So don't give up, however hard life gets.  God redeems all he allows, to make you more like Jesus.  Someone told me this week that if the mountain was smooth, we'd have no handholds to climb it to the heavens.

I'm reading John Grisham's latest novel, The Appeal.  Grisham is a modern day phenomenon.  His books have sold millions of copies, and movies made from them have made millions of dollars more.  This Baptist Sunday school teacher and lawyer writes books his children can read and his mother can endorse.  And he does it all in the context of a living faith in Jesus.

But it wasn't easy.  Grisham wrote his first novel, A Time To Kill, at night and on weekends while working as a lawyer in Mississippi.  No one would publish it--no one.  He finally paid to have it published himself, and sold copies out of the trunk of his Volvo.  His garage was filled with unsold copies.  But then his second book, The Firm, became a success and the rest is history.

Henry Ford went broke five times before he finally succeeded.  Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach's book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan published it and it sold seven million copies in five years.

Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his war novel M*A*S*H only to have it rejected by 21 publishers.  He finally decided to publish it himself.  It became a runaway best-seller, and led to a blockbuster movie and a highly successful TV series.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Vince Lombardi, the legendary football coach: "Quitters Never Win--Winners Never Quit."  The coach was a better theologian than he knew.

Your Father redeems all he allows, to make you more like Jesus.  This is the promise of God.