Don’t Give Up

It just spilled out: “I’d really like to just quit.”

Longtime friendships are funny like that — deep, honest conversation just flows, even if you haven’t seen each other in a year and you’re sitting in a fall festival surrounded by crowds and shouting children eating corndogs.

“Everything’s good. I mean, objectively I could sit here and make you a list of how and why everything’s good. Church is good. Absolutely no complaints. Home is good. Great, really. Nothing’s bad, per se. I just lack all motivation. This season of testing has been hard — I feel like God has been convicting me of so many inner things, so much subtle selfishness. It feels overwhelming. And the book thing? It’s been 4 1/2 years of writing and pitching and praying and waiting. I’m only doing it because God so clearly told me to. But does the world really need another book by a middle-class 30-something white girl?” 

She smiles, and manages to do that thing she does perfectly — identify completely and yet challenge wisely. She herself had just “quit” in a sense. She made the decision to end her online presence in order to fully devote herself to her family and in-person ministry. I basically wanted to just copy her. That sounds heavenly, honestly. Shut the thing down. Walk away.

But her thing was different from my thing, and her “obey God” thing is different from my “obey God” thing. Deep down, I knew that. She did too. So she didn’t just let me copy her (aren’t we all tempted to just encourage people to copy us because it helps validate our own choices?!) but instead she asks probing questions that help me identify the deeper issue.

I leave encouraged, not with some voice-from-heaven moment or life-altering revelation, but just deeply encouraged in my heart. Heard. And inspired. I haven’t decided whether or not to quit, but I feel hope. One thing I do know: Decisions made from desolation never honor God. Even in discouraging circumstances, decisions must flow from a heart-place of consolation. Hope-filled decisions reflect the glory, power, and purposes of God.

Hopeless decisions dishonor the God of hope.

The next day we make the 5-hour drive to our next destination. Along the way, Jeff hands me his phone: “Listen to this.” 

I have no idea what to expect. A sermon? A song? I look at the screen, it’s a voicemail from a pastor-friend we worked with a dozen years ago. We haven’t seen him in ages. But his familiar voice rings clear on the message, and he explains that during prayer, the Lord brought us very strongly to His mind. He then shared what he sensed to be God’s heart for us, for why he was to intercede so intensely for us. He explained at the end,

“I don’t know what’s going on, with church or your family or anything, but I just keep sensing so strongly God saying, “Don’t give up.””

My eyes filled with tears. Jeff knew the message was for me. I did too.

Hadn’t I just written the list of simple tweaks needed to make that river cabin glorious? I hadn’t written, “Burn the whole thing down. Quit. Give up.” No, of course not. The reality is, finding a renewed sense of vision, passion, and purpose, involves stripping away all that isn’t contributing to that vision, passion, and purpose.

Just as that filthy cabin needed a good scrubbing (and large dumpster) before it could be ready for function and beauty, so our lives must go through seasons of stripping away, seasons of discipline, purging, struggle and conviction. Go ahead and pull out the drawers and dump all the contents in the trash. Burn the brown shower-curtain. Toss the moldy kitchen sponges and dated musty curtains.

But don’t give up.

Why? Our friend’s voice so clearly conveyed His heart:  He loves you.

“My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline, or be weary of His reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom He loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.” Prov. 3:11-12

{Don’t give up. You are loved. Thank you for reading.}