Discovering and living out your purpose is essential to fulfilling your destiny in God and making impact in the world.  But we must be real…Living on purpose takes work! 

I have been inspired by reading a book entitled, Do The Work by Steven Pressfield.  The author does an excellent job of identifying a key villain when it comes to fulfilling your purpose. That villain is resistance.

  I love how Pressfield captures this struggle so vividly: “On the field of the Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon” [1]

The truth is that many good ideas get stopped by it.  If execution is the fuel for fulfilling purpose, then resistance is the siphoning agent that will cause you to lose momentum and run out of fuel. So how can we effectively overcome the dragon called resistance that never really goes away?  You must know its characteristics.

The Characteristics of Resistance

Pressfield lays out the characteristics right here:

• Resistance is Invisible: “Resistance cannot be seen, heard, touched, or smelled. But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential ” [2]

• Resistance is Insidious: “Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that’s what it takes to deceive you . “ [3]

• Resistance is impersonal: “Resistance is not out to get you personally. It doesn’t know who you are and doesn’t care. Resistance is a force of nature. It acts objectively.” [4]

• Resistance is infallible: “Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North – meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing”[5]
• Resistance is Universal: “We’re wrong if we think we’re the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance” [6]

• Resistance Never Sleeps: “Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five…In other words, fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought a new every day “[7]

• Resistance Plays for Keeps: “Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill. Its target is the epicenter of our being: our genius, our soul, the unique and priceless gift we were put on this earth to give and that no one else has but us. Resistance means business. When we fight it, we are in a war to the death” [8]

The Apostle Paul experienced resistance in many respects as he embraced his apostolic commission and fulfilled his purpose.  But he was committed to overcoming resistance to the end.  He said it best: “ I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” ( Philippians 3:14, NASB). 

What kind of resistance are you experiencing as you strive to make purposeful moves to pursue your great?

[1] Pressfield, Steven, & Godin, S. (2015). Do the Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way. Black Irish Entertainment LLC.

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.