Well, Lula started obedience lessons yesterday. While she’s super smart and utterly adorable, she needed to learn how not to jump up on people. Not everyone is as smitten with her as I am. The UPS man might be proof.

I’ll spare you all the details { email me if you want them }, but suffice it to say that Davey at All Dogs Unleashed is a magician. We had planned to do three in-home lessons, but Davey proudly pronounced her “Two Lesson Lula” and she will actually complete everything in just two visits. I told you Davey was magic. Of course, truth be told, Davey largely trained me. I’m no better with Lula than I was with my own two kids. When they are so stinkin’ cute, it is hard to make them mind.

My Lula lesson yesterday got me to thinking. I want to be Lula and conquer all of life’s challenges in two lessons. One and done. Fast and easy. No pain and quick gain. I don’t want the struggle or the frustration. And heaven knows I don’t want to wait. And if I’m honest, I don’t really want to work all that hard either. Is anyone with me on this?

But here’s what I know and what God has proven to me time and time again: Every struggle strengthens my spiritual muscle. 

So if I know that, then why do I resist the struggle? Don’t I want my faith to be stronger? Why is my response to any hardship always to beg God to make it go away and fast?

While I remind myself, let me also encourage you, too. The troubles of today are the training of our faith for tomorrow. 

And so…  “For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” { Ephesians 3:16-21 }

May our struggles strengthen our faith so we will know Him and make Him known,