None of us need to think hard to find something about our lives that gives us great challenge. I have often thought to give up on some things because I didn’t think I could endure. This is especially true for us when we are faced with things seemingly outside of our control.
Sometimes we make simple things harder than they need to be. Sometimes we allow hard things to make us hard. We allow incurable things to make us sick. We feel helpless when we feel like we cannot help someone overcome something.
All this happens because we want things to either change, or we want to give up and move on. But often, neither giving up nor moving on is what is best for us. We need to learn to stick with some things until we come through to the other side.
In 2 Corinthians 4:16, scripture says, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.” Paul is saying that even though things are tough, he will not give up.
Paul saw that the key to living with tough things is to understand that tough things are needed to put to death a part of our humanity that keeps us from being renewed in our spiritual being. Every time we allow something of our humanity to die, we give life to more of our spiritual being.
This is a spiritual principle. Dying to live and living to die. This will work for your good if you do not give up on the things that come at you. God has given us an amazing treasure, the Love of Christ. But this treasure is held in our earthly lives when we need to move it to our spiritual lives.
When we don’t give up on what the Lord can do for us, we learn to die more so that we may live more.
We can be challenged all around but never overcome when we don’t give up.
We can have the weight of the world come at us, but we will never be crushed when we don’t give up.
We can be wrongly persecuted and hated but we can always keep our joy and peace when we don’t give up.
We can be knocked down time and again, but we can always rise again when we don’t give up.
How can this be? When we carry the life of Christ who died to the temporal, we will live with Him. He has died for your wayward children. He has died for your sick spouse. He has died for your impossible work environment. He has died for your addiction. All this so that you may live in the glory of His victory.
You have great reason never to give up. When you give up you are saying, “I love what I’m losing more than I love what I stand to gain in Christ.” Don’t give up on that!
I know some of us face some difficult things daily and some of us seem to get no relief. But you must not give up. Learn to face your goliaths with a David-like conviction to live free of bondage to your humanity.
Use your challenges to free you from the things that hold you back. There is a bit of health in your sickness; there is a bit of patience in your impatience; there is a bit of confidence in your fear; there is a bit of control in your lack of control.
When you don’t give up, all this you may be yours because the Lord will bring you a new life that is eternally perfect. You can live this life today in an imperfect world when you decide you will not give up.
Live a Delivered Life.
Live Delivered 