When You Want to Quit: Why God Lets You Get This Tired

If you want to quit, the weariness you are carrying is not evidence that you have failed. Paul reached that same place, and he said it was there for a reason: to break his reliance on himself so that he would lean on the God who raises the dead.

You might be reading this while despairing of life itself because of your own circumstances, asking God where He is in this, wondering out loud whether you can keep going. Church leaders say it privately all the time. There are seasons in our calling where we simply want to call it quits and say, "I'm out, I can't do this anymore." I am only two years into ministry in London, and I can attest that I have already had many of those moments.

So, the question worth asking is not how to escape the affliction. It is how we abide with our Creator in the middle of it, because God forms us and speaks to us in exactly these moments. Paul writes about it in 2 Corinthians 1:8: "For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself."

What Was Paul's Affliction in Asia?

Paul never specifies. Most likely the letter's carrier filled in the painful details for the believers in Corinth. From the surrounding context, it sounds like Paul and the people with him were suffering persecution almost to the point of death. He was probably referring to several things at once, since he experienced all sorts of trials, but it had to include his time in Ephesus to some degree. He later summarized that season as fighting with wild beasts in 1 Corinthians 15:32.

Paul Was Breaking Down in the Middle of a Breakthrough

Imagine yourself in Paul's shoes as he headed toward Ephesus. The whole narrative plays out in Acts 19, where he spent three years, a long stay compared to the other stops on his missionary journeys. He wanted the entire world to be changed by the good news of Jesus, the way he had been. He wanted Asia badly, and God had previously prevented him from going to that region. So, Paul waited for God to open the door instead of forcing it open himself. When the Lord makes a way is when revival can actually take place.

And that is what happened. It started with twelve men outside the city gates in Ephesus. They heard the gospel, they were changed, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Paul then went to the synagogue and preached there for three months, and the people there wanted nothing to do with his message. So, he took the message outside and ended up in what was called the lecture hall of Tyrannus, a place where philosophers, both Jews and Greeks, would debate and learn.

Look at what Acts 19:10 says about that stretch: "This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks." That is one of the wildest verses in all of Scripture. The soil was ready, and faithful, Spirit filled teaching gave everyone in Asia the opportunity to hear and receive the good news of Jesus.

Things kept escalating. Luke records that at the time the Lord was doing unusual miracles through Paul, completely out of the ordinary. People threw their clothes and handkerchiefs at him just to get a little contact so they could carry them to the sick and see them healed. The work was so extraordinary that even the demons knew Paul's name. Sorcerers and witchdoctors burned spell books worth millions of dollars in today's money. It was like a revival broke out in Hogwarts. Factories were shut down. If there was one moment across all of Paul's missionary journeys that felt like a massive awakening, this was it, and it is known as one of the biggest outpourings of God's Spirit in the New Testament.

You would think Paul's next move was a victory lap, or at least a vacation. That is not what happens. Read on in Acts 19 and a riot breaks out in the city, spilling into the local stadium where the crowds shout praises to the Ephesian god Artemis. Two of Paul's companions get dragged into the mess. Paul wants to go after them, and I can imagine the other disciples holding him back, urging him not to go. It was that intense.

He had already written to the church in Corinth, in 1 Corinthians 16:8-9: "I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries." By the time he picks up his pen for the second letter, he is beaten down. In the middle of all the good things, all the breakthrough, all the people coming to know Jesus, he is tired. He is weary. He is facing hardship that has burdened him beyond his own strength, and he says he and the others felt they had received the sentence of death.

God Uses Affliction to Break Our Self-Reliance

Here is the encouragement. Paul does not leave that sentence hanging. He writes, "But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead" (2 Corinthians 1:9). For every affliction, trial, tribulation, or season of suffering you face while following God's call on your life, there is a "but that was to."

God uses affliction to break our self-reliance.

When our team was praying about the convictions God was calling us to carry into Greater London, we kept coming back to one of them: build a church where, if God does not show up, nothing works. It sounds great on paper. Actually living it out is how you find out how much you rely on yourself. I believe the Western church in particular has gotten really good at doing church with no need of God at all, and the Lord is looking for faithful men and women who are willing to lay their self-reliance down at the altar.

Because here is the reality. We could preach the most eloquent sermons, run the best music for worship, build a rocking kids ministry, and brew the best tasting coffee in town. But if we have no need to rely on the Holy Spirit for any of it, we are not only missing out. I think we are missing it entirely.

There is no greater freedom than knowing that ministry does not have to rely on us. Salvation belongs to the Lord. He calls us to be faithful in the middle of it, and nothing is more freeing than that.

Why Does Losing Your Self-Reliance Hurt So Much?

Because the process of ridding ourselves of self-reliance feels like the crushing of grapes. The writer of Hebrews put it plainly in Hebrews 12:11: "For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." The pain is not the point. The fruit is, and the fruit comes later.

What Storms Reveal About Your Foundation

Storms reveal our foundation and show us where we have placed our ultimate hope. That is part of what Jesus was getting at in the closing of the Sermon on the Mount. In Matthew 7:24-27 He says that no matter which foundation you build on, sand or rock, the storms are coming either way. They will beat against your house. Your moments of suffering become an opportunity to cling tight to the Rock, and for Him to take that storm and turn it for His glory and ultimately your good.

What If Self-Sufficiency Is the Bigger Threat?

So, I have to ask: what if the biggest threat to your walk with Jesus was your own self-sufficiency? And what if it were true that our greatest weaknesses are often where our greatest ministry lies?

This is why Paul boasts in his weakness. If anyone could bring the heat and list his accomplishments, it would have been the apostle Paul, the Pharisee of all Pharisees. Instead he says he will boast in his weaknesses, because his God is a God of resurrection. He raises people from the dead. He raised Jesus from the dead. That is who we can put our trust in.

What to Do When You Want to Quit

Keep coming back to Him with empty hands. No matter how much training and preparation we had before moving to England this past year, I have gone to the Lord many times and said, "God, I have no idea what I am doing right now. I have no idea. I feel so ill equipped." And every time, God's response is the same. Fantastic. Now I can actually use you.

That is the invitation in the affliction. Not a promise that the hardship lifts on your timeline, but an invitation to abide with your Creator right in the middle of it, because that is where He forms us and that is where He speaks.