We Do Not Give Up

2 Corinthians 4:16

“Therefore, We do not give up.”

I believe most of us know and understand that the life we live is filled with highs and lows. We know that things can improve, but things can get really bad at times. I think we are well aware and quite use to the idea that life is nothing but a continual series of ups and downs. It does not matter your profession or your confession. You can be a staunch conservative Christian, or you can be a hand-clapping, foot-stomping, tongue-talking Christian, the narrative is all the same…life is a series of ups and downs.

This goes for everyone everywhere. No one is exempt and no one is above it. No one is beyond it and no one can avoid it. No one can escape it and no one can delay it. No one can change it and no one can deny it. That’s because life happens while you are making plans, and if you could control it, you would. If you could avoid it, you would. If you could change, you would. If you could rearrange it, you would. But since you can’t, you have take life one moment at a time.

And since life is a series of ups and downs, most of us would agree that perhaps we’d like to experience a few more ups than downs. I know this is true because it seems as if things can be down more than they are up. To fuel the flame a little, it also seems that when you think things can get no worse, they do. When you think circumstances can’t get any worse, they do. When you think people can get any worse, they do. And when you think that folk have gone as low as they can, they just have away of reaching an all-time low that exceeds one ability to fathom.

In this past week alone, we’ve seen a new level of crazy. So much craziness has happened until it’s difficult focusing on one aspect of crazy. But for the sake of this sermon, I will only give attention to one aspect of crazy I think we all can relate to. Y’all, Folks have lost their cotton picking mind, and have reached a new level of audacity suggesting that the proper way to teach black history is to suggest that slavery actually benefited the slaves. Just a few months ago, there was this big rush all across America to eliminate AP African American History, which was an attempt to teach the truth about the history of the African slave, as well as other oppressed cultures in this country. The sole objective of teaching this straight forward history was to inform the minds of our upcoming generations of the real truth as it relates to our people, as well as to take responsibility for articulating our own history. The curriculum called for steps to be made towards restorative justice, as well as a called for the consciousness of society to be a WOKE society based on the real atrocities experience in this great country.

However, all across the country, state after state began passing legislation that suppressed this curriculum citing that it teaches young people to hate America rather than to love and honor America. Furthermore, the suppression of this kind of clear un-sanitized approach to black history in America would expose the duplicity and double-standards Black Americans and other minorities have lived with for centuries. Painting this kind of picture for our young minds was considered a kind of treason, anti-American, and disrupts the intent of so many patriotic people to make America great again.

And now, legislation is being pushed to teach version of black history that makes Slavery look like something that salvaged the uncivilized African. This new curriculum teaches the violence that was inflicted upon the slave is somehow the fault of other Slaves, implicating black people as the perpetrators of their on violent and oppressive existence here in America.

Isn’t it crazy that the culprits of years of oppression can flip the script to make it seem like what they did somehow benefits the oppressed? It’s just absurd to require teachers to avoid teaching the truth of a history that took lives, split families, sold human being, and denied civil and human rights, but instead teach a theory that slaves actually benefited from slavery.

There was no benefit in lynching, no benefit in our mothers and daughters being violated, sons being emasculated, no benefit in building generational wealth for by giving free labor to families that saw our people not has human but as property. No benefit living in a country that sanctioned and legislated the horrors that gripped us. There was no benefit being exposed to a religion that only validated slavery but denied all the other aspects of godliness.

The assumption is our people were made stronger and better because of what they want through as slaves. What folks don’t realize is that our folks were strong before slaver, smart, survivors, builders, inventors, strong men and women, families, they didn’t need slavery to prove that and we don’t need lies now to convince us that we somehow benefitted from slavery.

Slavery was hard, difficult, life-threatening, brutal at best. Our people worked from sun up to sun down, survived the told and untold horrors, but the reason why we are still a people, the reason why other minorities are still strong, is because deep in the crevices of our being, in the fiber of our souls, is the uncompromising resolve, “We Do Not Give Up!”

