Don't Quit in the Dip

Chapter 1

MOVE, COUNTERMOVE

You. Can’t. Quit. There is a story told of a chess champion who is on vacation. Also an art connoisseur, he finds himself wandering through the hallways of a prestigious art gallery. One masterpiece stops him in his tracks and captures his full attention. It’s a painting of a chess game. But this is no ordinary chess game. On one side of the board sits the devil, leaning back in his chair with a fiendish grin, confidently tapping his fingers on the table. On the other side sits a young man in utter terror, clenching his teeth, wringing his hands, sweat dripping from his brow. The painting is titled Checkmate. It appears that the young man’s soul is dependent on the outcome of the game—and he’s about to lose.

The chess champion is so taken with this painting that he cannot look away. As his eyes scour the chessboard, his mind begins calculating. When a gallery custodian happens by, the chess champion asks, “Excuse me, sir. You wouldn’t happen to have an old chessboard lying around, would you?” The custodian says, “I think I might. Let me check in our break room.” He quickly returns and gives the board to the chess champion, who sets it up to match what he sees in the painting. He looks down at the board and back up at the picture repeatedly until every piece is exactly in its place.

After studying the board and the painting for several moments, he steps back and crosses his arms, and a smile creeps across his face. He lifts his voice in the quiet hallways of this seemingly abandoned art gallery and says, “Young man in the painting, I sure wish you could hear me right now, because I’ve got some good news. The devil only thinks he has won, but I’ve been studying the board, and there is a move he has missed! If you could see what I see, the whole nature of this game would change. Not only would this move save you from defeat, but it would also help you win the entire game!”

This legend, first told in the 1800s and brought to life for me by Tony Evans, is one of my favorites. Maybe it’s because I can relate to the young man in the painting, knowing I have given my best attempt at the chess game of life but still have felt cornered. Checkmated. I’ve had unfulfilled dreams that looked like they would never come true. Slumped back in my chair and ready to give up, I have wished a chess champion would shout out the move that would turn things around.

This slumped-down place in life is what I call “the dip.”

THE DIP

When you’re in the dip, you can see where you want to be, but no matter how hard you try, it seems you can’t get there. You begin to lose hope and doubt you’ll ever reach it. The dip is where your dream is just out of reach and you feel stuck. We all have a dream, but there is always a dip before you get there. Sadly, most people give up in the dip. But successful people don’t quit in the dip and they’re the ones who see their dream fulfilled. We’ve all been in a dip at one point or another. Maybe you’re there now.

None of us have the perfectly filtered life we present on social media, right? Every person, even the ones who seem to have everything together, has at least one area in life that isn’t what they want it to be. So we sink back in the chair, staring at our life chessboard, and believe our situation is hopeless and give up.

The dip can be your health. You want to get in shape, attempting every diet fad and workout routine, but nothing is working. The scale ain’t moving. When it comes to losing weight and stepping on the scale, there’s no such thing as “too naked.” You’re taking out your contacts from your eyes, exhaling every ounce of air from your lungs, and stretching your arms high to try to defy gravity. Every little bit counts. Or so we think. So discouragement sets in, along with the desire to eat your emotions.

Maybe it’s your career. You know there’s more in you to express, but there seems to be some invisible ceiling keeping you from reaching your potential or landing that dream job. If only someone would just give you a chance. So you lower your expectations and trade in your hi-def dream for a low-res version of reality.

What about your marriage? You’re giving your all, but things are not getting better and you’re even contemplating divorce. If marriage is such a sacred relationship, why isn’t God swooping in to save the day?

It could be that you’re single and looking for a spouse but you just can’t find Mr. or Mrs. Right and you’re tempted to settle for Mr. or Mrs. Right Now instead.

The dip is also where you might stand, wondering, If God has a wonderful plan for my life, why is He so slow to reveal it? Does He even see me here in this place? It feels like you have one piece of a ten-thousand-piece puzzle and don’t know where to begin.

