Have you ever experienced a time when you felt like giving up? Giving up on a situation, a task, a relationship? Sometimes, that may have been the necessary response. Sometimes, though, perhaps we threw in the towel too soon. Sometimes, it’s God Himself who we feel like giving up on. What gets us to such a place of hopelessness?
I think the more removed we are from the Lord, the more hopeless a situation will appear. That’s not to say that those of us who follow the Lord are always more optimistic and hopeful human beings than those of us who don’t yet know Him. What it does mean is that we believers are each more hopeful than we would have been, given the same circumstances, if we didn’t believe in Him, know Him, trust Him. As Christians, we truly have the opportunity to have peace and even joy in most any circumstance. But Christians have times when we feel discouraged and overwhelmed, too. We have times when we don’t know what else we can try or what else we can do. When we feel like we’ve extinguished the options. Those are precisely the times we need to give up.
Yes, give up. And by that, I don’t mean to necessarily stop trying, though sometimes that is the appropriate response. I mean give it UP. Give it to God. He will not fail to take it from you. Sometimes we are at the end of our rope before we realize that we should have given the other end to God the very first moment we even grabbed hold of it.
We need to give UP the outcome which we think should take place. Not much is promised in this world. I think of Job in the Old Testament and everything he endured. One thing I don’t particularly appreciate is how when people talk about Job, they instantly go to the end of the story as if the moral is that, due to his faithfulness, all was restored to him. I disagree with that idea a bit. Materially, yes, all was restored. But his ten kids were still dead. Yes, he went on to have more kids, but additional children can never replace the ones lost. I mean, imagine it…. all your kids taken away. You get more one day but those first ones are still gone. Job did suffer loss, even when all was said and done. It wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies as if everything was completely restored. No, it would never be the same for Job again.
Somehow, though, that makes Job’s testimony even stronger for me. He did not get everything back at the end of the story. Some things, the most important things, can’t be replaced; and Job lost those things, too. But despite losing the irreplaceable, Job never turned on His Lord, even when his friends tried to convince him of things which were not true. In chapter 42, Job replies to the Lord:
“I know that you can do all things; no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job teaches me so much. I think his humble acceptance that he does not know the Lord’s plans and that he spoke of things he did not understand is so relatable. We all think we know how things should turn out, but quite often we don’t. Job had heard of the Lord, but actually seeing Him, actually knowing Him, made him despise himself and repent. I think when we are confronted with the reality of our human state, when God actually questions us face to face via conviction of the Holy Spirit even through another person, we can’t help but repent in response. Imagine trying to argue with the Lord! We can’t totally control the outcome of our situation, but we can control how we respond. Job demonstrates for us how, despite the situation, we still have the choice as to how we will respond to our suffering.
Another thing I love about Job is that he prays for his friends, even after the Lord basically tells them that Job was right and that they, on the other hand, had angered Him because they had not spoken the truth about Him. Job did not give up on others, despite the many who had given up on him. Perhaps this was because the Lord had not given up on Job, and Job was faithful to project that loving devotion forward, as well.
I think it is interesting that Job 42:10 says that “After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.” It’s almost as though God waited to bless Job until he had stopped focusing on his own suffering (which was to a degree I can’t even imagine) and instead focused on his friends and what they were going through after being told by God that they had angered Him. It’s like the selflessness of that act was the final straw that broke God’s heart for Job and caused Him to cease the suffering which Satan had inflicted. Job gave up his cries about his own suffering and instead petitioned for others. It reminds me of the petition which Jesus spoke while on the cross in Luke 23:34.
That stands out to me. When I feel like giving up, where is my heart in the situation? Am I feeling hopeless because I am so consumed with my own feelings, pain, frustration, that I can’t see the light? Or am I focusing just on the particular outcome which I so desperately want to take place, without considering that God can use all things and that I cannot know the situation like He does? I think we cause so much of our own suffering by not having our minds, hearts, souls in the right place. We begin to focus more and more on ourselves, or even just the human perspective, and less on the Lord. When we don’t see things unfolding in our way and in our time, our trust in our Heavenly Father can go right out the window. Right when we need it most.
If you’re feeling like giving up on something right now, do it. Give it UP to the only One who knows what you need, truly need, in ways that you may not even realize. God will never give up on you, so don’t give up on Him… and don’t give up on yourself.
Job 2:9-10, HLC
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