Have You Felt Like Giving Up Lately?Sample

When You Don’t Know What to Do

When the enemy comes in like a flood, we panic. We feel we must do something, make something move or give. We have a need to see things happen, and we feel guilty if we are not constantly proving to God how willing we are to do anything he requires of us.

You aren’t the only one up against a wall. God specializes in hopeless cases. God takes over when we give up trying to work it all out ourselves. This couple with a marriage about to hit the rocks must stop looking for help outside of the Lord. They must commit their problems and their lives over to the Lord and pray, “God, it’s over our heads. We’ve tried and failed. It looks hopeless, so we’ll just stand in your presence and look only to you for help. It’s you, Lord, or nothing. Our eyes will stay fixed on you.”

You too face crises in which you don’t know what to do or where to go for help. What about you? Is it a financial crisis staring you right in the face? Do you live in a home situation that tears your spirit apart? Have your children hurt you, or has a child brought anguish to you? Has sickness or pain brought you down to the valley of death? Have you lost a job? Is your future scary and uncertain? Is your marriage in trouble? Has the death of a loved one left you depressed, lonely and empty? Has a divorce left you feeling like a rejected failure?

Do you feel overwhelmed right now? Have you tried so many ways to see it through, yet nothing seems to help? Have you grown tired of trying? Have you almost decided there is no way out? Have you reached the end of your rope? Have you said to your heart, “I don’t know what to do now”?

We are living in a time when everything is getting shaky and insecure, and almost everybody is hurting in one way or another. Hardly anybody knows what to do anymore. Our leaders don’t have the foggiest idea what is happening to this world or to the economy. The future is anybody’s guess.

Yes, we are all hurting in one way or another. We are all in need. We all reach that point of panic when the heart cries out, “What do I do now?”

Stop searching! Stop looking in the wrong direction for help. Get alone with Jesus in a secret place; tell him all about your confusion. Tell him you have no other place to go. Tell him you trust him alone to see you through. You will be tempted to take matters into your own hands. You will want to figure things out on your own. You will wonder whether God is working at all; there will be no sign of things changing. Your faith will be tested to the limit. But nothing else works, anyway, so there is nothing to lose.  Peter summed it all up: “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).