When You Want to Give Up

So many reasons to give up. And they all make perfect sense, but something will not let go. Something holding you up. A voice calling you onward. Calling you to your future. The place where the dream in your heart is realized. The deep longings of your heart that yearn to be tasted and held. These are the promises that cry out.

They hurt so bad because you haven’t held them yet. But they live. They breath. They speak. They move you. Forward. Onward.

Even if they never materialize, they still call. They still yearn. They won’t ever stop. They are eternal. Planted there by God. Holding out hope. Holding things together. Holding YOU together.

These great and precious promises. Precious because they hold life and hope and joy. They hold the hearts of our children and their children. Our legacies. The things that will live on beyond us. That will laugh beyond us. Songs that will sing when we are gone.

These we hold now, in these precious promises. They are not religious promises, but Holy. Sacred. Divine because they did not originate with us, nor will they be fulfilled by us, but by a power beyond us. The Creator of all things and the Father of all spirits.

How could religion ever be worthy enough to hold these promises? To offer them to us, and more, fulfill them? THIS is why we can’t give up. Because the promises are not only for us but for those who will follow behind us and live beyond us and beyond even them.

We can’t lay down what we’ve prayed for. Cried for. Longed for and seen with the eyes of our faith. What we know to be true in our hearts. That we know to be true to who we are and what lives and breaths within us. It’s not a matter of strength but of conviction. Of commitment to what we know is true and longed for beyond the sight of our eyes.

That is why the writer of Hebrews could say of Moses, “he was able to endure because he saw Him who was invisible”, our fathers were able to hope because they saw something beyond this temporal life that was God’s and would not fail us nor those who come after us…. to a thousand generations.

We can’t give up because it is not a mere possession we are laying hold of, but a way of being that endures heartache, betrayal, wounding and disappointment. That lives in spite of death, or the crushing of every dream and all things hoped for. A breath that rises out of the ashes of defeat. A glory incomparable to anything man made or man realized.

A conviction that faces the giant, or death itself, knowing it is loved, held and redeemed beyond any failure, wound or crushing. This is what we hold onto in the midst of our suffering, our pain, our unending agony that takes our very breath, all our hopes and dreams. This lives. This breaths.

Our faith! It is not mechanical or anything that can be condured up from a chant or a confession, but a living, overcoming faith that conquers the world. That comes to the rescue in incomprehensible disappointment that doesn’t change the diappointment but rises up out of it with a prize greater than whatever was lost.

This is the Resurrrection, the Life, we have been redeemed by. That is why Paul could say, “What shall we say to these things, if God be for us, who can be against us?” This is not a feel good mantra, but a living strength that lifts us out of agony and into the arms of The Everlasting! No defeat on earth, is worthy to be compared with the glory that is revealed in and through us in these times.

We weep and mourn our losses, because we are human. We do well to weep. But these can never steal or drown out the voice of this Life and faith that leads us on.

I love what Galations 2: 20 says in the KJV…..”and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith OF the Son of God…..” Many other versions say ” I live by faith IN the son of God…..but what we have is more powerful than a faith we can muster up…..we have the faith of the very Son of God imparted to us, by our belief that He is who He says He is!!!!

Our measly faith or rustled up stance of trust is no match for the sufferings we go through, it requires something beyond us. Ask anyone who has faced any giant or battle beyond their ability to endure, to hold on or to keep their heart. They will tell you, “it is Christ, not I!! He holds all things together by the Word of His power. He holds me together.”

And those who don’t beleive in Christ, who live and breath on this earth, will certainly find themselves, one day, facing circumstances beyond their mortal ability to endure. None are exempt. And then, they will find Him faithful and Who He claims to be.

Let Christ be Glorified in All,
Crisie