Biblical Resilience: The Unexpected Fruit of Living God’s Way

This livestream almost didn’t happen. Our summer turned our world upside down, and I came home weeks behind on everything, including our monthly live for our Bible Health subscribers. But once we settled in, a deep peace came over me, and God put one word on my heart: resilience. The article below is the fuller story. (Watch the replay here).

Dr. Z here…

This summer our family walked through a season we never would have chosen.

And in the middle of it, God showed me a benefit of this Bible Health lifestyle that I never saw coming in 23 years of living it. Not more energy or better sleep or fewer sick days, though we’re grateful for all of those.

Resilience.

Biblical resilience is the God-given capacity to remain rooted, faithful, obedient, and hopeful when life takes a turn you never would have chosen.

It’s not pretending everything is okay, and it’s not suppressing grief or gritting your teeth until the storm passes. It’s knowing where to stand when everything around you feels unstable.

It’s also not invulnerability. It is faithfulness in the middle of vulnerability.

And that may be one of the most unexpected fruits of Bible Health.

We started this journey wanting to become healthier, thinking we were doing this to better serve God and to get our lives in order.

I did not realize that, somewhere along the way, God was also teaching us how to stand.

This summer, we found out just how much those guardrails mattered.

Here’s the story…

“I felt the Holy Spirit tug me after seeing a video of Dr. Z and feel like this is the path I am supposed to take. I said to myself, I want what they have.”

— Mary O.

In April we drove to Michigan to celebrate Easter with Mama Z’s family because, quite frankly, we’re not sure how many more Easters we’ll have with her dad.

We introduced you to Papa’s story here:

He’s 76 and living with frontotemporal dementia, a fast-moving form of the disease that takes speech, swallowing, and personality. One of the first things it takes is empathy, the very thing that defined more than 50 years of marriage to Mama Z’s mom, Mimi.

When the school year ended, we went back for our normal two-week summer visit. Papa had been fighting a bad cough for weeks. The doctor had given him antibiotics and sent him home, but the cough kept getting worse, and within days of our arrival we were telling Mimi, “He has to go to the hospital.”

He fought it. That’s what this dementia does. It pulls a grown man back into a kind of adolescence, non-compliant and rebellious. At the hospital he became a flight risk. At one point it took five people to keep this big old football player in his bed long enough to treat him, because by then he was septic, with pneumonia and congestive heart failure on top of it.

He spent two weeks in that hospital, then a rehab center. He went from a cane to a walker to a wheelchair. And a doctor said something to Mimi that she can’t unhear: “He won’t go back to where he was.”

Our two-week trip became five and a half weeks. Mimi suddenly found herself making decisions she never imagined making: hospital stays, rehab, home care, medical equipment, memory care. She’s 76 years old, watching dementia change the love of her life.

She was overwhelmed. Who wouldn’t be? Our family needed to help.

And by God’s grace, we could.

The show must go on, right?

While in the midst of the chaos, we were able to sneak away with the family to get Esther’s graduation photos taken at the local gardens. Mimi (far left) and her sister-in-law Gail (far right) tagged along, which ended up being a wonderful reprieve for two hours. Sometimes resilience looks like showing up tired, finding joy in the middle of the hard, and doing the next faithful thing.

I was completely out of our environment. No regular workout routine. Seven children with us. A ministry and online businesses that still needed attention. Yard work, housework, insurance calls, hospital visits, and end-of-life conversations, all at once.

But we didn’t abandon the way we live.

We weren’t running through fast-food drive-throughs. We weren’t eating things we normally avoid, because cheating isn’t part of our life. We weren’t recklessly spending money. Our marriage didn’t buckle. Our kids didn’t fall apart. Our health held.

We’re not special. This just isn’t a diet or a program we follow when life is convenient. It’s our lifestyle, and it travels with us.

One day, while preparing to teach our Inner Circle class during our Metabolic Makeover series, we felt the Lord impress on me: “I am preserving you.”

The disciplines we’d built over 23 years, the food choices, the finances, the family rhythms, the prayer, had become guardrails. The crisis hit one area of our lives, and the guardrails kept it from taking down every other area.

Think about how often it goes the other way. A family walks through a crisis and comes home with new debt, new weight, a strained marriage, and a business on fire. That’s no criticism of anyone, just evidence of a hard truth: you are only as strong as your weakest link.

“I am preserving you.”

Because the guardrails held, we were healthy enough, grounded enough, and present enough to serve. Paul told Timothy to “be prepared in season and out of season,” and this was our out-of-season moment.

“Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.” — 2 Timothy 4:2

We helped with the yard, the house, the insurance, the wheelchair ramp, the hospital bed, the in-home care team, and the memory care conversations. We stayed until things were set in place.

That’s when I finally had a name for what God had been building.

Biblical resilience isn’t a church face, suppressed grief, or religious phrases repeated while your heart is breaking. It’s the God-given capacity to remain rooted, faithful, obedient, and hopeful while you walk through something you never would have chosen.

Paul shows us exactly how it develops:

“We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” — Romans 5:3-5

Notice the progression. The trial itself is never the fruit. The fruit is perseverance, then character, then a hope that cannot disappoint you, because it rests on the love of God rather than on circumstances working out the way you planned.

And here’s the part I had to experience that’s not in the Bible…

The trial does the producing, but your preparation decides what the trial finds when it arrives. Pressed against a fortified life, suffering produces perseverance, character, and hope. Pressed against an unguarded life, it mostly produces damage.

When the disciplines are already in place before the storm, you stay strong enough to serve others instead of watching every area of your life crumble at once.

