God Says "Get Up and Keep Going!"

[Darris McNeely] Have you ever been knocked down in a struggle or a trial and find it a difficulty and a struggle to get back up on your feet? All of us have. There's a story you've probably heard about a man who came across a cocoon with a butterfly about to emerge from the cocoon. And as he watched this cocoon open and the butterfly start to come out, about halfway out, the butterfly just stopped and didn't come out any further. The man after a while watched and thought, "Well, I'll help this butterfly out." And so he took some scissors, and he cut open the cocoon - exposing it, and allowing the butterfly to fall on out. Expecting the butterfly's wings to spread out into the beautiful, glorified picture of beauty that it should be, the body was kind of swollen. The wings were shrunken, and that butterfly lived out its short life without ever coming to its full potential and its full beauty, and it died.

What the man didn't realize is that it was in the struggle of coming out of the cocoon that the fluids within the butterfly would push out into the wings, allowing it to reach its full potential. And that's the way it is with struggle, with challenges, trials that knock us down. We need those as a part of our life, and certainly as a part of our relationship with God to reach our full potential as human beings. And so it's important that we get back up. Understand that struggle and trials are a part of this life, and approach them with a vigor to overcome them and work with them and work through them to achieve our full potential.

[Steve Myers] It's part of the challenge that we face. And the apostle Peter certainly understood this. He wrote about it in 1 Peter 1:6. He says, "We greatly rejoice though now for a little while if need be you've been grieved by various trials." So we get knocked down, and yet he says we can rejoice. Well, why? He says that, "The genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ." And so we see the outcome of the struggles coming out of our cocoons that ultimately it's leading to something that is tremendous, that we can be changed. Even though we have trials and temptations we get back up, and we see the goal of those difficulties.

[Darris McNeely] Meet that challenge. Meet that struggle, and get back up when you've been knocked down. That's BT Daily. Join us next time.