When You Feel Like Giving Up


“All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.” (Hebrews 11:39-40 NLT)

It’s not easy to live by faith. We live in a broken world. The weather doesn’t work right. Our bodies don’t work right. Our relationships don’t work right.

When God kicked Adam out of Heaven, He told Adam that life would be hard. And it is. There’s a cosmic battle for your life going on inside of you and outside of you. You battle with your own sinful nature. You also battle against Satan himself, who wants nothing more than to “steal, kill, and destroy.”

And sometimes it just gets to us. We just want to give up.

But in Hebrews 11, God urges us to hang on, because God hasn’t forgotten us and will fulfill His promises one day. He promises to give us a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). He promises to take away our tears (Revelation 7). And He gives us multiple other promises throughout His Word.

Hebrews 11 mentions a variety of biblical heroes who demonstrated faith in God’s promises — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Gideon, Samson, and others. Though they endured many difficulties, they kept going in their spiritual journeys.

Then Hebrews 11:39-40 says, “All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us” (NLT).

Talk It Over
- Living by faith involves pain. If you give up when life isn’t going well, you never learn to trust God. Why do you think this is so?
- It’s easy to love God and serve Him when life is going well. Will you trust Him when it’s not?

~ Written by: Rick Warren ~
~ Modified by: Oleg Fabyanchuk ~

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