Quit!

This is chapter thirteen of the Quit Giving Up ebook. You can get the whole thing in our shop now!

You’ve tried. You’ve failed.

You’ve tried again. Harder this time. More thoughtful. More effortful. This time it means more. You failed again.

People are encouraging you on, but it doesn’t seem to be as powerful this time. At least to you. It feels different. You want it to work. Your pride is wrapped up in this. So is nearly a month, year, or five years. It isn’t like it was a complete failure. You were able to impact people, earn a living for a bit, and started to fulfill the dream.

It doesn’t seem sustainable. Maybe you can’t raise the funds or do not have the time to continue being successful. There is too much manpower that is not possible right now or the politics of doing your dream ministry is so rough.

I want to suggest something you might not like: Quit.

Why You Should Consider Quitting

Remember on Day 2 we talked about the costs that would arise if we decided to make a change and start to tackle this crazy idea? There is another cost that we need to also consider which is important to the idea of quitting. It’s called opportunity cost.

Opportunity cost is a business word every business major will learn, so bear with me as I bring this term into our ministry mindset. Here is the undergraduate level definition of opportunity cost:

Opportunity Cost: A benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else. Since every resource (land, money, time, etc.) can be put to alternative uses, every action, choice, or decision has an associated opportunity cost.

Opportunity costs are fundamental costs in economics, and are used in computing cost benefit analysis of a project. Such costs, however, are not recorded in the account books but are recognized in decision making by computing the cash outlays and their resulting profit or loss.

In essence, if you keep doing this ministry now, you may completely miss out on something God has for you in the future. Is it worth attempting to rescue a ministry whose mission you know is possibly unattainable? Can you keep going at this pace?

Do not be tied down to the time you have already put into this. That time is gone and done. We can only look at now and forward. Of course, this also means we must put our pride behind us too. This whole “die to ourselves daily” thing we signed up when we said yes to Jesus gets really personal when we look at how we need to keep moving forward.

We may have to say “I’m done.”

And that’s okay.

What is your prayer to God when you think about being done? And if you need to talk to me about this further, do not hesitate to shoot me an email at [email protected] and we can chat.