Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, November sixth. What keeps you moving forward when your willpower fails? Today, you'll learn about the apostle Paul who consistently demonstrated the courage to keep going. How do you respond when you find yourself dealing with situations that are very painful? In fact, you get rejected. Somebody walks that on you. You feel like they were dishonest with you.
They didn't tell you the truth. You feel lonely. You feel hurt, very discouraged.
When you think about all the things that happen to people and the reactions we have, how do you feel? You just want to say, you know what, I don't have to put up with this anymore. And you just decide, I'm going to walk away. I quit.
I give up. I don't have to do this. I don't have to stay here.
How do you really and truly feel? Because you see, as a follower of Jesus Christ, giving up is not who we are. Surrendering is not who we are. Throwing in the towel as we say, that's not who we are. And I think sometimes when I see these people walking on the street and they look like they're not going anywhere.
I know this is not true of all of them probably. But I think the way they come across to me is, they gave up on life. They quit. They don't understand what it means to keep on keeping on.
And they just gave up on life and decided they'd just take what life has to offer. That's not who we are. As a follower of Jesus Christ, we have the right to expect the best from Him.
He has the right to expect the best from us. And so, when I think about giving up, that just doesn't fit who we are. And if you're in the process right now, giving up on your marriage, giving up on your job, giving up on your children, giving up on your financial situation, whatever the situation may be, before you give up, you stop and ask yourself the question, does this fit who I am as a follower of Jesus? And this message is all about keeping on keeping on. And that is to have the courage to keep on keeping on.
You don't have to give up and quit. There is an answer and a solution to what God wants to do in your life at this point, no matter what it is. So, I want you to turn, if you will, to Second Timothy and this fourth chapter. And Paul is writing to the young pastor Timothy and giving him some wonderful advice. He's coming to the end of his life now. In fact, Paul dies around sixty-seven A.D. He's killed by Nero, the emperor.
And it's interesting that the very next year Nero committed suicide. And so, he's encouraging Timothy at this point. And beginning in chapter four and verse one, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge, the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom, preach the Word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teaches in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn to myths. But you be sober in all things. Endure hardship. Do the work of an evangelist. Fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought a good fight.
I've finished the course. I've kept the faith. In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who love His appearing. And this is his challenge to young Timothy. As I said, he is a young pastor. And now we find him listening to the Apostle Paul give him a warning and a challenge and a word of encouragement that no matter what he goes through, you don't give up and you don't quit.
And as I think about all the characters of the New Testament, for example, no one fits the qualification of a one who never quits like the Apostle Paul. When you think about his life and think about how he lived it out, and you may be one of those persons today who wants to quit. And you think you have a pretty good reason to quit and you have a good reason to walk out. You may legitimately and reasonably think, well, I don't have to do this and I don't have to stay here.
And I think of many pastors that I've talked with over the years who've said, this is what's going on in my church and I decided I don't have to put up with this. I don't have to keep doing this. I don't have to live like this.
I don't like to have my family treated this way. I don't have to do it. And when they ask me what I think, here's what I tell them.
Yes, you do. You have to do what you're doing until God tells you to do something else. And Paul is encouraging Timothy. He says, now look, there's going to come a day when they're not going to believe what you're saying.
They want someone to tickle their ears to make them feel good. But you stay steady, steady, sober, calm in the situation. You keep doing what God has called you to do. And then he talks about his own life because of what he's been through in life. Now, when I think about what Paul suffered in life, you have to ask the question, what motivated him to keep on keeping on when everything in him would have said, quit?
But there's something that Paul knew, something that he did that every single one of us need to understand in our life because we're all going to be tested or have been tested many times to just say, you know what, I don't have to put up with this. I quit. I give up.
I walk away. There are plenty of quitters. And yet, quitters don't get anywhere in life. People who give up don't get anywhere in life. So, I want us to look at the reasons, the motivations that Paul had to keep going when the going got very rough.
So, the first one I want us to notice here is this. One of the things that kept Paul from giving up and kept him keeping on keeping on was the awareness that God was with him. And when I think about so many things that the apostle Paul said about God's presence with him, he said, for example, in Acts twenty-three, which is going through a difficult time, he says, the Lord stood by him. He knew the Lord was with him. The Lord stood by him. And he said to him on another occasion, don't be afraid, I am with you. And so, all through Paul's epistles, we are continually reminded that God is with us. If I should ask you if you believe God is with you, you'd probably say yes. But do you claim that when times are tough? Do you remind yourself that no matter what's going on and who's treating me this way, Almighty God is with me.
