Overcoming, and Never Quit!

“To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.” Revelation 3:21
Jonathan Bartlett brought this scripture to my attention the other day, and as I sat and thought about it for a while I was asking myself how a man overcomes? There are many directions I could go with this and maybe will sometime, but as I was thinking about this scripture again today while I was hauling firewood some thoughts came to mind that I’ll share. I had cut up an entire cottonwood tree into fireplace lengths and all that needed to be done was to split it and haul it out of the woods to the stack of wood that I have near the cabin. This tree was a really big old one with rounds that I could barely pick up and knots, twists and crotches that make splitting a miserable job. What was just as bad was the fact that it was all the way on the opposite side of the trees from where I wanted it to end up and there was no way I could drive the truck out to it to haul it that way since the snow is too deep there. The only solution was to pick it up one armload at a time and carry it on the winding trail through the trees, duck through a lilac hedge and over to the woodpile where I could stack it. As I stood there looking at the huge pile of wood scattered all over the place and deciding that there was just no way I was going to be able to do this and I might as well forget it, the scripture came to mind- “To him that overcometh…” and, while I know it is meaning something other than wood hauling I figured there had to be a start somewhere so I picked up the first armload and trudged through the snow to the woodpile. Partway through I was ready to do something else! But keeping “He that overcometh…” in mind I decided there was no way I was going to let the stupid old cottonwood tree overcome me and decided not to make anything to eat until all of the wood was stacked neatly! This was before breakfast. The entire tree was stacked neatly where I wanted it just about the time it got dark this evening! As I sit here my back is in agony but other than that doing all of that didn’t hurt me one bit, it really would have been stupid to quit before I even started just because it looked like a hard job. Never give up! The person who succeeds is not the one who holds back fearing failure, nor the one who never fails; but he is the one who moves on in spite of failure. There are and have been times where I have desperately wanted to just give up, and some of those times I am ashamed to say, I have given up. The problem I am finding with giving up is those problems are still there to stare at me in the face when I wake up the next morning so giving up really does no good, especially in the long run. Sitting here licking my wounds only gives a bitter aftertaste. Not much damages our dignity or pride more than stumbling, or in some cases, actually crashing down flat on our faces from a self imposed lofty height! Sometimes our dignity needs to be taken down to proper size and pride really has little place in the life of a Christian. We won’t die from having our pride and dignity demolished, though we may feel like the rug has been pulled out from under us and we are flat on our faces. What will destroy our life is to lie there in the mud refusing to get up and go onward.
I am not a public speaker, but there have been times when I have had to do it, usually I talk too fast just to get it over with but at the end I find that I enjoyed every minute of it. One of the funniest stories I have ever heard about public speaking is a true one where the speaker was to stand on a stage that was about 4 feet high above the audience with a complete drop off not too far behind the podium. This particular speaker got on the stage and was so nervous that when he tried to speak nothing came out. He took a step back and tried again but his mind was entirely blank. He tried again by taking a step back and fell, disappearing gracefully behind the stage. I wasn’t there but those who were got a good laugh, in fact one man in the audience laughed so hard he fell out of his chair into the center aisle! Now if I were that speaker I would have been very glad to stay behind that stage forever! Can you imagine scrambling back up onto the stage, probably getting dust all over yourself in the process, and calmly walking up to the stand and (with a wildly laughing audience) trying to give a long forgotten speech? I don’t know if he ever finished his speech but I hope he did. That would be a perfect case of not giving up even after crashing down and doing a bad job of it at the start.
We all stumble in one way or another, some harder than others, which just points to how high of a false pedestal they have put themselves, or how big of a lesson God has for them to learn. The common thing about it all that we all need to remember is, never, ever give up! Never quit! When you fall, fail, do a poor job of something or turn back there is only one thing to do. Get up, try again, do a better job of it and forge onward toward the goal. If we never try we will never get anywhere and certainly will never overcome like our Savior did as it says in Revelation 3. When I get to thinking things are just too miserable or rough I have to remind myself, “If it were not for the dark skies we would not see the stars”
Stumblers that give up are a dime a dozen. I would prefer to be a stumbler that gets up, which is often a lot harder than giving up but so much better in the end. I’ve recently found that even bad news can look like good news if seen from the proper perspective and that helps to spur us onward even if the road ahead looks tough and we want to give up. So next time something comes up where I just want to give up I guess I’ll just have to look at it from a different perspective, get up and charge ahead making sure not to quit!
If we look in scripture we find many people that wouldn’t give up, that got up and continued running the race even after falling. Off the top of my head I think of Joseph, who couldn’t have gone much lower than where he was, a jailed slave. Or how about Peter, who after denying Christ, got back up and ended up being used specially by God as a special witness for the Hebrews. Think about it, he denied his Savior three times! Talk about stumbling! That takes the cake, but how often do I deny my Savior? I don’t like to think about it really. The key is that Peter got up and got back on track, he kept going. It would have been easy for him to give up in despair like Judas did after he denied the Savior. He gave up and killed himself. Not Peter, he overcame and kept going. How about King David when he had his problem with Bathsheba and murdered her husband? Talk about crashing down and falling flat on your face! That is a pretty low place to fall down to, but David, after a time of genuine repentance (an essential part of getting back up and overcoming) overcame, got back in the race and won. I would like to keep him as my example. Not the falling part, God forbid! The repentance and the overcoming part is what I want. When I am down it helps to remember that “Whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved”
I have to remind myself all the time, but it is really worth the effort. Never give up! Never quit! Overcome the obstacles and keep going! Even a small guy like me can move a mountain one shovelful at a time if I just keep going and never give up.
“Good, better, best;
Never let it rest, Till your good is better, And your better best.”