One of the sad stories coming out of early American history is of a man who went west to find gold. He staked out a claim and worked it for a long time, but he found no gold. He followed the instructions he had been given day after day and week after week, but he found no gold. Finally, discouraged, broke and exhausted, he threw his shovel down and came back east.
Not long thereafter someone else with dreams of finding gold came to where he had stopped working and began to dig again. In only a few days he struck a rich gold vein. It became one of the richest gold mines in North America.
Have you ever given your personal energy and enthusiasm to achieving a worthy goal, kept at it for a while without success, and then decided that success was just not in the cards. Giving up too soon is the cause for a lot of failure in life. By not staying at the task, by throwing in the towel too soon, reachable goals are often lost forever.
The only thing achieved in life without effort is failure. Falling down doesn’t make you a failure, but staying down does. No one is a failure who can truly say, “I have given my best.” The last time you failed, did you stop trying because you failed – or did you fail because you stopped trying? It was probably because you stopped trying and gave up too soon.
It is especially tragic to give up too soon in the following areas:
KNOWLEDGE: William Barclay, author and New Testament scholar, told the story of a young man who attended college, but who found the going very tough. He became so dejected that he almost decided to quit and go home. At this point he saw a narrow strip of gummed paper inside the back cover of a book. He became curious as to what might be below the strip, so he stripped it off. Underneath were these words: “Go on, young man, go on!” Barclay said that he did go on. He graduated from college, and later became a very famous man. He was on the very edge of turning back too soon – but he kept on going.
FAITH: The reason many of the young people in our churches drop by the wayside and quit attending church as soon as they enroll in college is that their faith is not their own. Their faith is secondhand. It is their parent’s faith, or perhaps it was the result of the influence of a Christian friend; it never really became their own. They were introduced to what the New Testament said about God’s love as revealed in His Son, but their faith ceased to grow.
The reason why the faith of so many people collapses in the hour of trial or challenge is simply that it is not theirs. It is something they have accepted because someone else said it, not because they have discovered and experienced Christ in a personal and powerful way in their own lives. To claim to profess faith does not mean that you possess faith.
The cure for doubt is not to push it into the back of your mind and refuse to think about it. Rather, it is to face it honestly and work your way through it. For faith to mature in any person’s life it must continue to grow. What often happens is that individuals who profess faith in Christ encounter obstacles, become discouraged, and turn back too soon.
GOODNESS: The Rich Young Ruler who met Jesus is a good example of quitting too soon. He genuinely wanted to possess goodness. He came to Jesus and asked for His guidance. Jesus quoted the commandments which are the basis of goodness and respectability. The young man said that he had faithfully kept them all. Even so, there was still a void in the depth of his being.
Jesus, who could read him like a book and knew what his top priority was, said, “What you must do is sell all your possessions and give them away.” The young man went away sadly, “for he had great possessions.” If he had honestly put his thoughts into words, he would have said: “I want goodness; but I don’t want it strongly enough to give away everything I own.” He turned back too soon.
LOTS OF OTHER THINGS: Someone asks us to forgive him or her. We know that we should, but for some reason we do not do it. We know that offering forgiveness would provide the opportunity to restore a broken relationship, but we hold onto our hurt feelings or our anger. We turn back too soon.
In showing generosity to others, or in trying to break ourselves of a harmful habit, it is so easy to stop short of reaching a worthy goal. We pay a needless and costly price when we give up too soon.
The tragedy of giving up too soon is that we miss some of God’s greatest blessings. Quitters never win; winners never quit. Could this be a truth you need to hear? Think about it!
The Paper Pulpit 
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