James Merritt - 9 Ways to Hold On When You Want to Give Up

Monday is the key day of the week.

G AELIC P ROVERB

L ike an antique collector at an estate sale, youve perused the stockpile of Gods winning strategies for facing tough times. You now have a trunk full of advice drawn from stories of great men and women whove found victory in difficulty. How and when should you start to implement these principles?

Why not begin this coming Monday morning? Why this Monday? Because I dont want you to just read this book and walk away from it like we do most books. I want you to begin this coming Monday with a new attitude, ready to attack all the problems that Mondays seem to bring armed with the strategies you have found with this book.

Why Monday? Monday may seem an odd choice. After all, its perhaps the most disliked day of the week. No other day is vilified, cursed, maligned, dreaded, and even downright feared like Monday. As you can guess, more people call in sick on Mondays than any other day of the week. Think about it: ever heard of a restaurant named TGIM? The Carpenters sang Rainy Days and Mondaysnot Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdaysalways get us down. Mondays more than any other day tend to knock us down with the challenges of a new week of unknowns: dreaded diagnoses, difficult meetings, unexpected assignments, and personal confrontations put off for the weekend.

I suspect it could be scientifically proved that more frowning, complaining, moaning and groaning, faultfinding, criticizing, bickering, and arguing occurs on Monday than any other day. Adults complain about having to go back to work; kids complain about going back to school; everyone complains that the weekend was just a dream. Yes, Monday is lifes wake-up call to the real world. More than any other day, Monday meets us at the door with the gloves on, ready to knock us down.

Go back just three days from Monday. You hear a sigh across the land from early Friday morning to late in the afternoon. It reverberates from metal prisons stuck on freeway off-ramps stretching from Los Angeles to New York. The plaintive sound is heard from cubicles in corporate offices to tiny offices in concrete basements. If sung in unison, it would come from the throats of the largest choir ever assembled. Custodians and CEOs utter the same words always on the same day of the week: Thank God its Friday.

This sigh or cry comes from battle-weary waiters, information technologists, computer programmers, schoolteachers (especially schoolteachers), lawyers, accountants, and myriad other professionseven homemakers are not exempt. As Sunday draws to a close, the feeling of dread that Mondays coming hits the pit of the stomach. Some call it Black Monday. We know that were going to wake up with the Monday-morning blues, and like that cold we feel coming on, no medicine can stop it. For so many, each week has become a war of attrition followed by a brief respite before the battle of the real world resumes all over again.

Mourning Monday morning is a universal malady that affects billions of people regardless of where they work. Even people who like their jobs dread Mondays. Unemployed people hate Mondays because its a painful reminder that they dont have a job and they have to start all over trying to find one. Indeed, for them Mondays are the most difficult times to still stand when so many voices are saying, Just give up.

So why am I suggesting that Monday is the perfect time to begin reorienting your life according to these winning strategies? Because even though weekends may be a ceasefire where guns are reloaded and ammunition is restocked, the Monday morning battle often determines the outcome of the war for the rest of the week. Monday is the day when you will determine whether you will remain standing the rest of the week. And the victories you achieve this week will reshape your whole month, and your month will flavor your year, and the outcome of your year can change the course of your life.

Many of the most important decisions of your week occur on Monday mornings:

You decide whether to even go back into the battle of a tough job or quit.

You face the challenge of the first day of a new career.

You begin a new effort to lead a company or department on the brink of collapse back into the black.

You confront the reality of another week living in a marriage speeding toward the cliff of divorce.

You have to face that friend who has stabbed you in the back and determine if youll let the cancer of bitterness continue to grow.

You snatch up the first appointment of the week with your doctor only to find the tumor was malignant.

On Mondays, character is revealed and built. Winners are separated from losers. The greatest rewards are harvested and the greatest regrets are experienced. In so many ways, whether youre still standing or have thrown in the towel is determined on Monday.

What if you decided to make this coming Monday a pet project for renovating your life? What if you decided this Monday that, whatever happens today, you will still be standing for the rest of the week? What if these key strategies became your field guide for facing this dreadful day? What if this Monday became the model of how you would face every day ?

Every day, you and I play the game of life. We smack the alarm clock, slurp our coffee, kiss our loved ones good-bye, and set our eyes like a flint. We bear down on the days demands and gitr done. But Ive found that if I can, for one moment, lift my eyes from the rugged path and look beyond the here and now, I can see a new light, another route. I find that too often I walk through life with my head down, grinding out my existence, and I never really look beyond whats always right in front of me. This is called perspective. And I have to be intentional about keeping it fresh and vibrant.

Im challenging you to mark your calendar for next Monday morning and decide to make it a day where youll begin to shift your perspective. Suspend your normal view of the challenges you face. Make a list of ways youll implement a handful of the winning strategies youve learned, and keep them in your pocket. Let this piece of paper become your pocket-revolver arming you with enough rounds to gain victory over the toughest battles youll face.

I dont know what challenges you face that want to knock you down for the count. Perhaps its a crippling disease that makes every day Monday for you. Maybe its a crumbling marriage, and you find yourself tempted to surrender to that voice telling you to throw in the towel. It could be a job that you despise. Whatever they are, I urge you to take the anxiety and frustration and challenge of that situation and begin to transform it through Gods winning strategies that youve found in His Word and in this book.

When life threatens to trip you up, push you over, or knock you down, remember, you arent the first person to take that punch, face that giant, or stumble over that obstacle, and you wont be the last. But others have stood and are still standing, and by Gods grace and through His power, you can too. The One who still stands after dying on a cross is standing with you todayand that knowledge is the greatest place of all to stand!

So my prayer for you as you suit up the armor, put on the helmet, and strap on your sword to go out to the battles of life that we all face is that at the end of the day when you have taken the best shots the enemy has, you will, by Gods grace, be still standing!

James Merritt (@drjamesmerritt) is lead pastor of Cross Pointe Church in Duluth, Georgia, and host of Touching Lives , an internationally broadcast television show airing weekly in all 50 states and 122 countries. He has written seven books including, How to Impact and Influence Others and God, Ive Got a Question . As a respected religious leader, James has been interviewed by media outlets including 60 Minutes, The New York Times, ABC World News Tonight, Time Magazine, and Hannity and Colmes.