|
Christmas is a glorious season, and I love everything about it—the decorations, the lights, special time with family, and carols that mean so much to the Christian heart. Most of all,
I love that Jesus was born. God kept His promise and sent to us His only begotten Son. But you can’t be in ministry for long and not see that for many people, this season is a sad time. Like winter days short on sun, some of you are dealing with more darkness than light. I got an email the other day that said, “I feel like giving up. I’m at the end of my rope. Can you pray for me?” We get a lot like that—letters and emails from believers, including preachers, who feel ready to throw up their hands and quit. “It’s not working out,” they say. “I’ve misread God; I’ve failed Him.”
And that’s exactly what the devil wants believers to say. The devil is doing everything in his power to stop you, hinder you, discourage you, and cause you to stop believing. But as my husband says, if you won’t quit, God won’t quit.
Maybe it helps to know that every believer, at one time or another, reaches the end of his rope and wants to give up. Trials, tribulations, and things that we plain don’t understand happen to all of us. In the early years of our ministry, we endured such times, including money problems, which is one of the biggest discouragements of all when trying to do the work of God. In fact, in one of our crusades my husband commented on those lean times, saying, “Back then, if somebody would have given me a nickel, I probably would have put it between two pieces of bread and tried to eat it!” He was being humorous, of course, but we do know what discouragement feels like, and we understand the struggle that so many people are engaged in today, in this economy, to pay a medical bill, a car note, or just put food on the table.
If you’re in that place now, wondering if God even knows you’re alive, then take what my husband and I learned long ago—it’s just a season. It’s not permanent. Peter wrote, “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.” And the reason? Peter said, “That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (I Peter 1:6-7).
My husband and I had to learn, just like the ministers and missionaries that we listened to and read behind learned—you have to stop struggling against the Hows and the Whys and the Whens that threaten to pull your faith under. Learn to trust the Lord.
Our children’s pastor Jonathan Steele shared a great analogy about this. On a certain day at a water park where he worked, he heard unusual splashing and looked up to see that someone in a nearby pool was drowning. To his relief, he watched the lifeguard dive in and swim toward the swimmer in trouble only to suddenly stop. Why wasn’t the lifeguard helping? Finally, just before the exhausted swimmer went all the way under, the lifeguard resumed his efforts and pulled that swimmer to safety. But why did the lifeguard pause? Because that swimmer—desperate, panicked, flailing, and thrashing—could have caused them both to drown. The lifeguard had to wait until the swimmer stopped fighting. And that’s what God does for us in our seasons of hard times. He wants us to stop fighting, give up, and admit, “Okay, I can’t do it. But Lord, You can.” And that’s when God rushes to our rescue.
So during those seasons when our faith is developing, the Lord will step in to help. At other times, when we find ourselves in a valley, He walks with us.
Psalm 23:4 says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” Theologian Albert Barnes says this valley is “applicable not merely to death itself—though it embraces that—but to any or all the dark, the dangerous, and the gloomy paths which we tread in life: to ways of sadness, solitude, and sorrow. All along those paths God will be a safe and certain guide. I will fear no evil—dark, cheerless, dismal as it seems, I will dread nothing. The true friend of God has nothing to fear in that dark valley. His great Shepherd will accompany him there, and can lead him safely through, however dark it may appear. The true believer has nothing to fear in the most gloomy scenes of life; he has nothing to fear in the valley of death.” Why? Because “Thou art with me.”
Not long ago, Evangelist Jason Stidham was here ministering, and he shared the story of world relay champion Derek Redmond, a runner in the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games. While running the 400-meter race, Derek suffered a torn hamstring that immediately brought him to his knees. His competitors, of course, ran on. After a slight pause, Derek got up and continued, trotting on his good leg, determined to finish. His dad, who had been watching from the stands, ran onto the track, and father and son finished the race together. Years later, reflecting on that event, Derek said, “When you do get knocked down, and you get up, you get up as if that was the last time. If it isn’t, you get up as if this time is the last time. If it isn’t, you keep on doing that.”1
Are there times when we feel like giving up? Yes, we’re human. Is the valley of the shadow of death real? Yes. But if you are born again, then God is with you. As Brother Stidham encouraged us with that runner’s story, he said, “Your heavenly Father is telling you, ‘If you won’t quit, we will finish together.’”
God is with us—it’s His very name. Matthew 1:23 says, “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.”
|
