You Should Just Give Up

In Junior high, I was experimenting. I was playing football for school and I was in the school band. I didn’t know anything about either so I was giving both a shot. The band director gave me the French horn to play, which is a hard instrument. Every day at football practice, I thought about throwing in the towel since I was so small. Eventually, the band director, Mr. Hicks, told me I needed to choose: it’s either football or band Hall; which do you choose. So I gave up on band and dedicated the rest of my years (7-12 grades) playing football. It was the right choice for me.

Each one of us have moments in our life when we have to choose. There are difficulties and hardships. When hard moments come, it’s the enemy, Satan, trying to get you to choose to give up your relationship with God and other people. Jesus said that the enemy came to kill, steal and destroy. That’s all Satan cares about.

One dude in the Old Testament who experienced the full force of choices was a guy named Job. His story is one of the oldest recorded stories in the Bible. Job was very blessed by God. Job worshiped God every day and kept God in the primary place in his life. Job had lots of wealth, property and a huge family with 10 children. But Satan wanted to press Job into leaving his relationship with God so Satan created difficulty and chaos.

Satan had groups of people come in and steal all his livestock and kill all his servants. Satan also created a storm that destroyed the house all ten children were in, killing all of them. But even after all of that destruction, Job 1:20-21 says that Job worshiped God.

My guess is you also have had tough moments in your life. Maybe your marriage is not in a good place right now or your adult children are walking away from God. It could be your working through a prolonged illness or cancer treatments. Maybe you were hit hard in the market and investments and now you realize you’ll need to work a few more years before retiring. It could be you’ve been carrying around the shame and guilt from past mistakes, unaltered habits, or secret sin. These all are difficult moments where you must make a choice.

But like Job, we must realize your story doesn’t have to be defined by what happens to you; it should be defined by how you respond. As a follower of Jesus, we know difficult life moments are going to come. That’s a promise. Like Job, we must realize the script is already written for us in how we respond. Don’t buy the lie from Satan that you should just give up. Don’t let him sway you from the truth that Jesus has given us.

Like Job in chapter 19, we can say, “I know that my Redeemer lives!”. Jesus told us he’ll never leave us nor forsake us. He’s with us until the end. There are going to be storms in our lives. It’s just Satan trying to get us to walk away from our relationships with those we love, including God.

So, stay the course. Be resolute. Don’t back down. Make the choice to continue to walk with God through the storm. He’s with you. He’s got you by the hand and he’s not letting go. Blessings on the journey.

"You'll Never Change"

You have probably heard that lie, “You’ll never change”, about you in your life. Maybe from a parent or a coach or a teacher or even your pastor. You and I must discern between what is truth in our life and how the enemy lies to us about who we are. You and I must concede that God and his truth can and will set us free.

For several years, I was part of an American Civil War reenacting group called the Trans-Mississippi Rifles (that has nothing to do with gender identity, by the way). We were attached to the 3rd Louisiana infantry and “fought” for the South. Our U.S. Civil War pit us Americans against ourselves and for some reason we like to replay that.

We are spiritually in a civil war as well. We are fighting with who we are and whom God called us to be. Paul talks about his personal frustration with this civil war in Romans 7:15-19. You can just feel his frustration in the words he pens. “We don’t do what we want to do and the thing we don’t want to do, we do.” So how do we overcome this within ourselves?

Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 10 that we demolish the stronghold Satan has on us by taking our thoughts captive for Jesus Christ. We make our thoughts and then actions obedient to Jesus. And when we take every thought captive, the walls will fall. For some reason, we believe Satan and God are equally matched but NOTHING is equal to the power of God’s love for us.

Proverbs 4:23 says, “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” In other words, protect what you think about or dwell on each and every day. Whatever you’re allowing into your thinking will direct your attitudes, emotions, and behavior. Paul tells us in Romans 12:2 not to conform to the world’s way of thinking but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So to do this, I want you to think about a couple of things.

First, think process, not perfection. Becoming more like Jesus doesn’t happen overnight. But use this metric…am I different as a follower of Jesus than one year ago? Since the first of 2024? Have a changed any since summer began? You’ll want to do some investigation in yourself to see if you are growing spiritually. We’re all in process. Even the Apostle Paul says that in Philippians 3 about himself.

