And happy Tuesday, sweet sister. I uh want to just jump right into our topic of conversation over being strong in the Lord. You don't have to do this in self-reliance, you don't have to do it in your own strength. And there is that place of you have to recondition yourself. You know, it's that balance of relying upon the Lord and the work of the Holy Spirit. But when it comes to physical manifestations of our actions, that's on us. And so what I want to remind you today, as I just this is, I'm going to issue a bit of a challenge to you today to up level your thinking and your actions. We talked yesterday about agency, things that are in my control, things that are not in my control. And we surrender and relinquish everything to God. But what are the things that are in my control? When it comes to my thoughts, that's in my control. And how am I managing and governing my thoughts, my thought life? Am I taking my thoughts captive? Am I allowing my thoughts to run rampant? The negative thoughts. This is such a work. And especially when you're just starting out, maybe this is new to you and you haven't been managing your thought life well. I remember when this, honestly, I didn't, I didn't know I could. I didn't know my thoughts were my responsibility. We don't know what we don't know. I didn't understand how to take my thoughts captive. Now I read that scripture, so not that I didn't read that scripture. It was perplexing to me. There was a couple of things. I didn't understand who I was in Jesus. I didn't understand my identity. The enemy was doing a real number on me. I lived in some trauma and triggers and just played really, really small. And then to step out of that requires a massive amount of courage. And so today, as we're just kind of on the cusp of this resilience, and I believe that we're walking into turbulent times. There's a lot of uncertainty. But of the things that we can control are our thoughts and our actions. And so, in this sanctifying process, becoming more like Jesus, letting our light shine before men, becoming evolving and embracing everything that God wants for you in your life in a way that honors Him, that you're glorifying Him with your life, with your works, with your service. And it starts with a right relationship with Him. And it starts with an identity and alignment in your identity. And as I was thinking about that this morning, our scripture is 2 Timothy 1.7. For God, the Spirit of God, the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline. So we're called to this the spirit inside of us gives us power. Bam. Hello? I want that. That's what I want. I want that power. It gives us love. I want that too. And self-discipline. Part of you, this is where we're going to end today. Part of you moving forward in your life is overcoming the bad habits. And this will be till the day we die. This is like part of the sanctifying process. But we don't have to do it on our own. Call upon the work of the Holy Spirit inside of you. But here's the thing: the Holy Spirit's not going to put down the ice cream cone at 12 o'clock at night. The Holy Spirit's not going to knock it out of your hand. There's that self-discipline piece. The Holy Spirit's not going to make you get up and go do your exercises because you need to. There's that self-discipline piece. And that's the part I want to speak to right now. Number one, tap into the Holy Spirit that's inside of you. Pray, ask God to help you. He will. Number two, honor the struggle as you're activating new levels of self-discipline. Honor the struggle. Sit in the uncomfortable place of what's new for you and the bad habits that you're breaking. You have conditioned your body, your central nervous system, your mind, maybe your blood sugar levels, to act in certain ways, to do certain things. And when it comes time to change, too many people quit and they give up because it's hard. And it's like that is like the opposite of strength and dignity, one of noble character. This is oftentimes a work in our character. And then we can sometimes go to the flip side. Oh my gosh, I'm sucked, I'm terrible, I've been doing this for so long, I'll never change. Like this victim mode. And here's what I'm going to challenge you today is that in the areas of your life that you are making changes, that you approach it from a healthy perspective. And for you to know that as you are making changes in your life and up leveling your physical health, your emotional health, your mental health, your spiritual health, that it requires a place of hard. Honor it. Sit in it. Sit in that place because it's actually going to get easier the more you do it, and you're going to be proud of yourself. You're going to unlock that potential that's inside of you. But you can't quit. You can't keep quitting. And because you might fall off once or twice doesn't mean that you failed. It's part of the process. But get yourself right back up. That's resilience right there. Get yourself back up. Get back on track. Get back on the wagon. That rebound time, make it quicker, quicker, quicker, quicker. Whatever your struggle is. I'll just leave you with a struggle that I have noticed in my life and I've praise God, I'm gaining victory over it. Is I struggle with unforgiveness. I've been really vulnerable about this with you guys. Very transparent. And you know what? If I sat in my victim mentality, it comes from a place of self-protectiveness. It comes from a place of a little bit of all or nothing too, of being in trauma and abuse. And then the more I walked, started to walk into some freedom, it was like, what? Oh my gosh. And so I can hold on to the older version of myself, held on to unforgiveness. And man, the Lord just helped to illuminate that in my life. And I realized how that really did cause bitterness. And I love cannot be cultivated in that when I allow that in my life. And life is too short. And that is certainly not what the Father has done for me. Like I just had this whole oh shift that I'm grateful for. God just redeemed me out of that. And now when my natural man goes to that, my spirit man says, Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You know, but in that process of learning how to let things go where I've been very, very wronged, was hard. It's like, are you kidding me? Oh, like I just, you know, I felt indign indignant of some things, some things where I was just treated wrong. And the Lord's like, mm-mm, no, that's not what I'm calling you to. So anyway, I just, it's not always self-discipline, isn't always in the um physical realm. There's also that emotional place. And so, what is it for you? What is it for you to grow in that area of self-discipline that you can release to the spirit and you can make some strides in because you are sitting in it, you're honoring the heart, you're you're focusing on the character of God and what is He doing inside of you to help you become more like Jesus Christ. This got a little long. I would love to know how it blessed you. Uh, you can um maybe go to the Facebook group and and and let us know how did this maybe challenge you? This was meant to challenge you. As a coach, I'm here to encourage you, but I'm also here to challenge you to evolve and become more like Jesus.