The Word of God talks about striving in good ways. But we can strive in unhealthy ways too.
Here are the reasons behind that striving.
—Believing you are unworthy – this produces a driving need to win love and approval. Because you are not at peace with yourself – unaccepting of yourself – you are unable to feel the acceptance and love from others. You are driven to please people. Doing things for them to the point of burnout and even aggravation because no matter how much you try, people can never make you feel good enough.
You will also do this for God. Striving to make him love and accept you.
The root behind this is believing the lie that you need to change and be better than you are.
—Striving against the lies of condemnation – When the enemy creates a case against you with a lie, and you agree with the lie, you then have to deal with the fruit of that lie. Many times, that lie that planted itself produces baskets and baskets of fruit and you spend all your time dealing with that fruit and have no time to get to the root. Constantly striving to make the never-ending fruit go away.
There is always a root that produces the fruit. Find the root and seek healing and deliverance from that instead of deliverance from the fruit.
—-Striving to move mountains – We buy into the lie that we must pray, fast, worship, speak and declare the Word and if it’s not working then we have failed. We either become discouraged or try harder. Striving to move God, we try to lead Him instead of understanding that we are partnering with Him and sowing seeds, allowing Him to bring the harvest in due time.
Striving to lead God into doing what we want can lead to questioning if we are even in the will of God. Because even though faith moves God – manipulation doesn’t. And the moving He does doesn’t mean moving circumstances, it can mean obtaining peace while the circumstances remain unchanged.
If you are discouraged and losing hope, feeling you have done all you can do, or have a driving need to keep doing more than you are striving and not partnering. You are trying to lead instead of trusting God’s timing.
The way to overcome this is through a new perspective. Ask yourself this “Who is leading who? Who asked you, called you, and who’s will are you trying to accomplish?” When you can answer God to all these questions, and faithfully believe this, the burden and reasons behind your stiving will vanish as the burden shifts from your shoulders to His, the timing shifts from your time to His, and His will, plan, and purpose being accomplished replaces yours!
This is God’s stand, not yours. He called you, you are standing WITH HIM, not the other way around.
Standing with you,
Sheila Hollinger
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