There is no hope without something to hope through. That is an uncomfortable way to start, but it is honest: hope only means something because hard things are coming. And they are coming. Satan does not take a day off, and he has deceived every man, woman, and child who has ever lived except One. So do not underestimate him, and do not be surprised when the storm shows up on your street.
Challenges come. Temptations come. Pain comes — physical, emotional, mental. Trials come, and loss comes, and the only real question is whether you are prepared for them before they arrive. Jesus put it this way: “Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning” (Luke 12:35). That is not poetry about being religious. It is a picture of a man who has tied up his robe because he expects to have to move.
Preparing the Mind Before the Trouble
Peter takes that image and moves it inward: “Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13). Nobody in that world ran in a long robe without tying it up first; they would have fallen flat. So the instruction is to prepare the mind for action ahead of time, to be calm and self-controlled rather than frantic, and to fix hope fully on grace rather than on circumstances.
Your mind is a remarkable thing. It can carry you through what should have broken you, and it can also betray you and tell you to quit. The difference is usually preparation, and preparation is a set of decisions made before the pressure arrives.
- Count it joy before you feel it. “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience” (James 1:2-3). That is the exact opposite of the instinct, which is to groan and say here we go again. The text does not ask you to enjoy the trial. It asks you to recognize what the trial is for.
- Let patience finish its work. “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing” (James 1:4). You do not plant a seed and harvest the next morning. Endurance produces maturity, and maturity is what makes a person steady in the next storm.
- Trust the limit that God has set. “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape” (1 Corinthians 10:13). The word translated temptation is the same word used for trial, so this covers the crisis as surely as it covers the enticement. He will not give you more than you can carry — though He may well give you all you can carry, and most of us can carry more than we think.
- Hold the confession without wavering. “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; for he is faithful that promised” (Hebrews 10:23). Do not spend a single minute entertaining the thought of quitting.
- Keep doing good when it is not working. “But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing” (2 Thessalonians 3:13). Even when nobody appreciates it. Even when the arguments and complaints keep coming. Even when the tornado takes the RV.
Attitude Is Most of the Battle
Listen to the questions people ask in the middle of a hard season. Why is God doing this to me? Why won’t God help me? Why does He let good things happen to everyone else and terrible things happen to me? Those questions feel natural and they are quietly corrosive, because each one ends in despair, and despair is where quitting begins.
There is another set of questions available. What can I learn here? How can I grow through this? What will this equip me to do for somebody else later? And underneath all of them: I am going to trust Jesus to walk through this with me, because He has promised never to leave me. Two people can face the same loss with those two different scripts running, and they will not end up in the same place.
Be careful, too, about who is talking to you. Jesus said, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees” (Matthew 16:6). There are people who will give you terrible advice about your marriage, your children, and your brothers and sisters in Christ, and the advice almost always tends the same direction — toward giving up. Recognize it for what it is.
He Did Not Quit Either
Watch Jesus gird up His own mind. He began to teach the disciples “that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected… and be killed” (Mark 8:31). He told them plainly that He came “to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). In the garden He prayed, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me” — and an angel came and strengthened Him (Luke 22:42-43). He was not looking forward to it. He was preparing for it.
And He could have walked away at any point. “Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53). The heaviest part was not the dying, or the loneliness, or even the torture and the ridicule. It was that “he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21) — which is why the cry from the cross was, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). He carried your sin and did not quit, and while He carried it He said, “Father, forgive them.”
Hebrews 11 lines up the rest of them — Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, David, Samuel — until the writer finally says, “What shall I more say? for the time would fail me” (Hebrews 11:32). They are not there because they were spectacular. They are there because they did not stop.
A Call to Respond
“Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer… be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life” (Revelation 2:7). “He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son” (Revelation 21:7). Revelation is a book written to people under real pressure, and it says the same thing on nearly every page: overcome, endure, do not stop.
Maybe you are in the middle of a bad storm right now. Maybe you have made a long string of bad choices — one this morning and another before lunch. Here is the encouragement: never give up the fight. When you fall down, get up and try again. Make a better choice than the last one, and then another. “In your patience possess ye your souls” (Luke 21:19).
Be bold. Be courageous. And never, ever quit.