An Open Letter to the One Considering Giving Up

To the one who is considering giving up, 

Maybe you’re wondering where God was when you needed Him most. When no one else understood and when the pain was too much, God was supposed to be there. He was supposed to fix it. Isn’t that what He does? Make it better? 

I know you’re tired. I know you feel stuck and that you’d do anything to feel unstuck — even going as far as to do something you know you’d regret. At the end of the day, don’t you just want to remember what this life is for? 

Maybe you don’t talk to God anymore, at least, not like you used to. It’s not that you’re being dishonest with Him. You know He knows. It’s just not up for discussion, since you decided you already know what He’d say. He would be disappointed, right? He would say, “You knew better”…right? 

Maybe that’s what you tell yourself and now you feel like you have all the reasons you need to hold Him at arms length. 

But you can’t keep Him at a safe distance forever. 

You can do your best to put it off; to deny His existence and live in a kind of willful deception, but there will be a day when you can no longer hide (I know, because I couldn’t hide either).

What will it be?

Will it be the realization that you were and still are deeply loved? 

Will you suddenly have to admit to yourself that you refused God’s love -– the same love that He wanted to lavish upon you, but you didn’t trust Him enough to give you what you needed most? 

Will it be a humble plea? “I can’t do this anymore.”

Will you yield to the breaking and the mending?

He will meet you. 

Maybe not in the way that you prefer and maybe not in the way that you expect, but at the point when you feel like there’s none of yourself left, He comes in with grace and fills every part.

Here I am pleading, “Don’t give up hope.”

But please, give up. Stop fighting God. Maybe after giving it some thought you realize you’re actually trying to punish yourself. You know you don’t deserve His love, so you’ve decided you’re not going to receive it.

But refusing Him doesn’t make Him sacrificing the life of His Son for your life untrue. Blaming Him for the failures of others and the pain of this fallen world doesn’t mean that the blood of Jesus wasn’t shed on your behalf. 

I want you to know one thing: He was there when you needed Him most. 

Your idea of when you needed Him and His omniscient understanding of when you needed Him are two different things. He was there when you were dead in your sins, even when you could do nothing for yourself and had NO HOPE. 

God came for broken people. He came for people who don’t know how to love or how to forgive. He came for people who are ungrateful and selfish. He came for us. We could never earn His love, so when all is said and done mercy, grace and beauty flow from the cracks of our broken lives. 

You see, this isn’t just about you. You’re not the only victim of your refusal. Your life relinquished to His care testifies to others of His immense mercy and the unsearchable riches of His multi-faceted grace. 

He’s there. He wants to heal you. In fact, your healing was purchased at the point when you needed Him most. When the penalty for your sin, and mine, was satisfied on the cross. 

Love, 

A fellow sinner saved by grace

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”

Romans 5:6

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Let's Try Honesty

Honesty. Let’s try honesty. 

I’m lazy. 

Actually, no. I struggle with laziness. And yes, there is a difference. 

I get up and read my Bible every morning, but even still, look for excuses to look at my phone. I’m just making my coffee. I’ll look at my phone. 

Gah, I’m still not quite awake. I’ll look at my phone. 

I can sense Him coming if I know what to look for. I hear the leaves rustling, I feel the breeze, and He calls. I see the sun rise and the colors change and He draws. 

I don’t deserve it. His patience or His mercy and yet, because it is who He is, I will always find Him faithful. Even when I am not. 

Doesn’t He know every thought in my head? How sometimes I go down roads I know I shouldn’t? Secret paths, dimly lit and forgotten. He does, and He waits. 

He waits until I take those thoughts captive because He’s given me the responsibility and authority to do so. He waits until I’m ready to listen, but He’s not One to be manipulated. And when I’m ready to listen He speaks truth–love-soaked truth that cuts me to the quick and exposes my need for Him. 

And yet there are times that I persist like a belligerent child who insists that she knows best and she knows what she wants right now but cannot conceive of more and can’t imagine better. 

Pride is ugly. It doesn’t look good on anyone. And it comes in secret forms. Forms we don’t recognize at first. 

Pride looks like my frustration when things aren’t going my way. It looks like when I’ve worked all day, dinner still has to be made, children still have to be cared for, and I feel the load resting on my shoulders rather than letting Him carry it. It looks like when I choose anger over love and I don’t invite Him in. 

There is a kind of death that must happen for us to move forward. A death to that old self. You know, the one with all the demands. Can you see it? Demanding that I reach for the phone. Demanding that I think those thoughts. Demanding that I speak my mind or hold a grudge when things don’t go my way. Demanding that I carry the load.

Why does it take so long to decide we are no longer slaves to who we once were? 

Because it’s a choice. A choice that I will have to make time and time again. I will have to tell that old part of me, the part that is selfish, lazy, insecure and unloving to get back in the grave. And with every ounce of grace at my disposal I’ll let her know, “You’re not welcome here anymore."

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”

— Colossians 3:3-10 ESV 

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