“This is going nowhere.”

Have you ever thought those words or voiced them when frustration mounted and you were ready to call it quits?

Confession time: I have.

Multiple times.

I’ve been ready to throw in the towel because it felt like things were stuck, or like I was going in circles, or like I was on a road to a destination I could never get to.

I’ve been writing for a long time. I started my first blog in 2004, as a single 25-year-old woman working for a newspaper in Bangalore, India. After a break, I picked up writing again in 2014 as a mama of two in Portland, USA. Essentially, it’s been 18 years since I started blogging. Instead of my work taking off like a sure-footed adult, it still feels like a wobbly toddler.

My journey as a writer and speaker has had ups and downs, but mostly it been just been a plain old horizontal line. If I were to continue with the life-stages analogy, my writing is like a tired old lady finding it hard to straighten up from her afternoon nap. I find myself repeatedly saying, “This is going nowhere.” And I find myself telling God, “Lord, this season has been long and all I see is… sameness…all day long, all year long. It’s like the endless desert sand. Where is the growth? Where is the breakthrough? Will I ever be successful? Is this actually worth it, God? What’s the point??”

Compared to the wilderness that you may be trudging through, my sandy season (I couldn’t even call it a desert) may seem trivial. And no doubt it is.

But it still feels real. And plodding through still feels wearisome on some days. There are no immediate, tangible results. I often see mirages in the distance and my heart skips a beat as I run toward them, but often it’s just the glistening of my wishful thinking.

Yet, what can I say? What can I say but that God has been patient with my complaints? What can I say but that God has walked with me through my desert days? What can I say but that God has never cornered me with a performance appraisal? What can I say but that God has never measured me by my success?

Friend, maybe you feel stuck too. Perhaps you’re wandering through a wilderness in a relationship or in your career. Maybe it was just this morning you looked in the mirror and said, “This is going nowhere,” and you felt like it was time you threw in the towel.

But may I encourage you today to hang on? Hang on to hope because you have Jesus and He won’t ever let go of you.

The world may deem you a failure or may pronounce your marriage hopeless or declare your situation impossible.

But God sees around the bend.

And right now, He’s not measuring you by how “successful” you are. He is simply looking for your faithfulness.

At the end of the road, God is not going to commend you because your life was impressive—but He has an imperishable crown for the one who endures.

So, what will you do today with what you’ve been given?

Will you use your time, your talent, and your treasures to build up what He has entrusted to you, whether that is in your career, your calling, or in a relationship? Will you stay faithful even if the results are not always discernable?

God cares about your character more than your comfort.

He cares about your holiness more than your hustle.

He cares about your fruitfulness more than your productivity.

He cares about your righteousness more than your accomplishments.

He’s not going to look at my life and say, “Well done, bestselling author,” or “Well done, Christian influencer.” He’s not going to pat me on the back for my likes or shares or followers or platforms. But I pray that, when it’s all done, He’ll embrace me with a joyful, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

 

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