Word for Today – Anita Wamble Ministries

Word for Today

September 19, 2018

Building Spiritual Muscle

There is a story told about a man who loved the Lord. One day God told him to go out in the forest to take a walk. While he was in the forest he found a HUGE boulder. This boulder had to be seven feet high and six feet wide.

God told the man, we’ll call him Steve, to push against the boulder. So, being obedient Steve pushed. Soon he realized that he could never move the boulder and cried out to the Lord asking for further instructions. Receiving none, Steve continued to push.

Day and night for a year Steve pushed the boulder. Then finally he gave up. “Lord,” Steve said, “I have pushed this boulder for a year and if it moved one inch I’d be surprised. I told you when I started that I couldn’t move the boulder. Why did you have me push on it for a year with no results? Why did you have me waste my time?”

God responded by telling Steve, “I never told you to move the boulder, I only told you to push it. I wasn’t looking for a change in the boulder; I was looking for a change in you.” God continued by telling Steve “Look at you legs and arms. You have developed muscle and strength you didn’t have a year ago. Listen to your heart beat. It’s stronger now then ever before. Your time wasn’t wasted. The time you spent struggling was time well spent developing you into who I need you to be today.” God concluded by telling Steve, “This was my plan all along. Your job is to fulfill the purpose of my plan by being obedient.”

Struggle is one of God’s teaching tools. When we struggle, we are developing character, morals, ethics and faith that we will need in the next phase of our lives.

God has the plan for our lives. Fulfilling his plan is our purpose. We struggle to understand what God is doing. It’s not making sense and so we struggle to be obedient to a plan we don’t know and because we love the Lord, we continue to struggle.

We must know that through the struggle we’re building spiritual muscle. We’re building spiritually muscular arms with which we’ll do battle. We’re building spiritually muscular legs so we can walk out our purpose. We’re building a heart for God and, sooner or later, we’ll look at our spiritual lives and know that it’s vastly different then it was before. God’s plans are never easy but they always achieve God’s desired results.