Struggle Is Necessary

if we're going to be the kind of people that god has created us to be we need to engage in the struggle [Music] hi my name is father mike schmitz and this is ascension presents a while ago i came across this story it's kind of a fable maybe it's a true story of a man in an emperor moth so here's the idea and here's a man who's out in the woods and he comes upon a cocoon of an emperor moth and he recognizes it for what it is and so he carefully cuts off the the stem branch that the emperor moth is hanging off of and brings it to his home and so he wants to watch this this uh you know caterpillar essentially this cocoon this larva whatever become an emperor moth he watches it day after day at one point uh he starts sees movement and then there's a hole at the top of the cocoon and then the movement stops and so the man in order to like assist the moth to like get out of the cocoon he takes just a just a small pair of scissors and he kind of just widens the opening clips a little bit away and he essentially helps the moth come out of the cocoon so that it doesn't have to struggle it doesn't have to be uncomfortable it doesn't have to to keep like fighting to get out of the cocoon unfortunately instead of freeing the moth to be able to like fly off the body of the moth was oversized and the wings of the moth were shrunken and shriveled and unable to fly that what this man had done in what he thought was kindness he had taken away the struggle he had robbed this caterpillar that could have been an incredible emperor moth from its potential by removing the struggle i think sometimes uh this is what happens to us the man thought he was doing a kindness but the the moth needed to struggle in order to have wings that were strong enough to fly the moth needed to struggle in order to have wings that were strong enough to fly and too often i think that we do this not necessarily just do this to our kids or we do this to the people around us maybe that's the case but i think too often we do it to ourselves i think too often i do this to myself where i can i can find myself shrinking back from things that are difficult things that are uncomfortable in fact i remember talking with so many people who um you know in this in in counseling situations and just kind of even just processing their struggles some people saying like i've fallen into some of the most serious sins of my life simply because i didn't want to be uncomfortable like i didn't want to handle i don't i didn't want to deal with discomfort anymore but this is the case in this case i was talking with some people i don't know i just popped in my head talking to some people and they were like you know um when it came to my struggle with say against purity or for purity i guess against impurity for purity they would say like it was just like i'd be uncomfortable for a little while while i turned away from what it was whatever i was attempted to but i didn't want to be uncomfortable for a while and so i just found myself unable to move incapable of flying why because that struggle is necessary not just in that particular area but in almost every area of our life if we're going to be the kind of people that god has created us to be we need to engage the struggle in fact there was a years ago i read this book that was written by two twin brothers it was called do hard things and it's just so good it was written for uh young people it's written for teenagers i believe written four teenagers by teenagers i think these two brothers were 17 years old when they co-authored this book with each other do hard things and it was so good because it talked about how great people in history great people that we would look to as heroes they started doing hard things when they were young they didn't allow the difficulty of um life and difficulty of a project to dissuade them they said again this is part of life this is part of this project and they didn't go out like necessarily seeking hard things just for hard things at sake but it was if this is a goal that's worthy of my time worthy of my life worthy of my effort if it's uncomfortable if it's difficult that's okay because anything that's worthy of me worthy of your life it's going to be difficult and so what i need to do is i need to not spare myself hard things but i need to lean into hard things in fact this isn't even just like a moth example this isn't even just these two young men example this is a scriptural example saint paul one one of my favorite letters is saint paul's letter to the romans and instead of the romans chapter five where saint paul says this i quote this verse i probably quoted this in a video maybe eight times maybe a dozen times but here's what saint paul says he says we know this we boast of our afflictions because we know that affliction produces endurance so we boast of the fact that we're encountering hard things why because affliction produces endurance and endurance proving character and proven character hope hope does not disappoint because the love of christ has been poured out into our hearts that's paraphrase at the end but what he's saying affliction produces character it produces something in you and in me that can't be there without the affliction they can't be there without the struggle i know for so many of us though we're like but not this struggle i don't want this particular struggle i don't have to do this hard thing and yet this is the struggle that you're facing and yet this is the hard thing that you're in the middle of and yet at some for some reason this is god's will for you now we have another video about this i want to keep keep bringing this up because it's important to make the distinction between god's perfect will and his permissive will his perfect will is always good his permissive will is he allows even evil to touch us he allows evil even to scar us knowing that he can do something with those scars that are even more glorious than a scar-free life that's hard that's a hard pill to swallow it's a hard thing to accept but we know it's true that whatever struggle you're facing right now you can get through it whatever struggle you're facing right now it is doing something to you in fact we know that strength is produced in affliction like strength is produced in affliction that that that when it comes to actually becoming being forged there is an element of testing there's an element of trial and that element is necessary what's even more necessary is not just you being a superhero superman or superwoman what's even more necessary is god's grace his help jesus said in this world you will have trouble right there's gonna be tough times there's gonna be afflictions there's gonna be these struggles that are that seem to almost break us but he said but take heart because i've worked i have overcome the world and so in this moment in this struggle my invitation to you be comfortable with being uncomfortable be okay with leaning into the struggle knowing that you're not in this alone god is with you and he is doing something in you he's doing something in this struggle that maybe he couldn't even do without this struggle he's strengthening your wings so that by his grace you can fly to him from us here to ascension presents my newest father mike god bless [Music] you

Channel: Ascension Presents

Views: 161,962

Keywords: Fr. Mike, Fr. Mike Schmitz, Ascension Presents, Ascension, Ascension Youtube, Ascension Press, Father Mike Schmitz, Fr. Mike advice, Father Mike advice, fr. mike schmidt, do hard things, struggling, struggles, redemptive suffering, recovering from sin, God’s grace, grace of God, you are not alone

Id: i_w7LUV0xaM

Length: 7min 56sec (476 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 30 2020