You Are Not Your Struggle - A Message for 2026

“For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again.” — Proverbs 24:16

As someone who’s spent over twenty years researching how people grow spiritually, I can tell you with absolute confidence: Struggles don’t derail people, stories do. The story you tell yourself about your struggle is the thing that either destroys you or frees you. Here’s what I mean.

The Story Satan Tells

I read every one of your messages you sent, and read about your distractions, your exhaustion, your addictions, your wandering kids, your loneliness, your inconsistent prayer life, your ADHD, your forgotten Bible readings, your relapses, your “I should be better by now” talk.

But here’s what hit me hardest: You weren’t just describing a struggle. Some of you were describing the identity you have built out of your struggle. You weren’t just saying “I struggle with keeping a consistent prayer time,” you were saying, “I am terrible at prayer.” You weren’t just saying, “I struggle with a wandering mind during my quiet time,” you were saying, “I am not in love with God enough.”

Struggles with adult children who have wandered away from God became, “I am a terrible parent.” And struggling with repeated sin became, “I am unable to change. I have blown it too many times.”

But that’s not Jesus talking. That’s shame, discouragement, and spiritual inertia masquerading as self-awareness. That’s the enemy talking, and these are his favorite lies. If there’s one thing your emails this month made crystal clear, it’s this: far too many of us are defining ourselves by our spiritual struggles—by the enemy’s lies. That’s the internal, constant, universal story. It’s the one that smothers any hope of forward motion. But it is not the story God tells about you. 

The Story God Tells

The story God tells is a story of hope and of forward motion. It’s a story that says your struggles don’t disqualify you. Your doubt doesn’t define you. Your relapse doesn’t represent you. Your weakness doesn’t write your ending. In fact, if you listen through your struggle, God is telling you exactly where He is working next.

Did you relapse into sin? “Get up again!” Have you wandered away from home? “Come home again!” Are you exhausted at the end of your strength? “Lean on Me again!” Are you drowning in expectations? “Be still with Me again!” However many times you mess up: “My mercy is new again!”

In your exhaustion God is inviting you to rest in Him instead of performing for Him. In your sin battle He is pulling you closer to His strength, not your willpower. In your family pain? He is calling you to persistent prayer, not parental shame. In your loneliness He’s reminding you that belonging in His kingdom is never based on how many people are in your house. In your ADHD God is teaching you persistence rooted in grace, not guilt-driven perfection.

The righteous aren’t righteous because they never fell in the first place. The righteous are those who refuse to turn their struggles into their identity and are determined to let God write their story, and not the enemy.

So Here’s What I’m Asking You to Do Before 2026 Starts

Pick one struggle you’ve been using as your identity and rename it. Then reply to this email and tell me about it. It only has to be one sentence like this:

“This used to define me. It doesn’t anymore. In 2026 I’m letting God write a new story here.”

I’ll read them. I’ll pray over them—by name.

And I’m building our entire early-2026 Spiritually Fit content around the very areas you told me you’re fighting through. Because if there’s one thing I know from the data—and from my own life—it’s this: You rise the moment you stop identifying yourself by the thing that knocked you down.

And 2026? This is your rise-again year.

Grateful for you,

P.S. If you have a comment or prayer request, contact me here: or call me and leave a message at 1-800-811-2387. And be sure to join me tomorrow through Friday on our new podcast Spiritually Fit Today.