Introduction To My First Book - Don't Give Up

Hello, everybody. This is Andy Cain from God Center Theology. I hope you're having a wonderful day. I want to take this time to introduce you to my first book that I'm working on called Don't Give Up.

Finding Joy and Hope in Christ

Don't give up. Don't give up. No matter what you do, don't give up. Our joy and hope are in Christ. They're not based in circumstances. They're based, rooted, and founded on the bedrock of Christ. If you're like me, you've lived a large portion of your life based on your joy on circumstances.

Christ-Centered Joy Rather Than Circumstantial Happiness

Whether you had enough money, whether you had the right job, the right ministry, friends, etc., etc., and you found that you had moments of happiness and joy, but down deep there was this deep-seated uneasiness combined with a lack of joy.

So, whether we're doing the comparison game, whether we're doing discontentment, all these things we think in terms of, you know, I'm happy, I'm angry, I'm sad, whatever. Well, our joy, just like our salvation is unified spiritually in Christ and our identity then becomes Christ, we also take on and should take on joy that is Christ centered in and combined with hope that is a function of who Christ is and what he has done.

Hope meaning what it is that we long for, that we're patient for, the thing that keeps us moving, the thing that motivates us. Joy, don't think of it so much in terms of an emotion, but a disposition, a worldview, a joyful, positive, hopeful disposition and worldview.

Learning to Trust God Through Experience

And this true joy is in the experiential learning that comes from truly living for and learning to trust Christ. The only way we'll ever learn how to trust God in this world is to be put in situations where you guessed it, you have to trust God.

Another way around it, you can have all the book knowledge in the world, you can have all the people in the world tell you how something should be or how it should feel or whatever, but until you have actually lived it, it's very difficult for you to understand it.

And so I'm going to talk about in the book how, you know, it means a lot when somebody says, you know, Hey, I, you know, I feel for you, I would love to help you, but it means so much more when someone says, Hey, I know how that feels.

I've been through that and I can help you walk through it. And anyone that is worth their salt, that's going to help you walk through something is ultimately going to point you to Christ and how it's his power that helps you live and go through things.

Psalm 119 and the Means of Grace

But we understand that one of the means of grace that we have in this life is other Christians. And I'm going to talk about, I'm going to be exegeting Psalm 119, 81 through 88. And we're going to learn this because it talks about how the psalmist is revived.

He's energized. He, he is able to go through both circumstantial and the people issues of life. And he says, here, revive me according to your loving kindness so that I may keep the testimony of your mouth.

We keep the testimony of God and we display it and show it when we walk through suffering with a joyful worldview, a joyful disposition that's founded and rooted in Christ, regardless of our circumstances, make us happy, angry, sad emotions change daily minute by minute sometimes depend on what's happening to us.

But regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what we're going through at any point in time, the bedrock of joy that undergirds it all can remain intact because it's not based on us to maintain our joy.

Just like our salvation and justification is based in Christ. And I say this all the time, the answer to every question regarding your salvation is Jesus. Well, when we deal with the hope of salvation, we deal with the hope in this life.

When we deal with the joy of salvation, the psalmist refers to this quite often, the joy of our salvation, while that can include emotions, it's not based in emotions. It's particularly human, humanness, fleshly emotions.

It's the joy. And he says here, revive me, energize me according to your loving kindness, according to the power of God, not according to my power, not according to anything that I can produce but he recognizes the source for his hope and joy in the midst of the things that he describes in verses 81 through 87, which is both circumstantial and dealing with people.

The ability, the energy, and the spiritual gusto, if you will, that he will need to endure, persevere while maintaining joy and also hope comes from God. And he notices, recognizes that it is when God helps us through these things and keeps us moving and not giving up that we're able to truly keep and watch over the testimony of your mouth, meaning the testimony of God's mouth, meaning his word.

Writing a God-Centered Book About Perseverance

So when we live with joy, we live in hope in Christ, we truly are living a God-centered life. And so that was really a big change for me and why I wanted to begin working on this book. And I'm probably about somewhere around two-thirds done.

I, you know, I thought I was going to be done a couple weeks ago and then I was like, you know, this part over here needs work and this part over here needs work. And any of you that ever tried to do this or has done this, you know what I'm talking about.

It's a lot of work because you want it to be good. You want it to be, to communicate exactly what you want it to communicate. So that's what I'm working on, but I hope to be done soon. And, uh, there will be some parts that would, you know, deal with my life a little bit and my depression and things I fought through.

God's Power Displayed in Human Weakness

But ultimately this book is about God and it's about what he does through frail human weakness. As he told Paul, my power is perfected. It's completed in working in and through human weakness because it's through that he displays his power when we keep and live out the testimony of God, even in the midst of very, very difficult circumstances.

Encouragement to Persevere in Christ

So if you're like me and you've been tempted to give up and you just feel like there's just no point sometimes that you're never going to make it. And then you look up and you wake up one day and five years have gone by and you're like, man, you know, I did make it and here I am and I'm, I'm, I'm okay.

And I'm still doing good and well, don't give up no matter what, because your joy and your hope is in Christ, not in circumstances. Amen. Well, when it gets ready and it's published, I'll let you know.

So you can check out a copy for yourselves and I hope it'll be a blessing to you. God bless.