Now we are justified or found to be righteous the moment we say “yes” to Jesus. But sanctification or becoming more holy and like Jesus is a lifelong process. We are made right through Jesus immediately upon making him our Lord and Savior but our journey is a life-long process.

Secondly, think God’s power, not your own. That word “transform” in Romans 12:2 in the original Greek is in passive form meaning we don’t do it to ourselves, it’s done to us. There is power with filling our minds with Godly moments and thoughts.

One final point. Paul tells us something so important in regards to power. Our enemy, Satan, gets us so busy and distracted we forget about the power of God in our lives. But Paul reminds us in Ephesians 1:19-20, “I pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms.” Wow! That kind of power lives within you if you’ve said “yes” to Jesus.

Jesus came to set us free. He’s come to give you life. He’s come to empower you. He’s come to change you. And if you will let him, your life will never be the same again. Blessings on the journey.

You Can Fix It Yourself.

We live in a DIY world. Every Saturday, I try to watch at least one house flipping show because I love that kind of stuff. It’s reassuring to me that I can save tons of money on labor if I do the work myself. I typically look at a project and say, “I think I can do that myself.” We’ve all been saying that since we were 3 years old though.

But many times in our adult life when we say this, it really isn’t true. It’s the lie of pride that states I don’t need anyone else. We are desperate to cover up imperfection, hide mistakes, not admit fault or that we are even capable of doing something so we just say, “I can fix it myself.”

Sometimes the thing we are fixing is the person we are married to or our kids or our coworker. Sometimes we are fixing a financial situation, our marriage, an addiction, a health issue, a broken relationship or a secret sin. Here in the good ole USA, we pride ourselves on being individualists. We celebrate self-starters and self-sustainers. It’s our mentality to not include others because after all, I can fix it myself. And this idea has been around for a long, long time.

Sarah thought this when she and Abraham were past childbearing years in Genesis 16. God had told them they would have a baby and their offspring would be more than the stars in the sky. They were an old couple so Sarah gave her servant, Hagar, to Abraham thinking that’s how God will do it. I can fix this myself. Hagar and Abram had a child together. All the issues between Muslims and Jews and Muslims and Christians can be traced to Genesis 16 where one person decided they could fix the issue by themselves.

If we buy into this lie, I can fix it myself, several things happen to us in our lives. First it increases pride. “I don’t need anything else or anyone to help me.” I can do it on my own is inherently prideful. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be humble and part of a community. Pride goes before a fall so the Bible says.

When we believe this lie, it minimizes the problem saying it’s nothing I can’t handle. We end up usually making the situation worse than it ever was and to avoid embarrassment, we just say it’s no big deal.

It can also feed guilt and shame. Internally, we acknowledge the mess of our situation and the reality that I can’t really clean it up. I can’t put it back in the package like it was before. So I take on guilt and wear it like a bad suit. Carrying the guilt intensifies the fallout. We think, “I can’t believe I let it get this bad.” We typically realize this too late when our addictive personality keeps bringing us back to the porn site or the intake of alcohol or drugs.

This lie will rob us of relational intimacy. We are ashamed of our situation because we thought we could handle it so we are not vulnerable enough to admit we need help. It can be the reason we avoid being in a church small group or attending Sunday morning Bible class. However, when we decide to have relational intimacy, it makes the person we interact with feel valued and helps us feel known.

Finally, when we buy into the lie, it fuels hypocrisy. We dare not let anyone know how broken we are so we put on the mask and pretend all is right as rain.

As a follower of Christ, I realize the truth in Hebrews 4:14-16. Jesus is there for us. He carries the weight. He understands our dilemma. He gets us. Jesus is our high priest who has taken on our guilt and created a pathway to the very throne of God. And because Jesus is our high priest, we can appoach the throne of God with boldness. We don’t have to, indeed we literally cannot do it on our own. We need Jesus. And with Jesus comes the church.

None of us were ever meant to journey alone even though that’s what Satan wants. Jesus calls us to follow him, not to walk alone. The church is the body of Christ so being in the body means we are never alone. If you’ve bought into the lie that you can do it alone, I hope you’ll leave that idea behind and realize you have a high priest who wants to be your advocate, your rock and your soulmate for the journey. Grab his hand and leave the lie behind. Blessings on the journey.