Is It Time to Give Up?

As if I have all the answers.

As if I have all the power and strength.

As if I have all the energy.

As if I can do all things.

As if I know what the heck I’m doing.

It really is a matter of trust. Do I trust God to handle my life? My emotions? My future? My children?

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Prov. 3:5-6, NASB).

Has God called me to do the impossible? To continue to give up and give up when not much makes sense? To continue to trust Him when I can’t see the good yet?

No, He has not.

God says I can do all things—all the things He has called me to do (and not to do).

So if God has called me to give up some things and to give some things up, then He is going to enable me to do it.

“I can do all things through him who gives me strength” (Phil. 4:13, NIV).

Reading that verse made me ask, “Why does Christ give me strength?” That’s one of those questions that seems easy at first and then, as I consider it, definitely not.

Maybe it is a simple answer: Because we need it. Because He knows we need it. Because we are weak. Because we are burdened. Because we carry grief and sorrow and pain. Because He understands the giving up and the giving up. Because He gave up an awful lot for me … for us.

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form Of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5-8, ESV).

In comparison, I have not given up much. It feels like very much—very, very much—but I cannot forget that I have also been given very, very much.

God might ask for things, but He is exceedingly generous in things too. And some of that generosity is that He is willing to show us His love and care by taking things—things we more than willingly would give Him. All this sorrow, grief, pain, suffering, frustration, fear and just plain aggravation—all that yuck, God says He’ll take it. He’ll handle it. I don’t have to.

I don’t exactly know how to get rid of it. I mean, really. I keep giving it to God, but grief has a funny way of coming back into my life uninvited.

God, how do I make grief go away?

Can I?