the hard work of doing it. He will allow us opportunities for endurance, perseverance, grit, resilience. Spoiler alert: Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem was a whole lot of hard work. It was construction. There were for sure setbacks, things probably didn’t always go according to plan, and I have no doubt he had to continually adjust and regroup.

Even (maybe especially) the best things God has for us in this life require hard work and the resilience of the warrior hearts He’s given us. He has and will equip us, and part of that happens in the tough, day-to-day, messy work of making it happen. But He also gives us an endless supply of power and counsel in the form of the Holy Spirit within us, the same power that raised Christ from the dead. Because of that, we’re stronger than we sometimes believe, and fear just can’t compete with that in the end. Go get ‘em, Church!