"If I'm Not Dead, You're Not Done"

The band Elevation Worship has a song out that proclaims "If I'm not dead, You're not done, greater things are still to come, Oh I believe!". As I listen to those words of faith being sung, I have no other choice but to get pumped up and ready to hit the ground running!

The faith proclaimed in this statement is profound. Basically, as long as I have breath inside this body I have been given, there must still be something that God wants me to accomplish in His name. My situation in life may tell me that I am hopeless, that I am sliding down a mountain getting ready to plunge into a deep crevice, but God isn't done with me until I take that last breath and my heart beats its last beat. 

Viktor Frankl, the famed philosopher and survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, shared his experiences and understanding of those experiences in his book "Man's Search for Meaning". In his memoir, he told of how men lost all hope during the torture, starvation, and cruelty that was their daily life as a prisoner in those death camps. At the moment hope was lost a man would just stop living, literally just quit. Nothing else to live for worth living for. No hope, no chance, no thoughts of maybe just maybe, nothing left. Frankl survived because he held firm to the belief that as long as God made it possible for him to live one more day, then God must still have something He wanted Frankl to accomplish for Him, "If I'm not dead then You're not done with me yet”, kind of thinking. That is the message I wish to impart to you today.

It doesn't really matter what you are going through, God has a plan for your life and it is your job to live it out and fulfill your purpose. The hole you are in may be so deep that you couldn't see the light of day if you had a telescope, but you still have to keep holding on to the understanding that God's plans are not like ours. We can't see, even with a telescope, the master plan of our life. Wouldn't that be nice, we get in a bind and all we have to do is look at the master plan and turn to the what's next page and see how it all turns out. Sorry, that would make it all too simple. The grit, the resilience, the strength that is gained through trusting and believing is what creates the faith in what we can't see, but what we know is there. "Now faith means putting our full confidence in the things we hope for, it means being certain of things we cannot see" Hebrews 11:1 

As we develop this trusting faith in things that are so much bigger than us, then we will develop the conviction that God has a plan for our lives and it is our job to live that life and seek His will as long as we are breathing. Earlier I said it doesn't matter what you are going through. That wasn't said to sound non-chalant about things you are facing in your life. Instead it is a statement of faith that I have to hold firm to or else I might start questioning God's wisdom and the master design of life. I can't say why, and I certainly can't answer your question of why. All I can say is there is a purpose for your life and anything, I mean anything, you are going through can and will impact a life or even a multitude of lives. Maybe yours, maybe someone else, but you have a purpose to fulfill! 

Trusting that truth, firming up your faith, believing when it would be so easy to doubt is not easy. The world told Job that all of his torment was due to something bad that he had done and now he was being punished. Job wouldn't fall for that. He would not curse God when everything had been taken from him right down to his own health. He stayed the course believing that God wasn't done with him yet because he was still breathing. My prayer for you today is that you will hold on when it doesn't feel like there is anything to hold on to. When we keep holding on, we develop our resolve which tells us that God isn't done with me yet! Keep holding on, pray, and believe!

Coach Carter