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Have you ever taken on a considerable challenge that felt impossible to tackle? Maybe you trained for a marathon. Perhaps you went back to school to finish your college degree. Set out to get healthy physically or emotionally, and had a plan in place to make it happen. The start of any journey toward change can be hard, but there is also an enthusiasm that comes at the beginning, right? Because you have the motivation and excitement of tackling this thing, you can envision what it looks like to come through on the other side. But no one talks about the middle of that journey, do they?

You feel like you’ve already put in so much time and effort to get to your goal, and yet, reaching the goal still feels so far away. That part of the change is hard! That’s when these words from the apostle Paul feel so helpful to keep in mind. Change, even good change, can be difficult. Moving toward what we know we need—what we know is good for us—doesn’t mean the process to get there is easy. Still, we are not crushed. We don’t have to be in despair. We are not abandoned. We can press on because we know, as difficult as the middle might feel, it isn’t the end of our story.

This week, work on memorizing this passage. Let it be the reminder you need on every part of your journey that change, even when it’s difficult, is worth the work.