It’s hard to keep pressing forward when we don’t see results.

In my struggles with anxiety, there have been so many times when I would be in the middle of a panic, feeling the symptoms and I would proclaim a verse, or I would step away from the situation, run to a quiet place and speak the verse out loud in “battle mode” –but nothing changed. The symptoms remained, the thoughts didn’t stop like I wanted them to.

Why, God? Isn’t this supposed to work? I would get frustrated.

I am now starting to see what is on the other side of pressing through and not giving up, even when I don’t see quick results.

Even though it didn’t seem like proclaiming those verses “worked” in those moments, there was something happening –I just couldn’t see.

The Word was beginning to take root, it was beginning to grow, and it took some time for it to grow within me, to become part of me, to be given the opportunity to be made real to me. Things don’t grow instantly.

And then all of a sudden, somewhere, somehow in the journey of pressing forward, it’s happening, it’s working. Suddenly I look again and something is changed.

Breakthrough.

But there is something to pressing onward even when we don’t see the results we’d like to see in the moment. If everything we worked for was quick and easy, how would we build endurance? How would we build strength?

In the pressing forward, in the hardship, in the trusting –something is growing to life.

Things aren’t always as they seem in the moment. It’s in the journey ahead, the pressing forward, the obedience without question, it’s in the transformation that leads to breakthrough.

On a side note: I have seen within my own life what happens as the result of disobedience, and I have seen what happens as the result of obedience. I feel like the Lord has given me a closer look at what those results look like. Why He leads us to a certain action, let’s say –to go pray for someone or read a certain verse to a person, and we didn’t, well, then He will get someone else to do it. But when He leads us to a certain action, perhaps to share a verse with someone and we really don’t know the reason why, but we do it…. well He’s shown me later more in depth, the reason why that was to be and how it all played in, after being obedient. What a blessing for Him to let me see further into this so that I have more understanding!

Seeing this gives me so much hope for what’s ahead, for more areas of my life that I’m not seeing the results that I’d like to see. A reminder to not be discouraged! What could happen if I don’t give up, if I keep believing, if I keep going… only God knows, but I think He’s showing me that when I do my part, then He will do His.

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” – Galatians 6:9

–Heather