A few months ago, I met the man who created this song. Since then, it has become one of my favorite songs. I listen to it often!

The message of I Will Thrive is about far more than simply surviving hardship. It is about agency, faith, repentance, and maximizing improvement. And it is about the power to decide who and what we will become in the midst of opposition.

Life was never intended to be comfortable or free from struggle. “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” (2 Nephi 2:11). Pressure, temptation, disappointment, and failure are not merely obstacles to endure; they are the circumstances in which character is forged. We cannot always choose what happens to us, but we can choose what we become because of it.

The most difficult battle described in the song is therefore not against the world, but within ourselves. The emotional mind negotiates with sin, old demons return again and again, defensiveness and anger rises, and retaliation becomes tempting. Yet real strength is found in refusing to surrender ourselves to those forces. Christ taught us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us (Matthew 5:44). There is tremendous spiritual power in refusing to become the thing that wounded us. Every time we govern anger, resist temptation, forgive instead of retaliate, or rise again after failure, we exercise the very agency God gave us to become something greater.

That is what makes the declaration “I will thrive. I won’t just survive” so powerful. Christ did not come merely to help us endure life; He came that we “might have life” and “have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). The struggles and battles of mortality can become instruments of transformation when we give ourselves to Him. Through faith in Christ, we can do more than merely survive—we can thrive.