Never Quit
I stopped by the church office to visit with the secretary Betty. She was kind and friendly, a mother figure for me. Betty always seemed to know just what to say to lift my spirits, and in those days my spirits often needed lifting.
For reasons too many and too complicated to go into here, I left high school convinced that I was dumb and incompetent. The next several years were hard for me. Like all my friends, right after high school I enrolled in college. But convinced that I was too dumb to do college work, I dropped out when the work got hard.
So, then I needed to get a job. Without a college education, and with no useful skills that fit me for a job in the trades, I took a position selling stereos and televisions on commission. But that was also hard, and convinced that I was incompetent, I quit.
Then I enrolled in a different college. But, again convinced that I was too dumb for college, I dropped out of that college and got another sales job. Not long after that, I quit that job and enrolled in another college. Before I was finished with all that I had dropped out of colleges seven times and quit, I think, twelve jobs.
It was during this long period of failure and discouragement that I often stopped by the church office to talk to Betty with the hope that she might say something that would lift my spirits. On this day, though, what she said was, “Well, Barry, I think you would do better if you just decided to stop being a quitter.”
Stop being a quitter. Don’t quit. Never quit. It is one of the mantras of coaches and motivational speakers. Just decide and do it! An internet search of the phrase “never quit quotes” returned over 74 million responses. Here are just a few:
Basketball player Michael Jordon said, “If you quit once it becomes a habit. Never quit
Success writer Napoleon Hill wrote, “A quitter never wins, and a winner never quits.”
Football coach Bear Bryant said, “Never quit. It is the easiest cop-out in the world. Set a goal and don’t quit until you attain it. When you do attain it, set another goal, and don’t quit until you reach it. Never quit.”
According to General Douglas MacArthur, “Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.”
This is the message of motivational speakers, but it is not the message of the Bible. Certainly there is value in perseverance in the face of trials. But the message of the Bible is not, pull yourself up, keep trying, and by power of your determination, never quit. The message of the Bible is not, you’ve got this. The message of the Bible is that you will persevere and not quit when you remember what God has done. Remember what God has done!
In Deuteronomy the people of Israel were preparing to enter the Promised Land. But they had a problem. That land was already occupied by peoples more numerous and mightier than they were.
Moses said to them, “If you say in your heart, ‘These nations are greater than I. How can I dispossess them?’ you shall not be afraid of them but you shall remember what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt..” (Deut. 7:17-18).
Success in defeating these greater nations would not come from pulling themselves up and trying harder. Their success would come because “the LORD your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God” (Deut. 7:21). He will ensure their victory.
When we tell people facing trials and difficulties that all they have to do is to keep trying and never quit, when we tell them, in the words of the Japanese proverb to “get knocked down seven times, but get up eight,” that is moralism. But when we tell people to remember what the Lord has done for you and trust the “great and awesome God” who is with them, that is the gospel. God will provide the grace we need when we put our trust in him.
But, just as Moses told Israel that they must not be impatient and discouraged, so too we must be not become discouraged. Moses told Israel to not lose heart and grow faint if conquering the land took a long time. It will be “little by little,” he said, that the LORD your God will clear away these nations” (Deut. 7:22). This is a picture of growth in the Christian life, of sanctification.
In commenting on Deuteronomy 7 George Robertson wrote, “[D]ivine sanctification is not instantaneous. It is a process. Sanctification is pictured in God’s driving out before the Israelites all of their enemies. God tells them it will not be immediate, but he will remove them ‘little by little.’… he wants them to remain dependent on his grace. Do not grow discouraged with your sanctification because you are not growing more holy more quickly. God works little by little in almost everything… And he has a gracious plan for you—he wants you to know for all of your life and all of eternity that you are made holy by him. Keep taking your besetting sins to him. He will conqueror them little by little. When I am discouraged about my own sanctification, the Lord reminds me of what he has done in the past.”
It took a few years, but the Lord did do a work in me. The work continues, but I did learn that I was not quite as dumb and incompetent as I thought. I have learned, through God’s grace, to put my trust in him and keep with a task until it is finished. I did get a college degree, picked up a couple of master’s degrees along the way, and I haven’t quit the ministry. Well, not yet.
Much love, Barry