Sometimes Your Biggest Battle is You.

So over spring break I have been catching up on some movies, and one of the movies I just watched was Creed. For those of you who don't know it's the latest Rocky film in which Rocky trains his former competitors son to be a boxer. The movie itself is really great and super inspirtational and I really enjoyed it, but this isn't a movie review.

But what I do want to talk about in the movie was the message I really latched onto throughout the whole movie. About mid-way through there is a scene where Rocky has his young prodige, Donnie, shadow box himself in front of a mirror. And he tells him that the greatest fighter he will ever face is himself.

Later on, in the final giant match at the end of the film, Donnie is struggling and about to go down and Rocky looks at him and tells him that he isn't fighting his opponent, he is fighting himself and the other guy is just in the way.

I think there is alot of truth to that statement. If we imagine Donnie's opponent in the film as many of the problems we face in life, we see those problems as what is holding us back, when in reality the real opponent we have to beat is ourselves, and once we do that we can defeat our problems.

The reason I say we are truly fighting ourselves and not so much our problems is because if you really look at it that's what we are all doing. Who hasn't looked in the mirror and thought that they aren't pretty enough, or talented enough, or smart enough? And the list could go on, when problems come up we often, whether we realize it or not, have already given up before we have even begun; simply because of the inner battles we are fighting with ourselves.

The thing is, life is going to beat us down sometimes, it is going to throw us curves. But we need to be strong enough in ourselves, and our faith, to be able to stand tall through those curves and come out stronger and wiser because of them. We truly can be our greatest battle, but God doesn't want it to be that way. We should be able to stand confident knowing that we are His children and we are perfect in His eyes. So the next time we have challenges to face, hopefully we can look in the mirror and know that we have already conquered our greatest opponent... and that is the little voice inside of us that says we aren't good enough; and then turn to face our next challenge head on.