Still Standing Is a Win

Let me guess how you are scoring yourself.

You are not thriving. You are not joyful. You are not the strong, victorious Christian man you see in your head, the one who has it together and radiates peace. You are just getting through the day. White-knuckling it. Dragging yourself from morning to night, hanging on by a thread, and doing it again tomorrow. And somewhere in there you decided that this does not count. That merely surviving is not really faith. That a real believer would be soaring, and you are just crawling, so you must be failing.

I want to throw that scorecard out, because you are grading yourself on the wrong thing entirely, and it is crushing you for no reason.

Here is a man who knew exactly what you are talking about.

"we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed"

2 Corinthians 4:8-9, NASB 1995

Read what Paul is actually describing. He is not describing a man who feels great. He is afflicted. Perplexed. Persecuted. Struck down. Knocked flat on the ground. This is not a highlight reel. This is a man taking hit after hit after hit. And in the middle of all of it, the word that keeps repeating is not. Afflicted, but not crushed. Struck down, but not destroyed. He is still here. Bloodied, barely up, but not finished. And Paul counts that as the proof of God's power at work in him, not the absence of it.

And do not miss why he is still standing, because it is the whole point and it takes the weight off you. A few verses earlier Paul says the surpassing greatness of the power is of God, and not from ourselves. He is not still standing because his grip is strong. He is still standing because he is held. The strength keeping a struck-down man from being destroyed was never his own strength. It was God's. Which means your survival, the fact that you are still here, still hanging on, is not you barely managing. It is God holding a man who cannot hold himself.

So hear this, because you have had it backwards: still standing is not the consolation prize. It is the victory. In the dark, not being destroyed is the win. You are looking for joy and strength and peace as the scorecard, and meanwhile you are pulling off the actual miracle, which is that a man this beaten down is still on his feet and still turned toward God. That is not nothing. That is everything.

And here is the part that should undo the shame completely. You are afraid your grip is too weak to count. God is not measuring your grip.

"The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit."

Psalm 34:18, NASB 1995

Look at who God draws near to. Not the strong. Not the men with it together. The brokenhearted. The crushed in spirit. The very condition you are ashamed of, the brokenness, the crushed-ness, is the exact thing that pulls Him close. You thought your weakness was pushing Him away. It is doing the opposite. Your crushed spirit is not a disqualification. It is an address, and it is the address God moves toward.

So let me reframe the whole day for you.

You got up this morning when everything in you wanted to stay down. That counts. You did not walk away from God, even though you cannot feel Him. That counts. You prayed the empty prayer, or you could not even do that and you just groaned, and that counts too. You made it to tonight. You are still here. A man who is still here, still holding onto God with the last of his strength, is not losing. He is winning a fight most people cannot even see him fighting.

I am not going to hand you some line about soaring on wings like eagles, because you cannot soar today and you know it, and telling a man who can barely stand that he should be flying just gives him one more thing to fail at. The promise for the man in the dark is smaller and truer than soaring. It is that you will walk and not grow faint. Not fly. Walk. Put one foot down, then the other, then do it again tomorrow. That is the whole assignment, and you are doing it.

Because here is what is actually true about that thread you are hanging by. You keep picturing your grip, your weak, shaking, exhausted grip, and you are sure it is about to give out. But the thread is not held on your end. It is held on His. And a thread with God's hand around the other end of it does not break because your fingers are tired. You are not holding on to God nearly as much as He is holding on to you, and His hands are not the ones that are shaking.

So stop scoring yourself on joy you do not feel and strength you do not have. Score yourself on the only thing that actually matters in the dark.

You are still standing.

Still standing is a win. Go win it one more day. The Hand holding you is not going to let go, no matter how tired yours gets.