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Ten Reasons to Get Up and Stand Firm

You do not have to be a victim anymore. Get up, stand firm, and make the proper response! What you need is a game plan, a road map, that will take you from where you are now to where you need to be. The action plan you need to stand firm again is found in God's Word. The materials in the lessons are taken from Dr. Mark Flattery's book Stand Firm: What to do When Life Knocks You Down.

Reasons 4-5

Taken from Dr. Mark Flattery’s book:

Stand Firm: What to do When Life Knocks You Down

4. You must stand because God will make something good from your personal drama

More than likely you cannot see how anything good can come from your present adversity. Humanly speaking, that thought is absolutely correct. However, you are not limited to responding humanly for you have God as your friend. I encourage you to take your eyes off your problem and the subsequent depressing view of life. Instead, focus on the Answer and the resulting hope that waits for you. God will make something good from your pain if only you will let Him.

The apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans is your promise today; “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28). God is on your side and will turn all things for your good. It is an easy task for God to turn all the joys and abundance of life into your good because those items are already packaged as blessings. While we are thankful for all the blessings given to us, and we count them as gifts from God, you must realize that He will take the worst situations of life and turn them to your good. He can take your horrible, rotten, disgusting situation and find good.

Does this mean that you will get your job back? Will your spouse repent and come home? Will you be freed from disease and be healed? Well, these events can happen and certainly we would consider that as good. But if our desired outcomes are not met that does not mean that God is absent, uncaring, or uninvolved. Sometimes, we must have faith to walk with the Lord, to allow Him to break us of our stubbornness and self-reliance, and to allow Him to re-create us in His image. What this means is if you turn to the Lord then the good that you receive starts with His powerful presence in your heart and continues as he molds you into the person of God that He desires you to be.

You may not be able to see what good will come from this trial. Yet you can stand in faith and know that God will fight for you and bring good. Your reason for doing so lies solely in the fact you are standing on the promise found in God’s Word. You may not see the good, you may not feel it in your heart, and you may not experience it yet, but the good will come if you continue to love the Lord and fulfill His calling on our life. You must stand because God is not finished with you yet, and He will make something good!

5. You must stand because when you do you will be stronger for it

When life knocked you down you had your pride hurt. You were humiliated. You were defeated. Maybe you thought, This isn’t supposed to happen to me! or Everything I touch is supposed to turn to gold! or I don’t deserve this! It is true that you were punched and you were knocked down. That is the fact. If you do get back on your feet and stand with Jesus, then you will discover you will be stronger for the experience. As much as we distain adversity, we cannot discover who we truly are without a test or a trial.

You will be stronger spiritually if you align your priorities and values with Jesus during this season, then the Lord will take what was meant for evil and turn it to good.

You will be stronger spiritually if you align your priorities and values with Jesus during this season, then the Lord will take what was meant for evil and turn it to good. If you do so you will discover what matters most. The most important parts of life are not money, status, or glory. Rather, the most important parts of life are loving God and loving others. Your love for God is expressed by your unrelenting trust and wholehearted commitment to Him during the most difficult of times. Your love for others is expressed as you continue to love in spite of your surroundings and in a manner that leads others closer in their walk with the Lord.

Each time you stand after being injured becomes a foundational experience that God will use to build you to be a better person. You will become better from the experience if you learn the lessons that you were supposed to learn and make the necessary changes. Each experience can be a monument in your heart as to how life was bad, but God is good, and He led you through to a season of victory.

One day, hopefully soon, your present season of grief will end, and you will be stronger because you turned yourself over to Jesus and allowed Him to weather the storm. Then you will

be prepared the next time life tries to knock you down because you can remember the victory of the past. Your personal history will fuel you with encouragement to act rightly in your next battle because God, who was faithful in the past, is faithful today, and He will be faithful tomorrow. You must stand because you will be stronger as a result!

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