Have you ever had a moment when you are really going through something that seems needless or meaningless? When we’re actually going through those moments, we wonder why God is doing something a particular way, or why it’s happening to us at all. It’s often that when we gain the perspective that only time and persevering with the Lord can bring that we actually see what He was doing. We look back and see that our struggles and our suffering was refining us and working something out within us. We were learning lessons in those moments that we couldn’t have learned if everything was at an even keel.

If you were to read the Gospels in the Bible side by side, you’d find lots of similarities throughout. Matthew, Mark, and Luke especially tend to report the same events of Christ’s ministry on earth. This especially helps us to cross-reference and gain lots of perspective on the same lessons and miracles that Jesus gave to us. And each Gospel in kind shows its own emphasis on Jesus.

But each Gospel is uniquely different, each one offering us completely new insights into the life of Jesus and offering some stories not found in the other accounts. This particular day recorded in John 2 sounds familiar, and yet is not. Here, we find Jesus in the temple during Passover and upon finding merchants and money-changers in the outer courts, He passionately cleanses the temple. In other words, He kicks the opportunistic businessmen out of the temple, clears out their animals being sold for sacrifice, and breaks up their tables and stalls to clear space for worshipers to offer sacrifices and pray.

There have been three separate times where I’ve witnessed nature and felt simultaneously so small and powerless against the greatness of God’s creation, and comforted with the fact that the same Mastermind of this same landscape thought that I was important enough to include in His design. The first was at the foot of the colossal horseshoe at the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. The second was stepping out of the airport in Cape Town to see the three mountain peaks that makeup that city’s skyline: Devil’s Peak, Table Mountain, and Lion’s Head. The third was this weekend, from the Fred W. Symmes Chapel in Camp Greenville, South Carolina.

So this whole time, we’ve been talking about the fig tree, and how the Lord never puts anything to waste in the scriptures. Everything thas a Kingdom-minded meaning. What might seem random to us, upon pressing deeper, turns out to have a much deeper meaning. What I think is so unique in Mark 11, is that we get to see one of those random, unassuming parts of scripture become the practical application in just a few short verses.

The true key to real success in our health, work, schooling, relationships– you name it– is nurturing our souls by giving them over to our Savior each and everyday. This key verse challenges us and reveals to us that a person who meditates in Jesus daily will have a life removed from shame, sadness, and fears. When we submit to God, we find true purpose, clarity, and ultimate joy. This is the challenge we wake up to each and every morning. The way we face this challenge we have in our souls influences every other part of our life.

What is the first thing you think when you walk into the gym? Is it “I’m incapable,” or “I’m not fit at all compared to all these other people?” Do you compare yourself to everyone else in the room or feed yourself unmotivating lies? The same exhaustion and self-deprecation that follow us around in life tends to follow us into the gym too, and most times, they tend to scream even louder. The enemy loves to get ahold of our insecurities and inflate them like a balloon as he sees us struggle, being afraid of the gym doors or the thought of even stepping on a treadmill. These are moments that the devil lives for, but also moments that do not have to be our reality.

One of my biggest struggles that God has grown me in over the years is learning to have a healthy outlook on my body. As a child, I was a bigger kid and I was very insecure about my weight. When I went to middle school I thinned out very quickly and my mindset from then on was “I have to stay this way”. Since then I have been pretty consistent in the gym all of high school and college. My main struggle has been having a healthy outlook about going to the gym and being healthy as well as controlling the number on the scale. It is a hard but vital struggle to learn to see your health as God sees it.