It’s where anxiety and depression have crept in over the years. You thought you could conquer them alone, but now things are getting worse.

It’s trying and trying to get pregnant, but all signs point to it never becoming a reality.

It’s where throwing in the towel seems reasonable, and feels like your only option. You feel outsmarted by the enemy. Checkmated.

Do I have your attention?

The young man in that painting is facing the biggest challenge we all face when we are in the dip: the urge to give up. He’s stressed, he’s filled with doubt, and he simply cannot see how any outcome will be anything other than a clear defeat. He has lost faith and is about to quit in the dip. And just like him, many of us want to give up when we can’t see any hope for a positive outcome. But let me encourage you.

When we are ready to quit in the dip, we have a God who is just getting started! God doesn’t see as we see! He says, “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts and my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8–9 NLT).

Just as that chess champion saw a winning move that the young man couldn’t see, God sees what we don’t see in our lives. We see impossible, but He sees possibility. We see financial ruin, but He sees a path to blessing. We see the diagnosis, but He sees the way to healing. God sees the end from the beginning when all we see is our past and our present.

We see a dip, but He sees another opportunity to show up and work through us and show us just how amazing He really is.

Throughout this book, I’m praying we all begin to see from God’s perspective—even when we feel like the young man in the painting, backed into a corner, out of moves, with no place to go. The devil thinks he has won, but with God it’s not over.

MOVE, COUNTERMOVE

From the beginning of time, we can see many instances when Satan has kicked back in his seat, full of confidence, thinking he has just thwarted God’s plans. Checkmate! he thinks… until God turns the tables on him with a completely unexpected move. Let me explain.

God created angels. The angel Lucifer rebelled against God, wanting to share in God’s glory himself, so he convinced one-third of the angels to join him in his rebellion. Lucifer, or Satan, thought this was a checkmate. But God banned Lucifer and his angelic insurgents from the wonder of heaven to roam about in spiritual desolation.

Then God decided to create man. This being was created in His own image and likeness. Satan did not approve. This led to angelic conflict, and a cosmic chess game began to unfold. The devil made his move on the cosmic chessboard, and convinced man to rebel against God. Checkmate for mankind. Or was it? As we watch the biblical timeline of mankind unfold, what we see is a back-and-forth battle. Just when it seems Satan has cornered mankind into an impossible situation, God sees higher and responds with one more move! After the fall of man, God made His countermove: He slew an animal to provide a redemptive covering for Adam and Eve so that the possibility for salvation now entered human history. Move, countermove.

So then it was Satan’s turn, and he persuaded Cain to kill Abel, trying to eliminate the godly line so that God’s prophecy to provide a Savior for mankind (Genesis 3:15) could never come true. But God had a countermove. He allowed Eve to give birth to a son named Seth, and the Bible says that people began to again call on the name of the Lord (Genesis 4:26).

Satan then responded by getting the entire known world to rebel against God through the influence of his demons. All of humanity was so corrupt that God deeply grieved His creation. However, even with 99 percent of humanity in a cavernous dip, God moved and found one man who feared and believed in the One True God: Noah. He instructed him, “I want you to build a boat on dry ground during the day. And print up some gospel pamphlets with a three-word sermon that says, ‘IT’S GONNA RAIN!’ and pass those out in the evening.” God would then judge the world, save this one family. Move, countermove.

Satan made his next move by finding a man named Nimrod, who built two civilizations—Assyria and Babylon. By bringing the two together, he would create a civilization independent of God, centralized around building a religious tower, otherwise known as the religion of man. Otherwise known as humanism. But God moved and confused all their languages so they couldn’t communicate freely anymore.

God went even further on the offensive. He came to a city named Ur and found a man named Abram, and changed his name to Abraham, and rolled out His plan to build His own nation, through Abraham, that would obey. That’s when Satan responded by getting Abraham’s descendants stuck down in Egypt, held captive in slavery to a man named Pharaoh. God responded by going down to a city named Midian and called a man named Moses. He commanded him, “Go and set my people free.”

