Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight!

I've sort of adopted that saying as one of my mantras if you will, for my life.  It's profound impact is in it's simplicity and it's piercing meaning.  It simply says , never, ever give up.  I heard the source was from an old Japanese proverb which means that literally you can bounce back from any form of adversity and giving in is not an option.   It was just this past week when I was tested a bit in this self adopted philosophy and reminded that God allows trials to His children for very specific reasons.  Although I have to tell you, I thought I had been through enough for awhile.  Now this is not a pity party by any means and I sincerely hope you can take away from it some encouragement for your own life like God revealed to me for mine.
  For those of you who know us, our family has been through a difficult time in the past few years.  In short I lost my long career in real estate due to the economic downturn, our home was foreclosed on, we've used up all of our security in savings, IRA's, stocks and other resources to survive for as long as we could while I spent the last 18 months looking for work.  Application after application, interviews, call backs and seemingly incessant job searching yielded me no results.  But in that time to add insult to injury, we also suffered the sudden loss of my loving father, our faithful lab Gideon and are struggling to hold onto our beloved ministry center here in our town.  The proverbial full plate for sure.  I sometimes wonder in my daily devotions if God is hearing my cries and seeing my tears even though I know in my soul HE does and He cares.  Anyway, for the past four plus months I've been working a very modest job from home booking cruises for travel agents for a major cruise line.  Just yesterday they cut me off completely and did not renew me for another 90 days.   The hours were being drastically cut back and for a myriad of other issues which are not worth discussing, I was dropped.  Just like that!  In a matter of hours after receiving a boiler plate letter from an unknown supervisor my login codes were rescinded, my hours for work were removed from my portal and I was banned from every access to the company I was just working for just 24 hours earlier.  Absolute sterility and almost surreal to say the least.  Believe me this was only a $10 an hour job, but it was a job.  It gave me a measure of self esteem and allowed me to be productive and contribute to my families basic needs even though it wasn't enough.  It happened so fast I was almost numb.  Then I was mad, then disappointed, and finally I found myself knocked down again.  Not physically of course but emotionally.  Losing this little job took the starch out my shorts so to speak, temporarily.  I went to bed last night after my wife encouraged me and stared at the ceiling in my bedroom and the emotions of the past few years flooded over and the tears came for a bit.  When I finally fell asleep I tossed and turned and woke up with this simple phrase in my head, and it wouldn't go away.  Sort of like the dumb jingle or song that get's in your mind and tortures you for an entire day looping over and over.  I knew right then and there that God was doing one of his not so subtle nudges through the Holy Spirit that often accompanies hard times in my life when I find myself wallowing too long in sorrow.  You see God is not a quitter, nor is the Holy Spirit and most importantly not Jesus Christ His son.  I was instantly taken to the little cobblestone street in Jerusalem some two thousand years ago when a bloodied, brutally beaten, exhausted and mocked man of peace was forced to carry the cross He would be crucified on to Calvary.  Subjected the past week to a sham trial, false and unfounded accusations, beaten and scourged to within hair of death, He was then shamefully paraded along the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha.  All the way being whipped, mocked, spit upon and laughed at by a feverish crowd set upon His death.  He collapsed many times in exhaustion, drenched in sweat and blood and in great physical pain.  But he got up, again and again!  Why?  Why didn't He just stay down and die in the street?  He knew the death that awaited Him.  It was the cruelest form of execution known to man in it's day and brutally efficient in it's torture to the human body and spirit.  Yet He got up and went on.  You know the rest but let me tell you why.  He was born to die.  He is the lamb of God and the propitiation for all of our sins and He was on a mission here on earth that would not be denied.  It was the completion of His death and subsequent resurrection of Jesus Christ that stands as the ultimate unselfish act of love and the most vivid example of sacrifice and obedience ever, period.  He set a standard for moral resolution and unselfish giving that can never be matched.  But it wasn't meant to be.  It was the awesome gift of salvation for us undeserving people from His death that was to be passed on.  Our God has a plan for all of us who He loves most assuredly.  We cannot give up because it is in the midst of sorrow that we will find the joy.  It is in the bitterness that we will find the sweet.  It is in the testing that we will find the resolve.  No person I have ever known or admired who professes their faith in God is without the scars of tribulation.  But the scars are physical only because God forges the tested soul in His fire and their testimony is proof and their gift to others who want to give up!  So I got up!  I am more than a conqueror through Christ Jesus and so are you.  God will use your heartache for the mending of others.  It is then and only then that you will come to understand that the end justifies the means. So let it be with you.

2 Timothy 4: 6-8

 
6 For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Now there is in store 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 have longed for his appearing.