The reason trying harder isn't working

Have you ever woken up in the morning and decided today was the day you’d finally get it right?

Maybe it was a relationship where the same argument keeps surfacing. A habit you’ve been chipping away at for years. A fear that still has a hold on you, no matter how many times you’ve talked yourself through it.

You set your jaw. You try harder. And for a while, maybe it even works. But sooner or later, the old version of you shows up again - a bit tired, a bit frayed, but exactly the same.

I’ve been there. I think most of us have.

In today’s devotional, I wanted to talk about something I think a lot of us are getting subtly wrong. We’ve been working far too hard at something we were never supposed to carry alone - and the cost of that has been quietly convincing us that we’re somehow disqualified.

So I went back to a promise in Ezekiel 36 - one that came centuries before Pentecost - and it stopped me in my tracks. God doesn’t say try harder. He doesn’t say sort yourself out. He says: I will give you a new heart. I will put my spirit in you.

That’s not self-improvement. That’s transformation.

The difference between the old Peter and the new Peter wasn’t willpower. It was whose power.

And that changes everything.

I think today’s five-minute video might be one of the most practically useful ones I’ve put out in this series. If you’ve been exhausted from trying to change in your own strength, this one’s for you.

👉 Watch it here:

See you tomorrow.

Rob

Read this week’s devotionals here - https://open.substack.com/pub/battledrilldevotional/p/you-might-already-be-a-leader-heres?r=643q6o&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true