Another layer of insanity was added to this crazy when Julliani admitted to lying about the two election workers in GA. He does not outright come out and says he lied, but instead He does not contest the facts about his deceit, and somehow believes his lies are protected under the first amendment which gives him the freedom of speech. A new level of audacity and entitlement. Like most minorities or people of color, whenever you are in a position where your voice means something, there will be challenges to make you second guess yourself, your character can be assassinated, and integrity can be questioned, and your authority jeopardized. You may get frustrated, reach a breaking point, feel like giving up, but you’ve got to remember “We do not give up!”

Maybe its our DNA, maybe its our self-resolve, maybe its inner since of greatness because we know where we come from, perhaps its all the above. But I also hasten to suggest that its our faith that has sustained us in the midst of life’s challenges. It was our faith that kept us believing in a day of freedom. It was faith that kept our people marching in protest against all the atrocities of oppression. It was our faith that fueled our ancestors’ efforts to build their own schools and educate their own children. It was the faith of our fathers and mothers that believed the next generation should go farther than the previous one.

Our folk taught us that if what you through didn’t kill you, God meant for it to only make you strong. It may not have been the best way of looking at all of the stuff we have had to endure, but over arching truth behind that statement is this, if God takes you to it, God is able to bring you through it. And it’s not just that God is able to take you through it, is that what’s waiting for you on other side is greater than your troubles, greater than your trials, greater than your challenges, greater than your struggles. That means your focus has to be on your outcome, and based on your anticipated outcome, you do not give up!

That’s where we meet the text. it’s at the place where Paul is defending himself against the Corinthians who took issue with his first letter of correction and rebuke. The Corinthian church was known for practicing all the spiritual gifts, and still living sloppy. They were carnal, fleshly, imbalanced, and rejected spiritual authority. When the Apostle Paul addressed these issues, they in a sense clapped back and tried to mute his voice with sarcasm, the same way folks respond when they realized that you are more intelligent than they thought. When you speak with the voice of authority, well informed and clearly at the top of your game, you can almost expect that someone is going to spue some form of sarcasm.

It is here at this juncture that the bible makes it clear that whatever you are going through right now does not compare to what is to come.

If you don’t leave here with anything else from this message, just remember you must be persuaded in your heart and mind that giving up is not an option! We’ve got to wake up every day determined not to give up! This is our declaration! It’s our chant! This is our pep talk, its our self-talk, it’s our reminder that our focus is not just on what we see, but what we cannot see. Dr. Tony Evans says, “If we only see what we see, then we will never see what we cannot see.”

Why then, does Paul state emphatically, “We don’t give up!” Why this declaration?

Valuable

I believe its because every believer has something valuable inside. Verse 7 says, we have a treasure in earthen vessels or jars made of clay. Here’s the idea. Usually, when people have something valuable that they consider a treasure of some sort, they normally put in a container that has equal value or significance so that the treasure can be protected and preserved. However, God has chosen to place the treasure (which is the knowledge of gospel of Jesus Christ, verse 3) in jars made of clay. God placed a perfect treasure in an imperfect vessel. We are imperfect people holding on to a perfect gospel.

And do you know what happens when a perfect gospel gets into the hearts of an imperfect people, we become infectious and contagious, we become influencers for the kingdom of God. And the grace is this, God uses us with all of our imperfections, all of our brokenness, all of our quirks and craziness, so that at the end of the day, we will know that the glory belongs to God.

In other words, we don’t give up because no matter our flaws, no matter our brokenness, no matter our history, present, or even the crazy that is yet to happen, God is power is at work in us so that whenever we take a stand for the gospel, when ever we take a stand for biblical justice, whenever we walk as Salt and Light, and people are blessed, saved, healed, changed, we’ll know…this is not my flesh at work, it’s the power of God. We don’t give up because we have something valuable inside of us, God’s power is working in us, through us, on us, with us, because of us, and in spite of us! It’s not I, but the power of Christ inside!

