Remember Your “Power Ups” + “You Just Don’t Know When To Quit”
“You Just Don’t Know When To Quit.
On May 30, we had a family movie night, and Ellis & April came over to watch “Super Mario Brothers”. It was a classic “underdog wins” story, and we had a fun time watching it!
There is one scene and one piece of a conversation that has stuck with me for the last 2 months. Princess Peach and Mario concoct a plan to ask the Monkey King to align forces with his army to defeat Bowzer. The king is a grumpy guy and says he will fight with them on one condition: Mario must win a fight against the king’s son, Donkey Kong.
When the fight scene opens, it is clear that Donkey is the sure winner, fighting on his home turf in an arena full of fans chanting his name, and Mario is outmatched in every way at just a fraction of DK’s size.
As the fight is about to commence, the Monkey King lets Mario know he has put “power ups” around the arena, to which Donkey boasts, “I don’t need anything else to break every bone in your tiny body.” The bell rings, and the fight is on, and as it gets underway, it certainly appears that DK will, in fact, crush every bone in Mario’s body. Mario is punched and tossed…he falls and plummets from one “ledge” to another in the suspended-in-mid-air arena. He has barrels hurled at him…and at one or two points DK gloats, thinking the fight is over. But Mario is a regular “come-back kid”, and in a combination of pluck & luck, he reaches the ‘power ups’ over and over. The final ‘power up’ sees Mario as a cat, and in a bold display of heroics, he defeats his formidable foe: Donkey Kong. Mario asks Donkey: “Had enough?” DK replies woozily, “Not even close.” Mario responds, “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’” and Donkey Kong face plants on the arena “floor”.
Peach comes to congratulate Mario, and says,
“That was incredible! He kept beating you senseless and you just kept getting back up?
YOU JUST DON’T KNOW WHEN TO QUIT!”
(*Sidenote: This is a line his dad has said to him several times throughout the movie. Mario is rather a “loser” at life and his father hasn’t been all that supportive.) Mario responds to the Princess: “Huh? I never thought of that as a good thing.”
To which she exclaims: “It’s a GREAT thing!”
Mario responds with “thanks.”
“YOU JUST DON’T KNOW WHEN TO QUIT!” 🖤 That line!!!!!
Every Christian is in a fight. Pastor has often said, “We are born onto a battlefield,” and Paul instructed Timothy, “fight the good fight of faith…” (I Timothy 6:12)
The 1st “fight” here is #75 - CONTEND, STRUGGLE WITH DIFFICULTIES and DANGERS (antagonistic to the Gospel) (Thayers) The 2nd “fight” is #73 - a contest of athletes, runners, charioteers. FIGHT as a verb, an action item, and FIGHT as a noun, a thing; an event.
Our Christian life is a FIGHT. Faith is a fight. We fight the world’s systems, ideologies, and mindsets. We fight the devil’s organized system of darkness, and we fight the carnal tendencies of temptations of our human nature and our flesh.
The battle of the ages is summed up in:
LIGHT vs. DARKNESS
GOOD vs. EVIL
HOLINESS vs. SIN
GOD’S WILL vs. MY WILL
GOD vs. SATAN
When it’s that plain, it seems very simple and we KNOW God wins ultimately, light wins, goodness wins, God has the final say. But we spend our time on earth deciding who we will align with. Which kingdom will we be a part of? God is always drawing us, and Satan is always trying to convince us that our way is better. He uses the appeal of the “seasonal” pleasure of sin and the ease of doing things “our own way”. So, when we determine to live for God, we are automatically inducted into a fight.
The conflict of the ages is for SOULS. Your soul. My soul. Every soul housed in a body with breath is the target. It is mortal combat, and God’s primary enemy has eternal destruction in mind. “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy:” (John 10:10)
Paul wrote to the Ephesians and said, “For we wrestle not against flesh & blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places…” (Ephesians 6:12) I like NLT: “For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in heavenly places.”
Every single saint is in the arena, “contending for the FAITH which was once delivered unto the saints.” (Jude 1:3) We fight for our faith! Paul went on in Ephesians 6 to give instructions for the armor and weapons to be used in this fight. God has given provision and tools for victory! He has made a way for us to be triumphant in every circumstance.
With all of that said, there are times where the fight “ramps up” and like Mario, we find ourselves bludgeoned by a brutal foe again and again. We find ourselves knocked down over & over. BAM - on the right side. POW - on the left side. BANG! BANG! Financial strain. Loss and the resulting grief. Family challenges. Schedule pressures. Trial after trial knocks the wind out of our lungs. Prodigal children. Crisis in myriad forms. Failures. Sickness. We find ourselves down on the mat with the crowd chanting the name of our opponent. We open one eye, two eyes, we crawl back to standing, only for another punch to knock us down, knock us out. Down. Down again. The fight is real. The fight is challenging. In the words of Princess Peach: “He just kept beating you senseless,”. There are seasons like that on the way to Heaven. Our “sea legs” barely make their way back under us before another wave washes them out. But that’s not all princess Peach said: “He just kept beating you senseless and YOU JUST KEPT GETTING BACK UP? YOU JUST DON’T KNOW WHEN TO QUIT!” And that is the key to the war of the ages: ot knowing when to quit! Getting back up after every punch, every blow that knocks us senseless. To quote another person who is definitely NOT in the Bible, Muhammad Ali said, “You don’t lose if you get knocked down; you lose if you stay down.”
Our faith in this fight is proven when we get back up, when we say with Micah, “Rejoice not against me, oh my enemy, for when I fall, I shall arise. When I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me.” (Micah 7:8) Jesus said, “He that endureth to the end, the same shall be saved.”
I could write on and on…so many “fight” and “fought” and “wrestle” scriptures come to mind, but I’m just going to keep this simple: DON’T GIVE UP! Know that the only time to quit is never! There is never a moment where “throwing in the towel” is an option! I will not allow the word “quit” into my vocabulary!!! If I go to heaven with black eyes and battle scars, I’m still going to heaven! To make it all the way requires pluck and fortitude. Determination. Grit and endurance! But we can make it! God is both fighting for us and cheering us on. He has given us all we need to WIN! We must hold onto our faith! Hold onto our shield!
“This is the VICTORY that overcometh the world, EVEN our FAITH!” As Rev. Donald Johnson pointed out in Sunday’s bulletin article: “victory” here is NIKE (nee kay). (Sounds familiar! :) ) and “nike” means “conquest/victory.” (#3529)
THE FIGHT IS FOR YOUR FAITH. BUT YOUR FAITH WILL WIN THE FIGHT.
Keep getting back up! Not knowing when to quit is an essential component of making it all the way to Heaven!
I refuse to give up!
Thanks, Mario, for the reminder that underdogs still win…thanks for the memorable quote. Thanks Donkey Kong for reinforcing the truth that being outmatched doesn’t automatically make the big guy the winner.
“I get knocked down, but I get up again.
You’re never going to keep me down.”
Thank you for joining me for this journey!
Go grab your Bible and your journal!
I look forward to the power of this habit in your life. This is Unedited.