Why Don’t You Just Quit?
Sometimes, it’s easy to convince ourselves that quitting is the best option. Would it really be that bad if we were to break our diet? Would it be terrible to give up on a rocky relationship? Would it really hurt anybody if we just stopped reading the Bible?
In our best moments, I think we all know quitting difficult things just because they are difficult is never the best option. Yet, there’s often a very loud voice in our head screaming a panoply of reasons why we should reconsider those commitments.
Michael Hyatt—the CEO of Thomas Nelson, Inc.—articulates how he counteracts these thoughts in his post, What Keeps You Going When You Want to Quit. It really has me thinking about why I don’t give up on certain things, and why I have—possibly foolishly—quit others.
Here’s a brief excerpt:
What these same voices fail to tell you is that there is a distinction between the dream and the work required to obtain it. Everything important requires work. Hard work. And sometimes there is a long arc between the dream and it’s realization. That is where the work and the transformation occur.
In my experience, the thing that keeps me going is answering this question, “Why am I doing this?” I then try to remember the dream. “Why I am doing this hard thing that I am doing.” I try to get connected to the original vision, because that keeps me going when the going gets tough.
There are a few verses in the second chapter of Job that have stuck with me ever since I first read them. Job has just lost everything he owns and is covered in sores. Sitting destitute in the street, his wife comes to him and tells him to curse God and die. He amazingly responds, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
Job’s wife has given up on the situation, and if we were honest, many of us would as well. We’d start to reconsider our commitment to a God that would allow such heartache. Yet, Job examines the situation and concludes that it’s not for him to judge his commitment to God based on his present circumstances. As Mr. Hyatt would say, he stayed “connected to the original vision.”
What about you? What keeps you going when times get hard?
Quiting in a chaos situation is an easy option. But when u have faith that is founded in the truth of God, somehow to quit is not an option but an excuse! Quiting is only applicable to the old self – to the old self where one person hasn’t personally encounter Jesus Christ yet in his life.
I have a job that I really really don’t like and I feel like I’m going down a dead end road in doing something thats just not me. I want to quit so bad and start looking for full time work since this is just part time but is it right to quit or is it right to wait on God to provide me another job?
Sometimes, quitting may be the only option or the option that will keep you safe.
My family and I helped start a non-denominational Christian ‘fellowship’ in Florida. By all rights, it was a church in everything but name.
After about a year, the atmosphere in the fellowship became toxic and adversarial with the Pastor, along with a number of supporters, on one side and the rest of us on the other. I certainly have an opinion on how I believe it all happened, but I won’t post it.
The atmosphere was so bad that my folks couldn’t stay anymore and stopped going. I felt a duty to stay because of the responsibilities I had accepted. After a month, an event occurred which sealed it for me. The next week, I dropped everything off and I left.
Yes, I quit but if I stayed I would have taken my life.
I think God was telling me to leave, to work on my own emotions and health and to remove myself from that situation.
Easter Sunday, this year, my folks and I went to another church and are fitting in.
My point is very simple…If you’re in a situation you need to escape from, leave. If it’s a job, a relationship, a church, it does not matter. I don’t believe God wants His people to suffer.
Advice given to a crowd of students by the Dalai Lama: “Before you can have ‘external disarmament’, you must have ‘internal disarmament’.” (The 14th Dalai Lama in a speech given to students at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida in February, 2010)