Viciousness

But secondly, we don’t give up even when there is viciousness surrounding us, vv 8-11. Now to be clear, even though there’s value is us, we still have to deal with viciousness all around us. In fact the scriptures says it like this, “we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed. Believers are like targets, someone or something is always trying to strike you down, our entire existence is marked by the fact that we live identifying with the death of Jesus Christ, and like Christ, we too are candidates for some kind of crucifixion. Real believers are real targets, but even with that, there is a certain knowing you have to possess on the inside that causes you to believe and to speak.

I believe, therefore I speak. What is it that we believe? We believe that the same one who raise up Jesus, will also raise us up, regardless the viciousness around us. That’s how we made is this far, not that it was easy, not that we were favored, not that we always had the answers, not that fate was on our side, but because we believed in something called due season, morning, reciprocity, faithfulness, we kept speaking and we refused to give up. You see, in this day and age we live in, there’s a whole lot of talk about prosperity but not enough talk about perseverance.

Believers don’t just should about the victory, believers go through the battles. Believers don’t just brag on coming out, they testify about going through. Believers don’t just praise God for getting them out of stuff, but they praise God for keeping them in perfect peace and giving them the strength to hold on.

The old church told us, We are soldiers, in the army, we’ve got to fight, although we have to cry, we’ve got to hold up the blood stained banner, we have to hold it up until we die!

And our entire stance is based on what I know and believe about the gospel of Jesus Christ. That gospel says, he died, was buried, but God raised him up. That is why in our preaching, we never leave Jesus on the Cross…We thank God for the Cross, we sing about the cross, we believe in the centrality of the cross, we believe thank God for the cross, but we never leave Jesus on the Cross, yes one day when I was lost, Jesus died on the cross, but we don’t leave him on the cross.

He was buried, but we neither does our narrative leave him in the grave. Oh he was buried. Living he loved me, dying he saved me, and buried he carried my sins far away. We know the buried him, but it was in a borrowed tomb, not a purchased tomb, not a permanent tomb, not a family plot, but a borrowed tomb. We all know that anytime people borrow something, the intent is to return it, to give it back, and we believe he was buried but we never leave him in the grave.

Instead, we declare early Sunday morning, He got up with all power in his hands…and the reason why that is so significant is because every day we are going through changes in our outer person. Our outer man is changing daily, slowing down daily, being attacked daily, frustrated daily, growing older daily, struggling with life viciousness daily, seeing death and destruction daily, but the joy we have is in knowing that the more I look to God, the more I trust in God, the more in lean on God, the more I walk with God, the more I talk with God, the more I keep my mind on God, my inner man is being renewed day by day.

Day by day....

Everything that is going wrong, everything that can go wrong is momentary, temporary, it did not come to stay, it’s not going last always, it’s just a night situation, and God is simply preparing me for a greater level of glory, greater joy, greater peace, prosperity, humility, higher place, and eternal glory...

What I see is temporary, just for now, just for a season, its the season I’m in now, but I believe, therefore I speak, greater is coming and that means despite the viciousness all around me, we still have the victory.

Therefore, we do not give up…because every trial God’s brought us through made us stronger. Strong so we wouldn’t give up on our hopes, dreams, families, faith, You could have quit by now, but the reason why you don’t give up on life is because God has not given up on you, and you’ve been through too much not to praise him,

I almost let go, I felt I just couldn’t take life anymore, problems had be bound, depression weighed me down, but God held me close so I wouldn’t let go! God’s mercies kept me, so I wouldn’t let go.

I’m here today because God kept me, and if you know God kept you, then fight on, press on, run on, hold on, pray on, sing on, shout on, and whatever you do, don’t give up!

Why? Because Jesus didn’t give up, he could have come down from the cross just to save himself, but he died just to save me. He didn’t give up, but early Sunday morning he got up with power and authority.

Is there anybody here with a made up mind, that will shout boldly, I will not give up! You don’t have to worry, or don’t you be afraid, joy comes in the morning, troubles they don’t last always, for there’s a Friend in Jesus who will wipe your tears away, and if your heart’s been broken, lift your hands and say…I know that I can make it, I know that I can stand, no matter what may come my way, my life is in Your hand. With Jesus I can take it, with him I know I can stand, no matter what comes my way, my life is in your hands.

Tell your neighbor, we do not give up!