In the first post of this series, “What to Do When You Feel Like Giving Up”, we looked at Elijah at Carmel. Elijah wanted to live life excellently and do great things for God. He had great dreams to bring Israel back to God. But things did not turn out like he thought and he was tempted to quit. We talked about how fatigue factored into this and the importance of keeping up with your physical needs. In part two of this series, let’s look at some other factors like comparison and focusing on facts instead of feelings.

1 Kings 19:1-8 (NLT)
1 When Ahab got home, he told Jezebel what Elijah had done and that he had slaughtered the prophets of Baal. 2 So Jezebel sent this message to Elijah: “May the gods also kill me if by this time tomorrow I have failed to take your life like those whom you killed.” 3 Elijah was afraid and fled for his life. He went to Beersheba, a town in Judah, and he left his servant there. 4 Then he went on alone into the desert, traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” 5 Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree. But as he was sleeping, an angel touched him and told him, “Get up and eat!” 6 He looked around and saw some bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water! So he ate and drank and lay down again. 7 Then the angel of the LORD came again and touched him and said, “Get up and eat some more, for there is a long journey ahead of you.” 8 So he got up and ate and drank, and the food gave him enough strength to travel forty days and forty nights to Mount Sinai, the mountain of God. 9 There he came to a cave, where he spent the night. But the LORD said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 10 Elijah replied, “I have zealously served the LORD God Almighty. But the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed every one of your prophets. I alone am left, and now they are trying to kill me, too.”

Don’t Compare Yourself with Others

• To protect yourself against giving up, don’t compare yourself to others.
• Elijah said, “I am no better than my fathers.’ – 1 Kings 19:4
• This was a tough statement for Elijah to confess about himself.
  • His fathers were disobedient to God.
  • They murdered prophets. They worshipped idols.
• Your worst day in God is way better than your best day as a sinner.
• God never asked Elijah to be like his fathers.
  • God never asked you to be like anyone else.
  • God asked you to be like Him.
    • There is only one person that you can be and that is yourself.
  • Be the best you that you can be.
• Comparison only leads to pride or depression.
  • If you try to act like people you esteem, you will surely fail because you don’t have their gifts and abilities.
  • Your heavenly gifts and equipment was given to you so that you can be yourself.
• Remember, the people you highly esteem have many non-strengths.
• No one is perfectly strong in every area.

James 5:17 (NLT)
17 Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for the next three and a half years!

• Recognize but don’t advertise your non-strengths.
• Don’t label yourself
  • If you ate too much at one sitting, don’t say “I’m a pig.
  • If you trip and fall, don’t say “I’m a klutz”.
  • If you make a mistake, don’t say “I’m a failure.”
  • If you’re tired, don’t say “I’m old.”

Focus On the Real Facts Not Your Real Feelings

• Elijah acted on the feelings of fear.
  • Jezebel threatened to kill him.
  • This was not a real fact.
    • Jezebel did not want to kill Elijah!
    • If she did, she would not have sent a messenger to tell him that he was going to kill him. He would have sent the hit man to Elijah to do the job.

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• Elijah acted on feelings of fatigue.
  • He asked to die.
  • This was not a real fact either.
    • If he wanted to die, he should have just stayed where he was and let Jezebel do him in.
  • Great feelings of quitting can often follows great achievements; so don’t be surprised if you feel drained after a personal victory.
  • Being armed with this understanding means you have an ability to head it off.
  • During these times of vulnerability, avoid the temptation to think that God owes you for your efforts.
  • It was His strength that gave you victory.
• Nothing is more depressing than the realization that you are not a hero.
• Sometimes situations don’t play out like you thought they were going to.

Let us take things as we find them. Let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not. We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them. – Cardinal John Henry Newman

• Have you ever built something up in your mind and got so excited about and then came crashing down when it wasn’t what you mentally dreamed it would be? Someone tells you that they are going to give some money and your thinking man $500.00 dollars and it turns out to be $5.00.
• Elijah though that he was the only one left serving the Lord.
  • This was not a real fact.
    • The fact was God had 7000 others Elijah did not know about.
• The enemy will try to make you feel isolated.
  • You are not the only one going through a situation
  • You are not being uniquely tempted by the devil
  • Others have experienced what you’re going through.
• Most of the world’s great souls have had to overcome loneliness.
  • We’re all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.
• What’s the difference between aloneness and loneliness?
  • Aloneness is spiritual space.
    • Now that I am alone with Jesus, I can recover, repair regroup.
  • Loneliness is inner emptiness.
• Shakespeare, Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Lincoln were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would work.

In solitude, our heart can slowly take off its many protective devices and can grow so wide and deep that nothing human is strange to it. Then we can become contrite, crushed, and broken, not just by our own sins and failings, but also by the pain of our fellow human beings. Then we can give birth to a new awareness reaching far beyond the boundaries of our human efforts. And then we who, in our fearful narrow-mindedness, were afraid that we would not have enough food for ourselves, will have to smile. – Henri Nouwen

If we possess inward solitude, we will not fear being alone, for we know that we are not alone. Neither do we fear being with others, for they do not control us. In the midst of noise and confusion we are settled into a deep inner silence. – Richard Foster

Some Real Facts about Real Feelings

• Feelings are not facts.
• True facts are located in the Bible.
• True faith acts on supernatural facts and gets supernatural results.
• Don’t fight a fact, deal with it.
• Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.
• Facts can be stubborn things.
• Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

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Fact and Feeling Statements

• Feeling: “I don’t always feel close to God.”
• The fact is I am.

Romans 8:35 (NCV)
35 Can anything separate us from the love Christ has for us? Can troubles or problems or sufferings or hunger or nakedness or danger or violent death?

• Feeling: “I don’t always feel victorious.”
• The fact is I am.

2 Corinthians 2:14 (NCV)
14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in victory through Christ. God uses us to spread his knowledge everywhere like a sweet-smelling perfume.

• Feeling: “I don’t always feel successful.”
• The fact is I am.

Isaiah 48:17 (NKJV)
17 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the LORD your God, Who teaches you to profit, Who leads you by the way you should go.

• Feeling: “I don’t always feel healed.”
• The fact is I am.

1 Peter 2:24 (NLT)
24 He personally carried away our sins in his own body on the cross so we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. You have been healed by his wounds!

• Feeling: “I don’t always feel acceptable to God.”
• The fact is I am.

2 Corinthians 5:21 (NLT)
21 For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

ILLUSTRATION: Act Like It
Martin Luther once was so depressed over a prolonged period that one day his wife came downstairs wearing all black. Martin Luther said, “Who died?” She said, “God has.” He said, “God hasn’t died.” And she said, “Well, live like it and act like it.”

Call to Action:

Now it’s your turn. You have sat and listened patiently. But progress is not made sitting but by participating. What are you going to do now that you are armed with some Bible facts? What are you going to believe, the facts or your feelings? What are you going to tell yourself after today? The same feelings of fear, the same sensations of fatigue, the same false optimism, the same feelings of isolation and loneliness are waiting at your house. Waiting for you to pull up. Are you going to evict these freeloader feelings and welcome into your home the facts of God’s Word? What about comparison? What kind of adjustments are you going to make here? Are you going to quit trying to be like Mike? Or are you going to continue to label yourself into despondency?

Question: How have you combated the feeling to quit? What did you do to overcome it? Please leave your comments in the comments section below.