The irony of asking God to root us and ground us in Him and make us fruitful is this, when He begins to answer our prayer, we complain because the strain is too hard.

The typical view of the Christian life is that it means being delivered from all adversity.  But it actually means being delivered IN adversity, which is something very different. . .

God never gives us strength for tomorrow, or for the next hour, but only for the strain of the moment.  Our temptation is to face adversities from the standpoint of our own common sense.  But a saint can “be of good cheer” even when seemingly defeated by adversities, because victory is absurdly impossible to everyone, except God.

No strain, no gain.

If you think about it . . . the amount of stress and strain on a pear tree, wind, rain, freezing cold, drought, blazing heat and so on, are the very things that make the tree strong and the fruit sweetest.  The fruit tree does not strain to make fruit, nor does it question pruning, it’s invigorated by stress and strains to reach up further and reach down deeper, to be nourished by the One who created it, and in return, sweet fruit is produced–miraculously.  God never promised no strain, but He did promise His strength as well as His fruit.