How to Not Lose Heart: 2 Corinthians 4 and a Fixed Focus
December 2020. David McQueen was pastoring in Abilene, Texas, in the heart of COVID, when one of his friends — an elder at his church, the man who’d had enough faith in a young pastor to give him the opportunity to lead that church in the first place — came down with the virus and ended up hospitalized for weeks.
McQueen couldn’t even get in to see him. So he drove around the hospital. He walked around the hospital. He laid claim to healing, and he doesn’t say this lightly: he had faith. He felt like he knew God was going to heal this man.
And then one day, his friend died.
McQueen went into the chapel where his church originally met and wrestled with God — saying things, he admitted, that a man of faith isn’t supposed to say to God. He remembers December 2020 because part of him was ready to quit. He was overwhelmed. And in the midst of that, the Lord did what he does when we’ve hidden Scripture in our hearts: he called it forth. A word from 2 Corinthians 4 rose up — therefore, we do not lose heart.
Pastor David McQueen, a longtime friend of New River Church and of Pastor Keith Roberson’s family, brought that word to Franklin as a guest preacher in the THEREFORE series. His observation: since 2020, the enemy has been ministering — and what he’s been ministering is discouragement. Even the most optimistic among us are struggling with discouragement that can turn into despair, difficulty that can evolve into wanting to quit. We are struggling with losing heart.
What this sermon is about
The thesis comes straight out of the text: a fixed focus on eternity is what empowers your heart for this life. Not as escapism — as fuel. The Scripture shouts that we can be people who do not lose heart, people who actually overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. The question is how. And the answer Paul gives is about where your eyes are fixed.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 — “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Paul isn’t saying your current problems aren’t real, McQueen was careful to note. He’s saying that relative to eternity — and to what God is accomplishing in you through the difficulties of this world — they are light and they are momentary. Let that word achieving sink in: your troubles are achieving something eternal.
Fixing your eyes (the Texas version)
McQueen had fun with the word “fix.” In Texas, he confessed, they’ve taken some liberties with the English language — “I’m fixin’ to do this, I’m fixin’ to do that.” (Franklin, it turns out, says it too.) But “fixin’ to,” meaning about to, is nowhere close to what Paul means.
The better picture comes from deer hunting — something Tennessee and Texas share. (He was pretty sure he saw a guy walking to his deer stand on the way to church that morning. Presumably headed to the late service.) Before a rifle hunter goes out, he sights in his rifle: gets stable on a bench, shoots at a target, unfixes the scope, adjusts, shoots again, adjusts again — until where the scope says you’re aiming is exactly where the bullet lands. And then you fix it. You lock it down so it does not move.
That’s the word. If we don’t want to lose heart, we fix our eyes — locked down, not drifting — on the eternal.
The pushback writes itself, and McQueen named it: the old line that some people are so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good. It sounds right, he said. It just contradicts Scripture.
“Thinking about heaven, focusing on eternity, is not a form of escapism. Just the opposite is true: a fixed focus on eternity empowers our hearts. It is only when we fix our eyes on that which is eternal that we can make a difference here in this life.” — David McQueen
Revelation: hear the message, not the puzzle
Then McQueen got honest about something pastors aren’t supposed to say: there are books of the Bible he enjoys less than others. For the longest time, Revelation was one of them — all those images, all those competing interpretations, centuries of people insisting the symbols matched their own current events and being wrong. Every time his reading plan brought him back around to it, he’d grind through trying to decode everything.
Until a few years ago, when he sensed the Spirit nudge him: instead of trying to figure out the details, hear the message.
Revelation was written to believers who were going through hell on earth — literally. Whether you date it to Nero’s persecution in the 60s or Domitian’s in the 90s, its first readers were part of an empire seeking to eradicate their existence through torture and death. And God sent them this book so that, as they followed Jesus, they would be people who do not lose heart.
“The Book of Revelation isn’t meant to be a book of confusion. It’s meant to be a book of encouragement, a book of empowerment, a book revealing eternal victory. At the end of the Revelation, we should be shouting with our hands up high: we win.” — David McQueen
The book opens with “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him” and closes with “Surely I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.” And no chapter lays out the message better than the nineteenth:
Revelation 19:11-16 — “Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war… He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God… On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”
(McQueen paused for the congregation’s tattooed members: a name written on his thigh — there’s your verse. The brother is coming tatted.)
The first time Jesus came, he came as a humble servant, to an out-of-the-way place, to no-name parents — the story we celebrate every December. But make no mistake, McQueen said: he is coming again, and when he comes this time, no one will miss him. Every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Three crowns: a heaven of more, and of no more
What kind of eternity is the returning King bringing his people into? McQueen walked through the three crowns Scripture promises, each revealing something about the nature of what’s coming.
