Handling Discouragement

-Bro. Nirmal Stephenson

Let us look at God. How He is. Since we are His children, be the way He is. God created this world and He is on the throne. When we get up in the morning, when we look at God, how is He? Is he discouraged and says I’m not in a good mood. Come after some time. He doesn’t say that. He knows the chaos the world is in. Or let us look at Jesus. People could come to Him anytime, get healed, talk to Him. He was not found upset nor was He found frustrated, nor was His mood out. He was always joyful always available to the Father to do His will and He led others to rest and peace.

Our focus needs to be like our God.

Math 5:48 Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. This means we are called to be like our Father in character.

So, how do we handle discouragement when we face it in our lives.

Discouragement comes thru many angles. Satan always tries to discourage us one way or the other and spoil our happiness.

Although we may not be able to cover all those areas, let us try to cover a few important areas.

1. The first very fundamental area in which we tend to get discouraged is when we get a cloudy feeling and we feel no inspiration. When we feel a heat upon us and our feelings are warm or feel God, we tend to think we are pretty close to God. This is because we have lived in a wrong way. We are not to live according to our feelings. Then our lives will be like a roller-coaster. One day we’ll feel mountain-high and the next day we’d feel valley-low. We are to live by the written word of God and not according to our feelings. All we need to do is just get up from our place, dust off our thoughts of entertaining those feelings and hold on to God’s word. We need to ask ourselves, is there anything bad I’ve done that I feel this way. If there is nothing, then rise up from getting discouraged, chew God’s word and start meditating His word, something like ‘I can do all things thru Christ Who strengthens me’ Usually, this happens when we are not filled with His Word and when we do not have proper intake of God’s Word. God’s word is our food and we need to be meditating on God’s word.

Ps 1:2-3

2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,

And in His law he meditates day and night.

3 He shall be like a tree

Planted by the rivers of water,

That brings forth its fruit in its season,

Whose leaf also shall not wither;

And whatever he does shall prosper.

2. Satan comes not in a visible manner but he comes in our thoughts. He tries to attack us in our thought level. He tells variety of lies to put us down. Some of them are

a. He tries to accuse you saying ‘You have done this thing wrong, you have done that thing wrong. You spoke like this etc.,’

If we realize we have done something wrong, we can always go to God and confess our sins and get our relationship right. God has the provision in His word and that is

1 John 1:9-10

9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

God has forgiven us and if there is something we need to restitute with people we need to do that and our account is clear. God’s desire is that we correct ourselves and walk again and not get slouched in the sofa as if the whole world is sunk. The devil always tries to exaggerate our falls and tries to speak discouraging words to us because his intention is to put us down, frustrate us and rob our joy.

But, let us know this ‘He is a liar by nature and he speaks only lies’

John 8:44

he is a liar and the father of it

So, nothing that he speaks to discourage us we should entertain.

3. Another area where we are attacked is ‘When we give too much weightage to other people’s opinions than God’s opinion and our own opinion.’

If in the best of our opinions we have done the right thing and it is being talked evil of, then we need to stand strong in our opinion. If we say that ‘Oh he is thinking like this and get worried about it, then we give too much value to the opinion of the other person and not God’s opinion.’ We cannot expect all people to understand us. There will be some that will understand us, there will be always some that do not understand us. So, in this area we need to correct ourselves to live in the sight of God and stand strong in our opinion if we are on the right track as per God’s Word and to the best of our knowledge.

4. When we start worrying about our life, our future, our children, we give room to the devil to discourage us. Here we have to stop worrying. Let us look at Jesus’ Word on worry.

Matt 6:25

25 "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, …

Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

We are not to worry for anything. The moment we start worrying, there is a loop-hole in our armour and the devil can enter thru that and discourage us.

How can we prevent worry?

First of all , the best thing we can do is instead of sitting and worrying about the situation, all we need to do is get up and do the best we can about the situation.

Second is trusting in the Lord to lead us. When our faith in the Lord is weak then we tend to worry about everything. The main requirement in this area to trust in the Lord. This trusting in the Lord is not developed overnight.

Faith or Trust come thru  maintaining a close relationship with God.

We cannot live the way we want and on the day of trouble when we try to trust in God it will be very difficult. We need to walk with God everyday of our lives. During times of ease, if we waste the time by surfing thru different channels in the TV or by wandering around without investing the time to develop a close relationship with God, then in times of difficult situation, it will be difficult to have faith in God. Faith in God gets deepened as a result of lifetime walk with God and developing a close relationship with Him.

 
To summarize, we do not need to live a life of discouragement. God has given us this valuable life so we can effectively invest it to be useful to God and to be useful to the fellow-beings in our circle.

9/20/2003