I thank God for my struggles....

I thank God for all of my struggles. I thank Him that He has let me struggle tremendously, to the point of exhaustion, in order that I may now fly and bring glory to Him and His kingdom through those struggles. It would suck to have to drag my swollen body [of past baggage] with my tiny underdeveloped [spiritual & emotional] wings. I know that He is always right by my side throughout each struggle, but doesn't do all my fighting for me. He is merciful in His grace and His grace is sufficient in my weakness. And trust me, I've got plenty of weaknesses. And yet, it is so awesome to know that when I am at my weakest, that's when I am actually the strongest, because then it is His strength that I am living by!

"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" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

"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" (2 Corinthians 12:10).

"A man once found a cocoon of an Emperor moth and kept it with the purpose of watching the beautiful creature emerge. Finally the day came and it began to struggle through the small opening at one end of the cocoon. The struggle continued for hours, but the moth could never force its body beyond a certain point.

Finally believing that something was wrong and that the opening should have been larger, the man took a pair of scissors and carefully clipped the restraining threads. The moth emerged easily, and crawled out onto the windowsill. Its body was large and swollen, its wings small and shriveled. He supposed that in a few hours the wings would develop into the beautiful objects that he had expected. But it did not happen. The moth that should have been a thing of great beauty, free to float and fly, spent its short life dragging around the swollen body and shriveled wings.

The constricting threads and the struggle necessary to pass through the tiny opening had been God's method of forcing fluids from the body into the wings. The "merciful" snip of the threads was the most cruel thing possible.

Often God lets us struggle rather than stepping in like a big brother to do our fighting for us. No doubt He could make it all so easy and every moment of life so pleasant. But as we struggle, becoming exhausted almost beyond endurance, changes occur in us which could not happen otherwise: the "fluids" expand our wings, and in time we can fly. Cut the struggle short at some crucial point and we are crippled forever...or until God gives another opportunity for struggle that will do what the first aborted struggle should have been allowed to do." (From 'Temptation: Help for Struggling Christians' by Charles Durham)