The crown of life. James 1:12 — “Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him.” Heaven is everything necessary for abundant life beyond what our hearts can dream — a world of more. More learning. More satisfaction. Real purpose and significance without the curse-twisted struggle our jobs carry now. An ever-expanding creation made by a Creator who never stops creating. And more relationships, with no hindrance of time — including the people whose faith made yours possible.
Here McQueen told his own story. He wasn’t brought to faith by a church family; he was brought to faith because in the 1970s, a church ran buses. His mom — invited to church by a coworker — said no for herself, but yes to the bus picking up her kids. (Free babysitting, he figures.) So at eight years old, a messed-up kid from a home with a lot of dysfunction climbed onto a big old bus, and for the first time in his life heard the name Jesus when it wasn’t in a cuss word. The church kept coming back, week after week, for five years, until he gave his life to Jesus Christ. Then his mom started coming. His dad later gave his life to the Lord. His whole family is different because of those people — and somebody he’s never met paid for that bus. In heaven, God’s going to connect the dots.
The crown of righteousness. 2 Timothy 4:7-8 — “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day — and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” This is the heaven of no more. Revelation 21:4 — “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
McQueen made it devastatingly concrete. No more phone calls saying the plane went down and your friend was on it. No more standing with parents in an emergency room after a child on a bike was hit. No more counseling families about ventilators. No more cancer — he hates that word — no more trisomy 13, no more miscarriages, no more cerebral palsy. No more slavery, no more sex trade, no more war, no more poverty. And because there is no more sin, there’s more of the best thing: knowing Jesus face to face, with nothing hindering an ever-growing knowledge of him.
“Our hearts know that the world shouldn’t be the way it is. Don’t think that makes everything a fraud. It just means you were meant for another world.” — David McQueen
The crown of glory. 1 Peter 5:4 — “And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.” We will finally be who we were always designed to be. God will finish what he has begun.
Back in that chapel in 2020, mourning his friend, McQueen said a thought struck the core of his soul: what did my friend feel the moment he took his last breath and woke up in the presence of God? What is it like to not have an inkling of an anxious thought, not a wisp of despair — to lock eyes with Jesus and hear “well done, good and faithful servant”? And the strangest thing happened in his place of despair: he found himself jealous of his friend. His heart came back. He was empowered to live here and now for that day.
What this means for your week in Franklin
If you take this sermon seriously, four things change about this week.
- Sight in your scope. Ask the Spirit specifically: what do I need to do to fix my eyes? For many of us, McQueen said, it starts with two adjustments — quit feeding your mind a constant diet of news and social media chaos, and get back to the practice of drawing aside with the Word and prayer.
- Treat people as the only eternal thing you’ll touch today. Nothing else you deal with today will last forever — but every person you encounter will. If your eyes are fixed on the unseen, the way you treat the people you can see has to start reflecting it.
- Start praying for someone far from God by name. There is nothing accidental about your life — God orchestrated your workplace, your neighborhood, your time and place so you could be a bearer of hope. It’s not on you to bring them to him; it’s on you to be used of God to help introduce him.
- Invite someone to Christmas Eve. McQueen’s practical on-ramp: people love coming to things like Christmas Eve services, and the gospel will be proclaimed. One invitation this week could be somebody else’s bus ministry.
Watch the full message
The full sermon — “We Do Not Lose Heart” from the THEREFORE series, with guest pastor David McQueen — is in the video above. We post a new message every Sunday from New River Church in Franklin, TN. Browse our message library for more from the THEREFORE series and other recent teaching.
Coming Sunday at New River Church in Franklin, TN
If this message resonated and you’d like to experience worship and community in person, we’d love to have you with us. New River Church meets Sundays at 9:00 AM and 10:45 AM at 1153 Lewisburg Pike in Franklin, TN 37064 — just minutes from downtown Franklin and easy to reach from across Williamson County, Brentwood, and Spring Hill.
You don’t need to dress up. You don’t need a good voice. You don’t need to know much about church or the Bible to come. We’re a community of ordinary people walking through ordinary life, trying to do it together with Jesus at the center. Whether you’ve been a Christian for forty years or you’ve never set foot in a church, you are welcome here.
If you’re new to the area or new to faith, our First Time Guest page walks through everything you need to know before your first visit: parking, what to expect on Sunday morning, what your kids will experience in River Kids, and how to find us when you arrive.
If you’re looking for deeper community beyond Sunday morning, our Community Groups meet across Franklin and the surrounding area throughout the week. Groups are where Sunday morning faith becomes Tuesday afternoon real life.
Whatever you’re carrying right now, you don’t have to carry it alone. There’s a place for you at New River Church in Franklin, Tennessee. Come as you are.
Watch more sermons: newriverfranklin.com/messages Plan your visit: newriverfranklin.com/firsttimeguest Find a group: newriverfranklin.com/groups
📍 New River Church | 1153 Lewisburg Pike, Franklin, TN 37064 | Sundays 9:00 AM & 10:45 AM