He said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Now, either I have to believe God'll do what He says He'll do or I don't. If I begin to question Him, I'll begin to consider giving up in some situations. If I believe what He says is true and that He's true to His Word, I'll not give up no matter what's going on. And oftentimes people give up right before victory is about to break loose, right before opportunity stares them in the face, they're willing to give up. People are willing to give up right before there can be a conciliation. Right before things can change, they want to give up. That's why it's dangerous to ever give up because when we give up in a situation, we're giving up on God. He says, I'll never leave you nor forsake you. As long as you and I are walking in His will and His way, it doesn't make any difference how tough it gets. If we don't give up, we're going to be rewarded.
Think about this. He says, shipwrecked all these times, a day and a night in the sea, and over and over and over again, the Jews tried their best to kill Him. They tried to trap Him. They tried to kill Him. They did everything imaginable to get rid of Him. And yet you find Him in jail rejoicing in the Lord and praising God for what He's doing in His life.
You know why? Because Paul never felt rejected by Jesus or that Jesus Christ was absent in any situation that He was in. The awareness of His presence will take you through things that nothing else will. A second thing is this, the experience of God's strength within Him.
Whenever you feel weak, and you see, when we feel weak and worn and then these things hit us, we are more prone to give in to them and to give up. He talked about the strength that was in Him. And when you think about all these experiences that He survived, He had to understand and experience the strength of Almighty God. Three shipwrecks, beaten all of these many times, jailed.
In other words, He was a frequent visitor to the jail. And so, all of these things He's experiencing, how did He experience it? He had strength. But He was not necessarily a strong man physically. And what was that strength? The same strength that you and I have to go through any situation we face in life, and that is the strength of Almighty God. Now, most of us know the verse when Paul said in Philippians, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Listen, he was aware of God's presence. And being aware of God's presence, he was aware of the strength that God released in him in that awareness of His presence. No matter what you're going through, what you're facing, you have the strength of God within you because you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you. And that's what Jesus promised His disciples. He knew that they were going to be tempted to give up.
He knew they were going to go through times that would seem impossible. And He said the Holy Spirit will be in you, with you, and upon you. And He will empower you, strengthen you to do whatever the Father called you to do. Every single one of us has within us adequate strength to do the will of God. You may say, well, I don't feel like I do.
You may not feel like it. But the truth is, are you claiming it? And you can have spiritual gifts and spiritual blessings. If you don't claim them, you don't understand them.
And if you don't understand them, you can't experience them. And so, one of the things that kept the apostle Paul from giving up, keep on keeping on, was he experienced the strength of Almighty God in his life. When he stood in councils and they criticized him and wanted to crucify him if possible, everything they did, he never gave up. He never quit. Now, did that mean that he always just stood like a man? I'm sure there were times when he was frightened for the moment. And this is why the Lord would say to him, I am beside you.
I'm going to be with you in this, no matter what you're going through. And so, when I think about his prayer, for example, for the Ephesians, he was encouraging them to pray for the strength that God, that third chapter, the strength that God would give them for what He called them to do. And then when he talks about putting on the spiritual armor, how does he start that in the sixth chapter of Ephesians? He says, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. And then he tells us, even before he gets to the armor, which he talks about a helmet of salvation to protect our mind, the breastlet of righteous to protect our emotions, and this girl of truth, so we'll always stand in the truth. And he talks about the sandals of salvation, always ready to go. And then he talks about the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, and then above all else, he says, and above all else, the shield of faith. He starts out saying, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
That's what you and I should start every day with. The awareness that God is with us today and that we have the strength of God to face anything and everything and anybody and everybody, no matter what the situation is, because listen, it isn't our strength, it's His strength. If they go on my strength or your strength, some days we wouldn't get up. But it's the strength of the Lord. That is, it's, watch this, it's the divine energy of God. It's the power of Almighty God within us. And that doesn't mean you won't have difficult situations and circumstances, but He will enable us to live through it no matter what. And so, what kept Him from giving up when He had so many reasons to give up was His awareness of God's presence.
