Strength in the Struggle -Part 2🤍🦋

Healing sometimes feels heavy because you’re finally facing what you once buried. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re doing the work.

Day 23- Strength in the Struggle 🤍

#40DaysToWholeness #BeautifulMe #HealingJourney #FaithAndHealing #EmotionalHealing #KeepGoing #MentalHealthMatters #ChristianEncouragement

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Good morning, good morning, good morning, happy, happy Monday. How are you all doing this morning? I hope that you had an amazing weekend. I hope you did some self-care. If you didn't, it is still not too late. Uh uh, it is indeed a privilege to be in the land of the living, and I am truly grateful this morning that I get to spend a couple minutes with you just to encourage you because in times like these, we do need a bit of encouragement. Life can feel heavy from time to time, the journey can become quite discouraging, and there are moments when hopelessness and doubt and fear and anxiety will creep up on us because, like I said, there's just so much uncertainty, but one thing I know is that we have a father, we have a father who never leaves us, he never forsakes us, he is right there with us all the way, journeying with us, and as long as he is the head of our lives, as long as he's the one who is leading the way, and if he's not, I pray this morning that you will invite him in that space and give him control, ask him to lead you and guide you, and as long as he is doing that, as long as he is in the forefront of everything that you are doing, then I know that the ending is going to be beautiful. Just continue. I will encourage you, as my dad always encouraged me, to trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him, and he indeed will and surely will direct your path. Hallelujah. Thank you for joining me again on this journey as we go through 40 days of sanctification to wholeness, and today we continue on the topic strength in struggle when healing feels heavy. Hallelujah. Father, we come before you today with hearts that may be tired, but we are still trying to trust you. We praise you because you are faithful in every season, and as your word says, and we're standing on your word, Abba Father, that you are our refuge and strength and ever-present help in trouble. So today we acknowledge that you are our refuge, and when the journey feels heavy, you are our strength. When emotions feel overwhelming, you are our peace, and when the process feels slow, you are still working. Father, thank you for sustaining us. Thank you for the courage to face our healing. Thank you for grace, the grace that carries us when our strength feels low. Thank you, oh God, that as your word declares, that you give strength to the weary and increase the power of the weak. So today, God, we receive that strength. And even in this moment, for the one listening who feels tired, I pray, God, that you will renew their strength. I pray for the one who feels discouraged, that you will restore their hope. And God, I pray for the one who feels like giving up, that you will remind them that you are still working. And we declare today that you are strengthening us in the process, the weight we feel will not break us. This season is producing growth and wholeness in our lives, and we give you thanks in Jesus' name, amen. I just want to do a quick recap of um part one, and of course, you know this is Monique Anderson, CEO and founder of the Beautiful Me Empowerment Ministry, and as always, I am grateful to have you here tuning into the Beautiful Me Empowerment Ministry podcast, a space where we heal and grow and learn together. Amen. Hallelujah. So we talked about uh the fact that sometimes healing can feel heavy, it's not easy, you know. Healing is not necessarily always peaceful, it's not light, but it is emotionally weighty, and we will experience moments when we feel tired in ways that we can't even explain. We may find ourselves processing emotions we've buried for years, and we may feel sometimes like progress is slow, and in those moments, it is easy to wonder like, why does healing feel this hard? But healing often feels heavy because we are processing what we once suppressed. Again, I always say this you cannot heal what you refuse to name, neither can you heal what you refuse to feel. So when emotions rise, it is not a sign that healing is failing or nothing is happening, it is a sign instead that healing is happening, and so today we look at the biblical perspective because God does strengthen us in the process, and one of the most powerful scripture uh that we could ever uh find as it relates to healing is Isaiah 41, verse 10. God strengthens us in our weakness, and the Bible says, Do not fear, for I am with you, I will strengthen you and help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. God does not wait for us to finish the journey before he helps us, he strengthens us in the middle of it. And if we look at this scripture, excuse me, God promises that he will not, that he will never, he didn't say sorry, that we will never feel feel weak, but he does promise that he will strengthen us when we are weak. The journey of healing often brings us to places where we recognize our limitations, but those places are also the places where we experience God's strength most clearly. Those places where I am extremely weak, and it was not easy because you know, first of all, we see vulnerability as weakness, and sometimes when we when we mess up or when we feel like we don't get it right, we feel like God is condemning us, but the fact that there's a conviction when we mess up or when we feel like we have failed, it is that the Holy Spirit is right there with us, and it means too that He is in the middle of it with us, and He just wants us to just talk to Him and just be vulnerable. He is, you know, revealing those places and those spaces in us so that He can work on that, and so I had to sit with Him and I had to say, God, this is my weakness, and I am bringing it to you because I cannot I cannot get over this and I cannot do this on my own. So, Holy Spirit, come into this space of weakness with me, this space that I need to grow and I need to heal from, right? And he strengthened me even in in that moment, right? I experienced his strength showing up. You know, the Bible says that when we are weak, then he is strong, and we see in 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah he had just experienced a major victory, but shortly afterward, he became overwhelmed and exhausted, and he even told God that he wanted to give up, but God did not rebuke him, God allowed him to rest, and God fed him, God strengthened him, right? Even strong people experience emotional exhaustion, and God responds to them with compassion. Persons see me show up every day with a