Dad, I Give Up Part 2
3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. 2 Timothy 4:3-5
So as a new father, I can’t help but think of all the time I spent with my dad. All the laughs, the hugs, and the humiliating defeats at every game we ever played. You see, Dad was not one to pull punches. If we were going to play a game, he was going to give it his all. It didn’t matter if it was basketball, chess, or the video game Tetris. Oh goodness, the hours we spent in his office playing Tetris on his computer. Playing two player Tetris on a computer meant one person would have to use the letter keys and the other player the arrow keys. Guess who always had to use the letter keys? Me. It was not easy, but I got really good. I mean really really good. I couldn’t stand Dad forcing me to use the letter keys every time, but it pushed me to be better.
And that’s the point. My dad never put me in a position to fail. He never bragged or rubbed it in my face. Anytime we played a game and he won, he would always come back and say, “Now what can you do better next time?” Now there were days when I just flat out wanted to give up because I felt like he put me in a lose lose situation.
Basketball was Dad’s bread and butter and at this point I had never beaten him in a game of one on one. But on this particular day, things were going to be different. We start playing as always and it’s back and forth. I can’t compete with his jump shot, but he can’t compete with my size in the paint. It’s down to the wire and he’s up 9-8. He misses what should have been the game clinching shot so I grab the rebound, I reset and I score. Now It’s 9-9 and it all comes down to this. I manage to get the ball back and get low so I can post dad up on the block. I turn to take my shot and nail it off the backboard to win 10-9. I finally beat my dad at one one one. He looks at me and says, “Let’s play to 15.” Now in my mind the game is over and I’m thinking he wants to play a little longer to kill some time before going home so I’m not really into at this point because I’ve already won. But dad rips off 6 shots in a row to make it 15-10 and declares himself the winner. Now I’m in shock. “But we played to 10.” “We did at first and then I said ‘let’s go to 15’ so I won.”
Now let’s be real. Did my dad change the rules just to keep me from winning? Of course that’s how I felt then. In that moment, I thought he was the grumpy old man who couldn’t stand to lose so he rigged it. But over time, I stopped looking at it as something he stole from me. I think of 2 Timothy 4:5, “…keep your head in all situations, endure hardship…” I can tell you without question that if I had beaten my dad 15-14, he would have been so proud. Because it would have meant I overcame the adversity put before me and kept a level head. My dad was my biggest rival, but he was also my biggest fan. He pushed me to be the best I could be.
I’m sure you have faced circumstances in life that have pushed you so far to the edge of your will power and sanity that you felt completely justified to quit. The key element in those trials is God is always fair. He’s not testing you to see how much you truly love Him. It’s not pass or fail when God allows our faith to be challenged. It’s the ability to keep on keeping on even when life is unfair. The world is going to do everything it can to cause you to stumble and look like a failure. The world is going to be completely unfair, but God isn’t. He doesn’t just level the playing field, He always tilts it in His favor. Isaiah 54:17 says, “No weapon formed against you shall prosper, And every tongue which rises against you in judgment You shall condemn.This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, And their righteousness is from Me,”
The world will cheat you out of the joy in life God offers if you choose to give up when life gets unfair. You are born for so much more than you even realize. Trust that God is looking out for you. Don’t give up on God, because He will never give up on you.