You and I need the same. When likewise, the same thing with Him, and that is, we have the right to experience the strength of God. You have the Holy Spirit living within you. That is, you have God on the inside. And He's not going to call you, watch this carefully, He's not going to call you to do anything, face anything, experience anything without Him giving you the strength to do it. He says He causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him, to those who call according to His purpose. And sometimes He allows us to get in situations we think, Oh God, I don't know that I can handle this.
Why does He allow some of those things? Because it gives Him the opportunity to show us how real He is, how faithful He is, how powerful He is, and how adequate you and I are when we put our trust in Him. And that's what Paul is saying here in these passages. Somebody says, Well now, how am I going to have that kind of courage?
Well, two things. And I say it every single Sunday on purpose. If you're going to have courage in your life, and you're going to understand that God is working in your life, you've got to be in the Word. This is the mind of God. This is the heart of God. This is the Spirit of God. Here's where we find all the gifts of God, what God is up to in your life. If I neglect the Word of God and neglect spending time with Him, I'm not going to be strong.
It's the Word of God. Because as I read what He says, listen, going through some difficult time and thinking, God, forget it. And I come to this verse, he says, God causes all these things to work together for good because I have called you. Then I don't have to give up.
Why? I know that whatever I'm facing, as tough as it is, my God, because He's always truthful, He's going to turn it for my good. There are some things I cannot figure out how God turns for good, but He does. He never said, Understand me. He said, Trust me.
Just trust me. And that is the key. And the apostle Paul certainly knew what he was doing in his relationship to God. He didn't give up. He didn't quit.
He just kept moving along, trusting Him. Then, of course, the assurance of His will for us. There's nothing that's more reassuring to keep us from giving up than knowing that we're in the will of God.
You don't give up, you don't quit. And he said, for example, he knew where he was when he faced all of these situations. He says, The Father sent me to preach the gospel. And he said, for example, in the thirteenth chapter of Acts in that forty-seventh verse, he says, assuring us that he knows what God has called him to do. He says, for example, that God said to him, I've placed you as the light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. Paul knew exactly where he was in life once he was saved. He knew exactly what God was up to. God says, I've called you to preach the gospel, and I have made you a light to the Gentiles, because first of all, the gospel was only being preached to the Jews. And so, because of the way they treated him and because they rejected him, he just brushed it off of his clothes and said, I'm going to the Gentiles, because that's exactly what God intended for him to do.
So, the issue is this. If I'm going to be able to keep on keeping on, I've got to know that I'm doing what God says do, how God says do it, when God says do it, and where He says do it. I don't even have to understand why. It's always good to understand why, and most of the time we will. But if you want to have the strength that you don't give up and you don't quit. And remember what I said, how many times people give up and quit right before the blessing? Right before God opens the door, they walk away from the opportunity. Right before God settles an issue in a marriage, oftentimes somebody walks away. And so, that gives up all possibility of renewing that marriage.
You can just go through illustration after illustration. You don't give up because you may give up at the very time when the best that you're looking for is there waiting for you. And the apostle Paul knew that. He understood he was in the will of the Father. And for example, wherever he went, God was there guiding him and leading him. He was on the second missionary journey. He was about to go east and preach in the gospel, and the Spirit of God said, I want you to go west.
If he had gone east, you and I would not be where we are today. But he, but the Spirit of God spoke to him. And then likewise, when the Lord spoke to him, made it very clear where he was, he gave us the same promises. Listen, Paul didn't have a single promise we don't have. And remember this, Paul didn't have the New Testament.
He had the Old Testament and then he had the sayings of Jesus, but he didn't have it down like you and I have it on the printed page. And so, when I come to this question of what God is up to, here's a verse I always come back to in Psalm thirty-two eighty. He says, I will teach you in the way in which you should go. I will guide you with my eye upon you. He didn't say I'd make it easy, but he said, I will teach you in the way you should go. You don't have to give up and quit.
You don't have to wonder what's going on. I'll show you that. And then in Proverbs three, five, and six, he says, Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not to your own understanding.
You may not understand it. In all your ways, acknowledge Him. He says, I'll direct your path. We don't have to give up and we don't have to quit Him.
We don't have to wonder what to do. God has already assured us of His guidance and direction. Thank you for listening to The Courage to Keep Going. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.