bright smile on my face, and it I post the nice pictures and I post the podcast and I'm on TikTok and I'm doing the post, I'm doing the gratitude checks. But the there's a popular saying that goes that you see the glory, but you don't see the backstory, you don't see the story, you don't see the struggles because I do struggle. Oh my god, I said to God this morning, I said, God, honestly, I get it wrong more often than I get it right. And there's uh, I think it's Grace Thrillers that sings this song. I want you to lead me, I want you to guide me, keep my I think it's keep my life or keep my heart under your control. Give me more grace, Lord, to love you and serve you. For honestly, I cannot do it on my own. And we see that even Jesus, Jesus, he had emotional moments, he rest in the middle of ministry, right? He experienced moments where he withdrew from crowds to rest and to pray, and Luke 5, verse 16 says, but Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. And if Jesus took time to step away and recharge, it reminds us that rest is not weakness, it is wisdom. Healing requires space, it requires reflection, it requires prayer, and it requires rest. Hallelujah! And I pray that we are resting because we really don't like rest, we don't like rest, all right, and again, I want you to always remember this. God does not only meet us at the end of our journey, He meets us in the middle of it, right? Sometimes we imagine that God shows up only after the breakthrough, after the healing, after the victory. But as we walk through the Bible, we see how God shows up in different ways. God walks with his people through the process, not just through the outcome. And when the process feels heavy, God provides strength. He provides us with the strength that we need to keep going. There will be moments in your healing journey when you feel emotionally tired, moments when the weight of processing old wounds feels overwhelming. But in those moments, God says, I will strengthen you. This means that you are not expected to carry the journey alone. God becomes the strength you feel when your own strength runs low. And again, throughout the Bible, we see that many of God's people experience moments where the journey felt overwhelming. And what do we see God doing? We see God strengthening them right there in the middle of their struggle. David, and I absolutely love David. David, I mean, God strengthened David in his emotional distress. David is called a man after God's own heart, and even David he experienced seasons of deep emotional distress. Psalm 61, verse 2, David prayed and he said, From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I. David openly acknowledged when his heart felt overwhelmed. But he also knew where to return. He returned to God, and in those moments, God became his refuge and strength. David's honesty reminds us that acknowledging emotional struggle does not make us spiritually weak. And we see Paul, the Apostle Paul also spoke about experiencing weakness, and he said, He said, My grace, he said, God told him rather, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Paul learned something powerful through his struggles. God's strength often becomes most visible when we recognize our own limitations. And as I said over the weekend, I had to sit with God and I had to tell him I said, God, this is the area that I feel I am so weak. Like this is my weak point, my weak spot, and I cannot help myself in this area. So I'm asking you to just show up in this area with me and help me. Weakness becomes the place where God's grace fills the gap. And as we mentioned that Jesus, Jesus, too, he became emotional. He carried deep emotional burden, but he did not face this weight alone, and so this morning you don't have to face this weight alone, God is available to us. When healing feels heavy, it does not mean you are failing, it means you are in the middle of the process, and that process requires strength. And the good news today is that God, God provides strength for the journey, not just once, but again and again. Every time you feel tired, every time you feel overwhelmed, every time you feel you might not have enough strength to continue, God meets you there, he strengthens you, he sustains you, and he walks with you until the healing he began becomes the wholeness he promised. Because the same God who starts the work in you is able, more than able to carry it through. Emotionally, healing requires the brain to revisit and process past experiences. So processing healing is hard work. What is happening is you are reframing beliefs you carried for years, you are breaking patterns you learned in survival, you are learning healthier emotional responses, and this requires mental and emotional energy. So when you feel tired during healing, again, I encourage you, and I'm letting you know, it doesn't mean that you are failing, it means that your mind and nervous system they are doing some deep internal work and God is forming debt. James 1, verse 2 to 4 says, consider it pure joy whenever you face trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, and perseverance produces maturity, and maturity produces stability. God often uses the process to develop something stronger within us, not to harm us, but to prepare us. So if you are listening today and healing feels heavy, I want you to know you're not work, you're not weak, sorry. You are doing some brave and courageous work. You are facing things many people spend their lives avoiding. I always say that many people will never experience the healed version of themselves because they just don't want to face they don't want to go through the process, they avoid it, and so they live in survival mode, but that's not where God wants us. Survival mode is Lodibar, and we are being invited to the king's table this morning. God is in the process with you, even when progress feels slow, even when emotions feel messy, and even when the journey feels exhausting, God is still working. So I want you to take a moment today and ask yourself what emotions have surfaced during my healing? Have I allowed myself to rest during this process? Can I acknowledge the courage it takes to keep going? Because healing takes time, but every step forward matters. And so, Father, we thank you for meeting us in the middle of the journey. When healing feels heavy, remind us that you are carrying us, strengthen our hearts and renew our minds, and continue forming wholeness within us in Jesus' name. Amen. Just remember, healing is not always easy, but you're not walking through it alone, and every single step you take is bringing you closer to wholeness. God bless you and have an amazing week and an amazing day. And just remember, you are not doing this in your own strength. God is right there with you. I love you, but God loves you even more.