What Are You Struggling With?

As seen in the  "The Heartbeat" and published in the Hot Springs Village Voice

Maybe I should ask the question using correct English: With what are you struggling? As you can guess I struggle with the English language, or should I say with formal English. Do I use "its" or "it’s"? Should I put the question mark inside the quotation marks or outside of them? You’ve heard the joke, "a preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with." That describes my grasp of proper English to a tee!

We have many struggles in our life. You have witnessed as adults the struggles of puberty in teenagers, specifically boys, and laugh. I must pause here and tell you I did not have a son, I had two daughters. I wouldn’t trade them for all the riches in the world. They were wonderful and have grown to be beautiful women. As for a boy, I believe God in His infinite wisdom knew I would have had no patience for raising a teenage boy! I laugh, but I digress!

It’s easy to look back and see the struggles of others, but a little more difficult to see our own. While we can identify the struggles we overcame, how about those we failed to reach victory? It’s not as easy to talk about the latter, because of the first step to problem solving: admit there is a problem.

Those of us who gave our life to Christ at an early age did so with the faith of a child. We accepted the fact we could not solve the issue of our own sin. We were told Jesus died for our sins, we wholly accepted this, and made Him the Lord of our lives. But what happened after that?

Those who accepted Christ later in life approached Jesus with a different mindset. They had more years behind them, and therefore more "sins" to have forgiven, but the struggle is different. Adults rationalize, qualify, quantify, and apply logic to problems. But these struggles lie within ourselves rather than with God, so we wrestle inwardly.

Do younger Christians have the same struggles? Is accepting Christ at an early age make living the Christian life easier? Absolutely not!!! Older adults have experienced the "pulls" of this world and have seen those paths lead nowhere. But a younger Christian, even though they have Christ in their life, must face the inevitable decisions and struggles posed by the world without the luxury of experience.

Can we use someone else’s experience as our own? We all know the answer to that question. Can we use someone else’s faith as our own? I answer this question with a contrast: God versus my God. Is God just someone we’ve heard about, or do we have a personal relationship with Him?

We all have struggles. But those of us who call upon Christ’s sacrifice, and are covered with God’s unfailing grace know we have a source of strength far beyond our own.

Struggling? Give your struggles to the only One who can pull you through!!

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