How To Get Up When You Are Down (Pastor Ron Termale) August 22, 2021
The Christian life is not always a mountaintop experience, and there will be times when your faith is tested and you feel weak or fail.
Three keys to getting up when you feel down:
1) Know that your down times do not define you—God does!
You are a child of God, not a slave of sin or of difficult circumstances.
The apostle Paul teaches that we were adopted as God’s children when we came to believe in Jesus and received His Spirit (Rom 8:15-16). Paul’s teaching is best understood in light of the Roman society in which he wrote. Roman couples who did not have any children would go to the slave market and adopt a child from there as a legal son of daughter, rather than buying that child as a slave. Just as children adopted by Roman parents would have their past identity of poverty, abandonment, abuse, and debt as slaves wiped out, and would be given a new identity as full-fledged Roman citizens, so do we as children adopted by Christ have our past identity as sinners wiped out, and we are given a new identity as members of God’s family, marked with His seal (Eph 1:13-14).
As a child of God, you have the legal right to ask your Father for every promise in his Word. You can decree healing (1 Pet 2:24), financial breakthrough (Phil 4:19; 1 Chr 4:10), freedom from fear (2 Tim 1:7), victory over the forces that oppose God (Ps 68:1-2), and more, both over your life and over the lives of others.
2) Know that Jesus thinks of you more highly than you think of yourself.
When you are at a low point, Satan will try to convince you that God is looking on you with disdain, in order to try to get you to lose hope. The truth is that God is still speaking highly of you as His child, even when others or you yourself are not.
God spoke highly of Job when Job lost his wealth and children and Satan was falsely accusing him of sin (Job 2:3). Jesus also spoke most highly of John the Baptist even when John was in prison questioning if Jesus was the Messiah (Matt 11:2-3, 11). Jesus said that we, the “least in the kingdom of heaven,” will be greater than John (Matt 11:11, NIV)! That is how highly God thinks of you.
3) Know that your down times are already included in God’s plan for your life, so do not quit.
When you are in a hole, give God the shovel. Trust Him and His plans to prosper you (Jer 29:11). Proverbs tells us, “though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again” (Prov 24:16, NIV).
Just as an Olympic athlete competing in the decathlon event is cheered on by the crowd for not quitting during the final run in the contest, so are we cheered on by the great cloud of witnesses in heaven for persevering during our race of faith that we run (see Heb 12:1).
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