What to Think About When You’re About to Give Up

Spiritual experiences prove that God is real. One recent experience of surreal delight – even in the midst of a chaotically incomprehensible life – as a very personal experience of God’s Presence and Power – threw me into a fit of laughter. Suddenly I was laughing in a different voice, a distinctly higher tone, than ever before. I was driving so I couldn’t tell, but my facial muscles also contorted in a new way. Then, just as suddenly, I was slapped with gratitude impact because of some brand new friendships I’d made – I’d been embraced. I was praying immediately. Then I found myself, just as quickly, laughing in this peculiar way again. Such laughter was zero percent contrived. I couldn’t have held it back if I tried to.

There were two great and competing pressures on me at that particular moment; separate reasons of sufficient magnitude that brought me to the end of myself.

In weakness there is strength if we detect our weakness and succumb humbly before God. There is no sense in continuing to fight the purposes of God when to work with is to taste rest. To work with is to run with the grain. To work with is the grace of God.

There are some certain realities that leave us reeling in a state of rollicking normalcy. Such moments of truth would rock us to the core if we weren’t so locked into the Lord and the Strength of his Spirit.

This explains my laughter as I reflect: all I could do was hold on for dear life and keep stepping as if God would continue putting ground beneath my feet.

This explains my tears as I prayed: there is such a wonder in how God can transform an otherwise listless morning into a timeless classic of personal experience.

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Our thoughts have the power to transform our perspective, so we might transcend our struggles.

One thought can change the game. One thought based in true belief. One thought of praise in the darkness. One thought of regal grateful fortitude in the quicksand of despair.

Thinking can transform the impossible into a point-by-point analysis on how to solve a problem. (We make so many possibilities into impossibilities.)

What goes on within us in a pressurised moment is either hope or despair. Our attitude is everything. When we might choose hope, why would despair even be a viable option?

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.