Never Give Up

for the righteous falls seven times and rises again,

but the wicked stumble in times of calamity. - Proverbs 24:16

It’s a new year. Time for a new you. Time for a new me. That’s what we do when we start a new year. We look forward to becoming the best “me” we can be.

Last year, I had the goal of losing a specific amount of weight… and I did… but when I went to go look the other day to see about 2025, I realized that I had put it all right back on… all that is except for 1 pound. I suppose that was some progress.

I was good through about September, I think. Maybe, August. At some point I stopped paying attention, and I gave in a bit, stopped trying as hard, and ended up right back at where I started – well, almost.

My first feeling was discouragement. I was discouraged with myself and where I ended up.

I find that I deal with discouragement a lot, actually. It’s the enemy’s #1 weapon against me, I think, and one of my greatest weaknesses, a bad combination.

Someone said, you can tell a lot about someone by what discourages them, by what happens to them when times get tough, the chips are down, and the challenges are big. At times, it doesn’t even take something big, just something that doesn’t go right, especially if there are a lot of things at one time. Discouragement has a nasty way of showing up at the worst times.

One of the things we teach at the Inspiring Hope Learning Center is NGU – Never Give Up. It is a good statement and a good way to live. When you get knocked down, get up again, and keep getting up, seven times according to Scripture, but that’s probably just a number to give us a number. In other words, keep getting up. Each time you get knocked down, get back up.

One of the things God taught me this past year is the importance of taking every thought captive, do not let thoughts just roam free in my mind and be passive about it. Negative, defeatist, faithless thoughts that bring discouragement are the worst.

Then He took me through a couple of months of discouragement to hammer the point home. God has a way of doing that, you know, to get our attention, and to build us up. Challenges are great teachers. You see all your weakness, and it makes you a bit dependent and a lot humble.

Discouragement was knocking me down, and I was letting it. The thoughts were running around wild in my mind, and I wasn’t trying to capture them. Just letting them go.

But then God… (great words, those) But then God took the opportunity to teach me something through it all. Don’t let them roam free. Stop it. Take them captive. Change the way I was thinking. I first had to never give up in my mind before I could never give up in life. That’s a great lesson to learn.

That and the importance of faith… trusting that God was working in me and around me all the time. Trusting that He would be there and always is there. It’s too easy to live by sight and not by faith, our eyes on the issues instead of the Savior.

The goal for 2025 is to grow in faith and trust. To watch for discouragement to show up and be ready when it does. Take it captive and refocus on what God can do – not where I fall.

Starting a new year is a good thing. Good time to get up again after falling. And get up again and again – as many times as it takes & never give up or give in to discouragement.

Just keep getting up!