David Wilkerson - Have You Felt Like Giving Up Lately?: Finding Hope And Healing When You Feel Discouraged

It is my firm conviction that, in one way or another, we are all hurting. We all need healing of our inner hurts. We need to know how to get hold of a genuine peace and a true freedom from the bondage of besetting infirmities. It is sin that causes many of our problems and hurts.

I hope this book will help multitudes of Christians find true healing. Already a great number of friends have been healed as a result of the messages included here.

Healing is a process. Read every chapter and witness that powerful healing process take place in your life. I can say that with boldness, because I know these messages were born in prayer, bathed in tears, tested through personal sorrow and suffering, and, most important of all, founded on the true Word of God.

In one way or another, we are all hurting. Everyone is in the same boat. Even the laughing, happy-go-lucky crowd is hurting. They try to hide their hurt by drinking and joking, but it wont go away.

Who hurts? The parents of a prodigal son or daughter. Millions of parents have been deeply wounded by children who have rejected their counsel. Those loving parents grieve over the deception and delinquency of children who were once tender and good.

The victims of broken homes are hurting. The abandoned wife whose husband rejected her for another woman is hurting. The husband who lost the love of a wife is hurting. The children who lost their security are hurting.

Others suffer illness: cancer, heart problems, and a myriad of other human diseases. To be told by a doctor, You have cancer; you may die! has to be terrifying. Yet many reading this message have experienced such pain and agony.

Lovers break up. A boyfriend or girlfriend walks away, trampling on what was once a beautiful relationship. All that is left is a broken, wounded heart.

And what about the unemployed? The despondent ones whose dreams have collapsed? The shut-ins? The prisoners? The homosexuals? The alcoholics?

It is true! In one way or another we are all hurting. Every person on earth carries his own burden of pain and hurt.

There Is No Physical Cure

When you are deeply hurt, no person on this earth can shut out the innermost fears and deepest agonies. The best of friends cannot really understand the battle you are going through or the wounds inflicted on you.

Only God can shut out the waves of depression and feelings of loneliness and failure that come over you. Faith in Gods love alone can salvage the hurt mind. The bruised and broken heart that suffers in silence can be healed only by a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, and nothing short of divine intervention really works.

God has to step in and take over. He has to intercept our lives at the breaking point, stretch forth His loving arms, and bring that hurting body and mind under His protection and care. God must come forth as a caring Father and demonstrate that He is there, making things turn out for good. He must, by His own power, dispel the storm clouds, chase away the despair and gloom, wipe away the tears, and replace the sorrow with peace of mind.

Why Me, Lord?

What hurts most is that you know your love for God is strong, yet you cant seem to understand what He is trying to work out in your life. If you were cold toward His love, you could understand why prayers went unanswered. If you were running from God, you could probably understand why the testings and severe trials kept coming on. If you were a down-and-out sinner, who despised the things of God, you could bring yourself to believe you deserved to be hurt badly. But you are not running; you are not rejecting Him in any way. You long to do His perfect will. You yearn to please God and want only to serve Him with all that is in you. That is why your hurting is so debilitating. It makes you feel there is something terribly wrong with you. You question your spiritual depth, and at times, you even question your sanity. From somewhere deep inside you, a voice whispers, Maybe Im defective, somehow. Maybe Im being hurt so deeply because God cant see much good in me. I must be so out of His will; He has to discipline me to make me obedient.

Friends Try So Hard to Help

A bruised or broken heart causes the most excruciating pain known to mankind. Most other human hurts are only physical, but a heart that is wounded must carry a pain that is both physical and spiritual. Friends and loved ones can help soothe the physical pain of a broken heart. When they are there, laughing, loving, and caring, the physical pain eases, and there is temporary relief. But night falls, and with it comes the terror of spiritual agony. Pain is always worse in the night. Loneliness falls like a cloud, when the sun disappears. The hurting explodes when you are all alone, trying to understand how to cope with the inner voices and fears that keep surfacing.

Your friends, who really dont understand what you are going through, offer all kinds of easy solutions. They get impatient with you. They are mostly happy and carefree, at the time; and they cant understand why you dont simply snap out of it. They suspect you are indulging in self-pity. They remind you the world is filled with heartbroken, hurting people who have survived. More often, they want to pray that one-time, cure-all, solve-everything prayer. You are told to release your faith, claim a promise, confess a cure, and walk away from your despair.

Thats all well and good, but its preaching that usually comes from Christians who have never known much suffering in their own lives. They are like Jobs babysitters, who knew all the answers but who could not relieve his pain. Job said to them, Ye are all physicians of no value (Job 13:4). Thank God for well-meaning friends, but if they could experience your agony for even one hour, they would be changing their tunes. Put them in your place just once, feeling what you feel, experiencing the inner pain you carry, and they would be saying to you, How in the world can you take it? I couldnt handle what you are going through!

Time Heals Nothing

Then there is that age-old clich, Time heals all wounds. You are told to hang in there, put on a smile, and wait for time to anesthetize your pain. But I suspect all the rules and clichs about loneliness are coined by happy, unhurt people. It sounds good, but it is not true. Time heals nothing; only God heals!

When you are hurting, time only magnifies the pain. Days and weeks go by, and the agony hangs on. The hurting wont go away, no matter what the calendar says. Time may push the pain deeper into the mind, but one tiny memory can bring it to the surface.

Truthfully, it doesnt help much, either, to know Christians have suffered before you down through the ages. You can identify with the suffering of Bible characters who survived tremendous ordeals of pain. But knowing that others have gone through great battles doesnt calm the hurt in your own bosom. When you read how they victoriously came out of their battles, and you still havent, it only adds to your hurt. It makes you feel as though they were very close to God to receive such answers to their prayers. It makes you feel unworthy of the Lord, because your problem lingers on, in spite of all your spiritual efforts.