Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:09] Well, hey friends, welcome back to Friday's edition of the Weekday Podcast. I want to encourage you if you missed any days this week. Maybe use today, maybe use this weekend as a chance to catch up and see if God does not have some encouragement for you. Now, there's something that Paul does in 2nd Corinthians 4 that I don't want you to miss. He opens the chapter with it, he closes the chapter with it, and every single thing in between those two places is the how.
[00:00:32] Here is the start in verse one. Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we receive mercy, we do not lose heart. That's verse one at the end. In verse 16, he says, Therefore we do not lose heart. It's the same sentence, beginning and end, like bookends holding everything in place. And what's in the middle. It's a recipe. Four things Paul kept coming back to when the world was pressing in and quitting felt like the only reasonable option. He returned to the mercy, not to his own strength. The mercy he had already received. The anchor that was set before the storm. He remembered the jar. He was a cracked, ordinary earthen vessel, and he stopped apologizing for it. Because cracked jars are exactly the kind of jars that God uses. Afflicted but not crushed, struck down but not destroyed. He resisted the permanent. He refused to treat a trial like it was a verdict, a season, like it's a sentence, a chapter like it's the whole book. He kept the eternal weight of glory in view of everything visible that was pressing him down. And he renewed every single day. Not dramatically, not one small, not one big thing, but literally one small choice at a time. The walk, the prayer, the decision to open back up instead of to close down. And that's the recipe. And it works for a man who was beaten, he was imprisoned, shipwrecked, doubted by people that he loved most, and standing at the end of themselves more times than he could count.
[00:01:51] So here's what I want to say directly to anyone who needed this week of Episodes. God is not done with you. Not even close. The fact that you're still here, still asking the questions, still showing up, that's not nothing. That is the mercy of God keeping you in the game when everything in you wanted to walk away.
[00:02:09] Surviving is just staying alive. Not losing heart means something is still burning on the inside. Something still believes, something still hopes. And that's what I want for you today. So don't quit. Not today. Not this. The mercy that found you has not stopped working. And the God who started something in you is not the kind of God who walks away from unfinished work. He is not done with you. The mercy that found you. I'm telling you, it has not stopped working. Have a great day and I hope to see you very soon.
[00:02:50] La.