In their escape, Satan trapped Israel between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea. But of course, God then opened up the Red Sea, and a million and a half of God’s people walked across on dry ground.

In fact, the entire Old Testament is move, countermove. Move, countermove. God moved and Satan responded. Then God conquered Satan’s move. However, by the end of the Old Testament, from a human perspective, it looked as though we had a tie. There was no clear winner. Just a humongous dip. In fact, between the last page of the Old Testament and the first page of the New Testament, there were four hundred silent years where there was no Word from God to His people.

When the New Testament begins, it was evidently God’s turn to move on the board because it says, “So and so gave birth to so and so, who gave birth to so and so, who gave birth to Joseph, who was married to Mary, to whom was born Jesus Christ.”

It’s very important for us to see that up until this time of the genealogies listed in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, God always found a human and used a human. Even when they were in a dip! That’s so encouraging. But this time, at the moment of Jesus’ birth, God’s strategy shifted. He said, “It’s time. I’m tired of all this mess. Let me come on down here and handle this punk myself!”

And God entered human history in the person of Jesus Christ.

Satan was not having it. He felt he must rid the universe of the Messiah, once and for all. He thought that his genius plan was working when Jesus was illegally tried and nailed to a cross. It was there that Jesus would hang and there Jesus would die. I’m sure at that moment the devil folded his arms, and with a confident smile thought to himself, Checkmate!

But that’s when the most surprising move occurred. Early Sunday morning, just a little before sunrise, Mary Magdalene came running to the tomb and found the tomb was empty! She discovered an angel sitting on top of the tomb with a sign that read, #HeAintHere! Jesus Christ had risen from the dead, and that was the final move!

NOT CHECKMATED

I would have loved to see the look on the devil’s face that day as he tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. Standing there defeated in bewilderment and frustration. Thinking to himself, I don’t get it. I don’t understand. Jesus, You were dead. To which Jesus responded in His best Adele voice, “Hello from the other siiiiiide!” No. Actually, He said, “I am the living one. I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever!” (Revelation 1:18 NLT). Jesus conquered death, hell, and the grave and now offers forgiveness, hope, healing, and eternal life for every person who places faith in Him! That’s for everybody who surrenders his or her life to Jesus. Even those who are stuck in the dip. Even me. Even you.

For so many of us, this is what has been going on in our lives. It’s been move, countermove. Move, countermove. For some of you, the devil has backed you all the way into a corner, threatening “Checkmate.” He has harassed you with move after move after move. None of your countermoves have been successful, and you are tempted to quit. I want to encourage you, though, to not believe Satan’s “checkmate” lie. Don’t sit there and believe it’s over! It ain’t over till God says it’s over. And last time I checked, God’s Word still says that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6)! God doesn’t see as we see, and He’s encouraging us all not to quit in the dip!

That’s what this book is about. I want you to know that you are not the only one. Every person on this planet is either in a dip, has just come out of a dip, or is about to go into a dip! It’s simply part of the human experience. Just like you, I know what it’s like to have a dream that seems unachievable, and I know what it’s like to feel stuck to the point where you start believing you will never reach that dream. But I didn’t quit. And through it all, God has given me some powerful truths, which I will share to help you reach a place of victory.

Keep reading. Get your highlighter out and keep it out, because in these next chapters I want to help you identify your dip. You’ll learn that the dip does not have to be your final destination. There are lessons we can learn in the dip, which can teach us how to climb out of the dip to see our dreams become reality. I know things might not look good now, but hold on! There’s still another move left on the board that will not only deliver you from defeat but will also give you the ultimate victory.

No matter how many moves and countermoves you have experienced, God has the final move. And if you will journey with me through these pages, you will learn that not only is God for you, but also He has gone before you and ordered your steps through the dip to a wide-open space of victory. So no matter where you find yourself right now, and regardless of how deep the dip seems to be, look back at the board. There’s a move you haven’t seen yet, but God sees it. And He wants you to win. So… DON’T QUIT IN THE DIP!