I Give Up

 Someone needs this message today.  Perhaps it’s not you. Not today. Perhaps it’s someone you know, or someone you will meet. Lift up these words in prayer for someone, naming them before our God, asking that they receive this encouragement from God: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” 2 Corinthians 12:9 

 If you are so sad, depressed perhaps, that you just don’t see how you will make it until tomorrow,  this is for you. If you are so heartbroken that you don’t know if the broken pieces can ever be reassembled, this is for you. If you are unsure how you will be able to live with the physical limitations or the physical pain racking your body, this is for you. If you have hit the bottom to which addiction so often brings its victims, this is for you.

 If you are sitting there ready to say, “I give up,”, then hear this word from God: “Don’t give up.  I am going to lift you up in your weakness and give you my power, the perfect power that grace alone can provide and for which grace alone is sufficient.” 

 Friend, keep on praying this word from God until it becomes a part of your memory, and bring it back to mind when you are ready to give up.  Then feel God’s grace strengthen you. One more hour. One more day.

 A famous London preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who battled depression his entire life, preached these timeless and prophetic words in 1876:

 “The grace of our Lord Jesus is sufficient to uphold thee, sufficient to strengthen thee, sufficient to comfort thee, sufficient to make thy trouble useful to thee, sufficient to enable thee to triumph over it, sufficient to bring thee out of it, sufficient to bring thee out of 10,000 like it, sufficient to bring thee home to heaven….” (https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/strengthening-words-from-the-saviours-lips/#flipbook/)

 Someone needs to hear this today. Pray for open eyes, open ears, and an open heart.  In Christ there need be no fear, for God’s grace is sufficient for everyone in every circumstance. Don’t give up.

"What Should We Talk About?"

 Not that this would ever happen. But if it did, here is what I might say.

 Imagine a group of women are on their way to celebrate one of those milestone birthdays ending with a zero. Maybe the first number is a 4.  Friends all. Christians all.  A four-day celebration of friendship and life. 

 Now imagine one of their number says to me, ‘Pastor Bill, could you suggest a good discipline that we could use this weekend to strengthen our friendships and our walk with Jesus?’ (I already said, this would never happen, but play along.)

 So, I say, ‘Sure. This would be a fun exercise in transforming discipleship which would add loads of positive energy to your time together. Read this quote every morning and practice it all day.’

  “An added discipline for this week might be to say nothing negative about anyone else or about yourself. This will give you more energy for inner work on the subject [self-observation]. If you find it a difficult discipline to keep, do not be discouraged. A discipline is to help us learn, and there is often more learning in failure than in success.”–Elizabeth O’Connor, Our Many Selves, p. 71 (inward/outward.org)

 ‘Imagine talking about the restaurant that offered slow service due to understaffing without saying anything negative.  Imagine avoiding all negative words about yourself as you sit around the living room at night swapping stories of children and pets and, dare I say, husbands. (Alright, maybe that bit about no negative talk about ‘husbands’ is beyond imagination.)

 Imagine learning a little more each day about how smiles and laughter come much more easily to faces that say nothing negative about anyone else or about yourself. That’s what you should talk about, my friend.’

 Not that this would ever happen.  But imagine if it did. And you were there.