It Ain't Over

Scriptural Text: Psalms 118:17 -18

I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD. The LORD hath chastened me sore: but he hath not given me over unto death.

Sermonic Topic: It Ain’t Over

There are no two ways about it, in the life of every person we sometimes find that the place that we are mentally, physically, emotionally, materially, spiritually, is not the place we had believed we would be. We had envisioned that life would have more in store for us and that #1 would be our spot. We had high hopes and big dreams. We had envisioned that our marriages would last, our children would grow up and be model Christians, that our businesses would be booming, our house would be nicer, our car would be newer, our paychecks would be bigger and that life would be better. We had aspirations of reaching the pinnacle of success and happiness. Yet, we look around our reality and find that much of it has not panned out quite the way we planned. Life and it’s circumstances and situations have done a number on us and in the midst of that our dreams are now lying on the floor of our yesterday.

We cry and we pray but never really get it in our spirit that it’s going to get any better. We adjust our dreams to accommodate our today and we stop pushing for more somehow figuring that it is better to just accept the status quo than it is to press toward a mark that seems to be just beyond our ability to grasp. We quit in mid stroke, mid struggle and start looking for the nearest bench to park ourselves as we watch time and life pass us by.

But I am here to tell somebody: “Don’t throw in the towel just yet”. Though it may appear that all hope is gone, that everyone else is finishing the race without you, It Ain’t Over!!!!

As we look at this text, I must confess that I really struggled with it. On one hand it is a scripture that has been groaning in my spirit for quite sometime. IN fact it has been in my spirit so deeply that we even selected it as the theme for the Survivors Conference that we are hosting in July. Yet on the other hand, each time that I have sat down to look at it for sermonic purposes the simplicity of the statement seemed to not lend itself to a full sermon. It is what it is. There does not seem to be much hidden behind the words. I have searched it and searched it and yet it was simply what it said it was. I shall not die, I shall not quit, I shall not give up but instead I will live, I will survive, I will keep getting up and tell, evangelize if you will, about the goodness of God. There seemed to me not a whole lot to add. But earlier today, as I was still struggling with the text, God placed it in my spirit that sometimes the significance of a text is not in the what, but instead in the who, the when, and the where.

So, the who of this text is the psalmist David. And if you know anything at all about David you will know that life for him was no crystal stair. There were so mountains, some valleys, some hard times, some test and some tribulations. Yet for all of that, there was this anointing from God that was upon his life. And at the time of this text, He was now sitting on the throne of Israel, a king of that nation. So when you look at this text, you see here a tried and true testimony of the sufficiency of God. A statement of what David had learned to be true.

You see this is the same David that God anointed, even as a young man to one day be King that can testify that anointing won’t save you from trials. This is the same David that found himself wrestling with a bear and a lion and was able to kill them with his bare hands. This is the same David that the people were laughing at and scoffing at because he rose to fight the Philistine Giant. It was this same David who faced and defeated that Giant with nothing more than a few pebbles for his defense proving once and for all that if God be for you there is no one that can stand against you. It was David who found himself running for his life from a man, Saul, that he had once called friend. And it was David who even after living in the promise of God who found himself so smitten by the flesh of a married woman that he was willing to not only to commit adultery but to kill for it. And as it mentions in the verses preceding the place where we pick up the text he testifies of nations and enemies who had risen up against him. But in spite of all that and so much more, David kept pressing forward recognizing that for all that life was throwing his way that God had spoken promise over His life and because God had spoken there was no weapon formed against him that could truly prosper. There was no battle he could not win because God is a very present help in the time of trouble and yea though enemies should rise up against him the shall stumble and fall because in the time of trouble God will hide you in the shelter of his tabernacle. In spite of how dark the midnight, weeping will only endure for a night because as surely as God is God joy will come in the morning.