Now let me tell you the part of this story that happened before Michigan, because without it, I couldn’t have served anyone.

There’s a situation in our family that has weighed on me for a long time. Some of it I’m not ready to share, because we’re still living that chapter. But here’s what I can tell you: my tendency in a trial is not to blame God. It’s to blame myself.

I felt responsible. I kept apologizing. And one phrase kept coming out of my mouth, over and over, for the past year:

• “I don’t know.”

• “I don’t know what to do.”

• “I don’t understand.”

• “I don’t see a way forward.”

I said it so often that it became ingrained in my soul.

I was confessing helplessness, and eventually I believed it.

That confession carried me into sleepless nights, anxiety, and the edge of depression.

Then I felt the Holy Spirit correct me, plainly: stop saying that.

The situation didn’t change. My confession did. Instead of “I don’t know,” I began saying,

• “God knows.”

• “I’ll know in His season.”

• “He is preparing me.”'

• “I’m figuring this out.”

That sounds small. It wasn’t. As my words changed, my faith rose. My confidence returned. The sleepless nights faded. The panic lifted. I even stopped saying “I don’t know” to our kids.

When one of our seven asks me a question I can’t answer, I don’t say “I don’t know.” I say, “Good question. Let’s look it up!”

Jesus said that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34). Our words are a window into what we actually believe.

• “I’m fat.”

• “I can’t afford it.”

• “I always mess things up.”

• “My body is broken.”

• “My marriage will never change.”

When you repeat these types of things, you’re literally carving ruts in your mind and then living in them.

This is why renewing the mind is foundational to health.

You can replace every toxic product in your home, eat clean, exercise, and take the right supplements, but if you’re speaking death over your life, those changes will only take you so far.

That’s the heart of our recent Bible Health Affirmation Series.

Here’s the point: I plugged the hole in my own cup months before Michigan. So when Mama Z’s family needed us, my cup had something to overflow.

“I’m going through an extremely difficult health situation... the affirmations brought me to tears.”

— Lynne M

On the long drive home after five weeks of caregiving, the kids found this sign at Buc-ee’s, and it felt like a note from God. Your family doesn’t have to look perfect or have an easy story to be beautiful.

You can’t build a storm shelter in a storm. The disciplines you establish today decide how you stand tomorrow. Start with these three.

1. Change your confession. Bring the phrase you keep repeating before the Lord and replace it with words that agree with His Word. Read Scripture, pray it, speak it, obey it. Resilience begins here, because this is where belief is formed.

2. Set your non-negotiables. For our family, some things are simply settled. I haven’t knowingly eaten white sugar in 23 years. Our children have never had a soda or eaten at McDonald’s. We make our own version or find a healthier swap, and those practical decisions matter most when finances are tight. None of this is about perfection or condemnation. These are boundaries that protect your family before temptation or crisis shows up.

We cover ours here:

Then apply the same principle to your finances, your work, and your emotional life. Decide in advance.

3. Stay with your people. The easiest thing to do when you’re struggling is to isolate, and it’s the most dangerous. You don’t need twenty people knowing every detail of your life. You need a few. Mama Z is my person. My pastor is a close friend. The men in the small group I lead each week are men I can share my heart with. Find your people before you need them.

When these areas are strengthened together, an attack on one doesn’t become a collapse of all. That’s building your house on the rock.

We’re still in the middle of our story, and there are parts I’m not ready to tell. That’s okay.

When you’re walking through something, you don’t owe every person every detail. Protect the process while God is working, and let a few trusted people pray with you.

But when the victory comes, and it may look like healing, or like peace in an unchanged situation, or simply like a stronger marriage and a closer family in the middle of the fight, don’t waste it.

Your testimony may become the word of encouragement that carries someone else through the same valley.

God has already given us a measure of victory. It began the day my confession changed.

So let me ask you what I’ve been asking myself.

• What are you speaking over your life right now?

• What are you building today that will carry you tomorrow?

• And what have you been repeatedly saying that God may be asking you to stop saying?

For me, it was “I don’t know.”

Maybe yours is “I can’t,” or “I’m not enough,” or “Nothing will ever change.”

Bring it to the Lord, and ask Him to replace it with words that agree with His promises.

The goal is not to deny the storm. The goal is to become the kind of person who knows where to stand when it comes.

That is Biblical resilience, the unexpected fruit of living God’s way. And it’s part of the abundant life Jesus came to give us.

Bible Health is about far more than what you eat or the products you use. It’s about learning to live the abundant life God designed for you, growing stronger spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, occupationally, and socially.

As a paid subscriber, each week you will receive Scripture-first teaching and a practical Bible Health Swap to help you put what you are learning into action. No information overload. No chasing the latest health trend. Just Biblical truth and practical steps you can actually use in your life and with your family.

And the moment you join, you unlock the Bible Health Vault, including:

• Your complete 30-Day Bible Health Blueprint

• Four Bible Health eBooks

• Bible Health Swaps, recipes, printables, guides, challenges, and practical resources

• Our growing library of members-only teachings

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• Replays and resources you can return to whenever you need them

You do not have to change everything at once.

Renew your mind. Take the next right step. Then keep building, week after week, in all seven areas of your life. Give us one year and your entire life will change…

Learn more about the 52-Week Transformation Journey here.

Or, become a paid subscriber and begin your Bible Health Transformation Journey today!

As always, our hope and prayer is that you experience the abundant life.

~ Dr. Z & Mama Z

P.S. If this word met you in the middle of your own hard season, would you share it with someone who needs it today? Your support helps us keep creating Scripture-first Bible Health content and allows us to bless families who need this encouragement in Christ. :)

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