Don't Quit in the Middle

Life has just been life-ing lately

Before service one Sunday, while people were getting ready to go back and pray, Bro. Alex's wife said out loud what a lot of us think quietly. She said she shouldn't even be back there, because she hadn't been praying in her own life like she should. The person she said it to answered with one word: same. And then that person said something worth keeping — life has just been life-ing lately.

That is James 5:16 happening in real time. "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed." She confessed a fault, and the moment she did, she found out she wasn't carrying it by herself. Now the two of them can pray for each other.

Ask yourself who you've told. Most of us are trying to carry something alone that somebody three seats down is carrying too.

Growth doesn't happen during the workout

Anybody who has ever trained their body knows this: you don't build strength picking up things that don't challenge you. You don't build endurance stopping every time you get tired. You walk into the weight room feeling fine, you load the bar, and then your muscles burn and your heart races and you want to quit. But you keep going, because you know what the burn is doing.

Here's the part we forget. You don't see the growth during the workout. You see it later, in the rest. And when the burn hits, you never once think, I'm getting weaker.

So why do we think that spiritually? Hebrews 12:6 says, "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." God's discipline is not evidence He walked off and left you. Sometimes it's evidence He loves you enough to leave you right where you are until the work is done. The stress isn't destroying you. It is developing you.

Romans 5:3-4 lays out the order: tribulation worketh patience, and patience, experience, and experience, hope. There's a progression in that. God can use what you're in right now to produce something in you that you could not have gotten any other way.

He knows how much weight is on your bar

Nobody walks into a gym the first day, throws five hundred pounds on the bar and calls it training. We all start somewhere, and we add a little at a time. The Lord understands progression better than we ever will.

First Corinthians 10:13 says God "will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able." He knows your capability. He knows where your faith is, and He knows when you are weak. He also knows that some of us keep trying to lift it by ourselves, and we've all tried that.

Sometimes He stretches us instead. None of us like being stretched — but stretching is what makes you flexible. He stretches your patience, your trust, your ability to forgive, your ability to keep believing when nothing looks like it's moving. Bro. Alex is in that right now. He's got something the Lord spoke to him, and it's close enough he can almost reach out and touch it, and it still hasn't come. He's waiting anyway.

And that door God closed on you? You thought it would help you and your family, and it shut. He may have been protecting you from your own future.

The private battle came before the public one

David didn't become a warrior the day he fought Goliath. Out in the field, with nobody watching and nobody clapping, he had already killed a lion and a bear. It was the private battle that prepared him for the public one.

That is exactly where some of you are. Nobody sees your struggle. Nobody sees the tears, nobody sees the prayers, nobody knows how hard you've been fighting. God sees every bit of it, and the praying you do where nobody can see is what gets you ready for the places everybody can.

Even Jesus felt the weight. In Matthew 26:38 He said, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." He didn't pretend it wasn't heavy. He prayed, and He said, "Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." We forget to pray in the middle of ours. We get in the woe-is-me and leave the Word sitting there.

Don't quit in the middle

One of the worst things you can do under a bar is rack out in the middle of the rep, especially when nobody's around. Now you've got to figure out how to get all that weight off of you by yourself.

That's what quitting in the middle looks like spiritually. You never told a brother or sister what you were carrying, and now you're pinned. Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."

Don't quit in the middle. Don't walk away from God in the middle of the process, and don't judge the whole story off one chapter.

Afterwards

Hebrews 12:11 says no chastening seems joyous for the present, but grievous — "nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness." Catch that word. Afterward. The training isn't enjoyable and the waiting isn't enjoyable, but there is always an afterward.

You're still breathing, which means every storm you've ever been in has a hundred percent record of not taking you out. Isaiah 40:31 says they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. He's in the training room with you until it's finished, and He's not trying to break you. He's building you.

So the next time it gets heavy, quit asking God why this is hurting you. Ask Him the other question instead: what are You trying to build me for?