My grandson Jackson got a little sick last week. His mom took him to the doctor who told us he had a touch of bronchitis. He prescribed some medicine and they came home. Jackson was telling someone about going to the doctor and he told them he had “wrong-chitis,” but he had taken some medicine and now he has “right-chitis!”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just take a pill and everything wrong in our lives would become right? Now that would be a magic pill.

The reality we know is that to turn something wrong into something right takes more than a little medicine, we need a lot of hard work and the power of the Holy Spirit to make it right. And even then opposition may be so strong that the right struggles to come out on top.

Spiritual work is hard work. Satan is more than happy to let us go about being good neighbors and nice people as long as we don’t introduce Jesus. Once we decide to go about doing real spiritual work Satan will work overtime to stop it. So we need to pray and we need to trust the Lord. Endure hard times, persevere through the difficulties. The kingdom is worth it. The gospel is worth it. Remember this Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, “God will not have His work made manifest by cowards.”