I’ve come to hate the phrase “struggled in my faith”. In case you’re unfamiliar with this, it’s used when people, typically at youth camp, come to a revelation that having a dynamic relationship with Jesus is hard stuff and not going the way they thought it would and they feel badly about not being the best Christian they can be. . .Lighten up.

All snark aside, I hate that phrase. I hate it because your faith is supposed to be hard. That’s why it’s called “faith”. If it were supposed to be easy, it’d be called . . .uh. . .something else.

As Christians, we know the end of the story. We know that sin will eventually be defeated, death will not win, pain will cease, and tears will not come.  We know this. In our hearts and in our heads, we know this. There’s just one problem —

We’re not there, yet.

We live in the shadow of the fall. We are a redeemed soul living in an unredeemed body. We are still susceptible to bad days, headaches, loss, hurt, jealousy, death, and war. Bad things still happen. We still make silly choices even when we know the right ones to make. There’s still the internal struggle of being human and being made righteous.

Our faith IS a struggle. We attempt to make a really big God fit into our small, finite, human understanding. That is tantamount to squeezing a horse into a pair of skinny jeans. I’ve never done that but it sounds really difficult. Our faith is a struggle because growing pains are real, and not just for kids who are growing taller. As we grow to be more like Christ and less like ourselves, we (or I, at least) experience growing pains.

I confess I don’t always behave like a model Christian, much less a minister. Some days, I don’t want to read my Bible. Or even just be nice to people who are rude to me. Some days, I really don’t do a good job . . . at anything! But some days, I do alright. . .hence the struggle.

So, if I may, Christians who are living your lives day-to-day believing in the God who is even when He doesn’t make sense or when the world is imploding around you — it’s OK to struggle. It’s OK to not understand. It’s OK to have “bad” days.
It’s just not OK to stay there.

Keep fighting. Keep pushing. And keep struggling.