By Brad Locke
June 10, 2005

(AgapePress) - I don't like struggling. Physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. It's painful. And as Daffy Duck so astutely reminds us, pain hurts.

"No pain, no gain" is a trite axiom that you often see written on locker room placards or football players' undershirts. So despite my reservations about pain, it's time we restore to that phrase the priceless wisdom it originally expressed.

Every home run Albert Pujols hits, every touchdown pass Peyton Manning throws, every rebound Ben Wallace snags is the culmination of countless hours of frustration and struggle. Those guys don't stroll out onto the field or court and succeed through sheer will. There is the unseen struggle that rages in the mind, body and spirit of each one, away from the cameras and critics.

You probably know this, but it still deserves examining, because struggle is a universal aspect of the human existence. Many men have retreated in the face of struggle, and have thus abandoned a future of great promise. We avoid struggle so much that, ironically enough, it becomes a struggle to do so. Steroid freaks for years employed all sorts of deception to take shortcuts. The rewards were temporary, the ramifications immensely dire and irreversible.

Struggle is too often viewed as an obstacle by those lacking patience and foresight, when in reality it is a direct path to success (and a clear conscience). I think it's been largely forgotten how sweet struggle can be. Struggle is the father of greatness. It has produced some of the world's greatest innovations and led to some of the greatest discoveries. The fulfillment one receives from hard-earned accomplishment is what makes the struggle so beautiful.

For the Christian, all the Bible learning in the world won't make you spiritually steadfast if you don't wrestle with the truthfulness of what you're reading. A man who hasn't closely examined his faith is one who's weak in it. I find that the more questions I ask, the more concrete my convictions become.

Wrestling with the Word is just one part of the greater, sweeter struggle of sanctification. The difference between being made more righteous through Christ and other human endeavors is that in sanctification we do not, thank God, have to rely completely upon ourselves for the completion of the process. God is constantly working on us, unspooling the thread of wickedness from around our hearts.

I think nothing captures the essence of this struggle better than Paul's words in Romans 7. "I do not understand my own actions," he writes in verse 15. "For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate." When I first read those words, it was such a relief to me to know I wasn't the only one who struggled so mightily with sin after being saved. You don't just become righteous and incapable of sin upon salvation. If that were so, this world would be in a lot better shape, and we wouldn't appreciate the grace of God nearly as much.

Struggle is the only way to get stronger. Consider newborns. Those delivered via C-section aren't as strong as those born naturally, because natural birth requires a struggle on the baby's part, which develops their muscles and immune system.

So it is when one is spiritually reborn. The struggle that ensues isn't always fun, but the rewards make it sweeter than a Pujols home-run swing. And as for Pujols and his athletic brethren, let us use them as encouragement in our own, greater struggles. What they are striving toward is commendable, but what the Christian strives toward is eternal.