A Devotional by Pastor Carl Toti
Don't Mistake Spiritual Resistance for God's Absence
August 23, 2026 | Sunday
BIG IDEA:
Resistance is not proof that God has abandoned you; it is often evidence that His Kingdom is advancing through you.
Key Scripture:
“And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”
John 1:1, 3–5 (NKJV)
REFLECTION
Every pilot learns this before they ever leave the ground: an aircraft doesn't get lift by running from the wind. It gets lift by turning straight into it. Point a plane downwind and it will taxi all day and never leave the runway. Point it into the headwind, throttle forward, and the very resistance that seems to be fighting the aircraft is what lifts it off the ground. The wind isn't the enemy of flight. It's the mechanism of it.
I think a lot of us have the theology backwards when it comes to resistance. We've been taught, without anyone ever saying it out loud, that if God is really with us, the road gets smoother, the wind dies down, and the opposition disappears. So the moment the pressure increases — the moment the marriage gets harder to fight for, the addiction gets louder before it goes quiet, the ministry assignment costs more than you budgeted for — we quietly conclude that God must have stepped back. That the resistance is proof of His absence.
Matthew 11:12 says the opposite. Jesus stands up in front of a crowd and describes the Kingdom of Heaven not as a peaceful garden stroll but as territory that is forcefully advancing and forcefully opposed at the very same time. From the days of John the Baptist — a man who was in prison, doubting, exhausted, wondering if he'd gotten it all wrong — Jesus says the Kingdom has been suffering violence and advancing by force. Those two things are not in tension. They are the same sentence. Opposition and advancement, in the Kingdom of God, travel together.
THE HEART OF IT ALL
Three promises. Life—but you may only be breathing. Liberty—but you may still be in Egypt.
Happiness—but you may still be chasing the car. Every one of them was made on parchment by men
who are dust now. But there was another document, written not in ink but in blood—and it didn't
merely declare your rights, it purchased your life.
The chase is over. The catch is here. And His name is Jesus.
ONE — THE KINGDOM HAS ENTERED HOSTILE TERRITORY
Luke 11:20 — “But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”
When Jesus cast out a demon, He wasn't performing an isolated miracle for spectacle. He was planting a flag. He was announcing that the Kingdom of God had physically crossed a border into territory the enemy considered his own. That's why the resistance showed up immediately. Occupied ground doesn't push back against someone walking past it. It pushes back against someone taking it. If your life, your home, your recovery, or your calling feels like contested ground right now, that is not a sign you've wandered outside of God's will. It's frequently a sign you've walked directly into it.
TAKEAWAY: The presence of a fight is not evidence of the absence of God — it is often the first evidence that you're standing exactly where He sent you.
TWO — RESISTANCE DOES NOT MEAN DEFEAT
2 Corinthians 4:8–9 — “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
Paul doesn't write this from a place of theory. He writes it from a place of scar tissue. Notice the pattern in every phrase: pressure, but not collapse. Confusion, but not hopelessness. Attack, but not abandonment. Being knocked down, but not knocked out. Paul is teaching us to separate two things we usually fuse together: the experience of resistance and the verdict of defeat. You can be pressed on every side and still be standing at the end of the chapter. The soldier language in 2 Timothy 2:3–4 backs this up — a good soldier expects hardship as part of the enlistment, not as a sign the mission failed. Feeling the pressure is not the same as losing the war.
TAKEAWAY: You are allowed to feel pressed without believing you are finished. The fight you're in was never meant to be the verdict — only the process.
THREE — PASSIVE FAITH CANNOT OCCUPY CONTESTED GROUND
Joshua 1:3 — “Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you, just as I promised to Moses.”
God had already promised Joshua the land. The promise was settled before a single footstep was taken. But notice the mechanism God attaches to the promise: every place the sole of your foot treads. Not every place you hope for. Not every place you pray about from a safe distance. Every place you walk on, in resistance, in faith, one step at a time. A promise from God is not a substitute for movement; it's the guarantee that your movement will not be wasted. Passive faith — faith that waits for the resistance to clear before it moves — will wait forever, because in the Kingdom, resistance is the terrain, not the exception to it.
TAKEAWAY: The ground God has promised you still has to be walked on. Waiting for the resistance to disappear will cost you the very territory He already gave you.
So here's where I want to land this with you. If you are hard pressed this week — at home, at work, in your own head at two in the morning — don't let the resistance rewrite the story. Don't let it convince you that God left the room. The wind in your face was never proof you were flying the wrong direction. Sometimes it's the very thing generating your lift. Point into it, throttle forward, and keep walking on the ground He already promised you.
Prayer
Father, I confess that I have sometimes mistaken resistance for rejection and hardship for Your absence. Forgive me for the times I stopped walking because the ground got contested. Remind me that the Kingdom advances through pressure, not around it. Where I am hard pressed today, keep me from being crushed. Where I am struck down, raise me back up. Give me the courage of a good soldier and the obedience of Joshua — willing to place my foot on ground I haven't fully seen yet, trusting that You have already gone before me. I will not retreat from what You have called advancement. In Jesus' name, amen.
ACTION & REFLECTION
☐ Where in your life right now have you interpreted resistance as a sign that God has stepped back? What would change if you saw it instead as evidence of advancement?
☐ Think of one area of “contested ground” you have been praying about but not walking on. What is one concrete step you could take this week — one place to put your foot — instead of waiting for the pressure to clear first?
☐ Read 2 Corinthians 4:8–9 again slowly. Which phrase (pressed, perplexed, persecuted, struck down) most describes what you are carrying right now? Write a one-sentence prayer that answers it with its matching “but not”.
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