I want to specifically talk to those today who might be feeling down. Who might be sad. Who might be just ready to give up.
See, often times in our lives we have this sort of vision for our lives right? We in our heads think I want to become this kind of man or woman in Christ. I want to be this and that. I want to grow spiritually in this and that way. We have this end goal, or this goal that we’re working to, and we are here in this moment. And along this path, and honestly just the path of life. There’s ups and downs. Theres moments where we are growing, blessed, feeling great! And then there’s moments where we slide down. We fall into a valley on that line right. Up and down. Theres times when we are so encouraged and strong and high energy. But then sometimes we might be discouraged, weak, and just feeling burnt out. And I call that right there the “valley of discouragement”.
If we were to look at the actual word discouragement, it comes from the root word of courage, right? And that prefix, dis- in discourage, means the opposite of. So discouragement is the opposite of courage or encouragement. See when we are discouraged, we have lost this motivation that we once had to press forward. We lost that strength to keep moving forward, to be able to take risks, we lost our courage. And in discouragement often the mountains seem too steep. The valley seems too dark. The battle we’re in seems too fierce. We lose the courage and strength to continue. And we may want to give up. If we were to look quickly at 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, Apostle Paul talks a little bit about this. The idea of courage vs discouragement. Strength, versus weakness.
2 Corinthians 4:8-9: “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
But if we were to insert ourselves into this verse. We are hard pressed, but what if I do feel crushed? We are persecuted. But what if I actually feel abandoned? Struck down and discouraged, what if I actually feel destroyed? See Apostle paul is making this contrast between what is happening to us, and our response to it. See this is what that valley of discouragement and despair is. When we face adversity or some sort of struggle, that it actually breaks us down, it kills motivation, even when it shouldn’t. But discouragement, sadness, feeling down, its something we as humans often naturally feel. And it often affects many of us.
Maybe for a long time you’ve been praying for a new job, or to get accepted into a school, and you’ve been praying and praying, and it doesn’t happen. Or what you thought it would be, isn’t actually that great. Maybe you’ve just had trial after trial. One bad thing after another. And you just can’t take it anymore. You just say I’m done. I just give up I’m done. Its not worth it dealing with all this and fighting. Maybe you made a mistake. You made some big sin and you just feel this pressure of guilt and sadness on you. And you think to yourself man God will never ever forgive me for what i’ve done. I might as well just give up now. I’m too far gone and I give up.
See these times of discouragement, if we’re not careful and before we know it, we can get into a very dark and scary and dangerous place.
Why Does Discouragement Come?
We are going to look at a few reasons why discouragement comes to us in the first place, we’ll look at examples of others in the Bible that felt discouragement. And then we will go through a very practical and Biblicly backed list of things we can do to get us out of that valley. I want us to be able to think back to this even if we aren’t discouraged now, but maybe one day. Okay. So where does discouragement, despair, and hopelessness actually come from? I want us to look at one verse deeply, and that's John 16:33.
John 16:33: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."
Okay let's look at the second half of this verse. Word by word and apply some logic and reason to it. “In this world you will have tribulation” See here Jesus is making a statement of truth. We WILL have tribulation. No matter what, a Christian in Jesus will have tribulation. Not maybe, always. But look at what comes next. He said “BUT take heart”. That but right there is an answer or a reaction to his prior statement. We will have tribulation, BUT take heart! And in the King James translation it says “but be of good cheer” See he's saying be encouraged! We will have tribulations, but be encouraged!
Why? See that semicolon and what comes after is the answer to why we should be encouraged. “For I have overcome the world”. See Jesus is saying here we should be encouraged in tribulations because he has overcome the world. He’s basically saying because of who I am. The son of God who did so many things on this earth, who died on the cross for our sins. Because of him overcoming the world, we should be encouraged. So lets apply some opposite logic to this.
We will have tribulations. But what if we lose our heart instead of “take heart”, what if we lose good cheer? What if we get discouraged? Well, what that means is we forgot about that end part of that verse. We forgot that Jesus overcame this world. Now obviously we don’t forget this. Intellectually, of course we understand Jesus overcame the world. But in our hearts, somewhere along the way, somewhere, we lost one or some of Jesus’ and God’s truths in our hearts. That when trials and tribulations come our way, we get discouraged. And we fall.
And I can easily end the sermon here and say that's the answer right? You will have trials. But be encouraged because Jesus overcame the world. Simple right? Just focus on Jesus and you won’t have an issue. In a perfect world yes. But life is hard. And we’re not perfect. God knows I’m not perfect, the farthest thing from it. But the last thing God wants us to do is fall away completely in our despair and hopelessness. And at the same time this is the exact place the devil wants us to be. He wants us to give up, lose hope, and be alone. The best way the devil can kill, steal and destroy is isolating us from God and keeping us in darkness.
And that’s why this idea of discouragement and losing hope is so dangerous. But Jesus, in all his love, his grace, his mercy, is there for us. More than anything he wants to pull us out of these moments. He loves us to such a deep level that he just wants us out of there. But we are human. And we have emotions and feelings. And sometimes they’re great. And sometimes they’re just raw. Sometimes we just feel sorrow, pain, grief. And those feelings are normal. That feeling of grief and pain that people feel when they lose someone. That heartache when you might break up with someone. That guilt and self pain you feel when you really messed up and you know it. Those raw feelings are normal. But in those moments, thats when we have to focus on the truth of God and not fall into true and deep discouragement. Life is always up and down and there’s many seasons.
Example: King David
We just have to cling to God to not fall deep in that valley of discouragement. A great example of this is David. I mean this is a man after God’s own heart and we see in Psalms, and over multiple psalms, he was feeling great in one moment and he wrote about it, and then just feeling down and discouraged in another. And it repeats and there's multiple accounts of him feeling these raw emotions. He’s human just like us. If we look at Psalm 13 this is almost a lamentation of David and he starts:
Psalm 13:1-2 “How long, O LORD, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?”
But then look at the very end of that psalm!
Psalm 13:5-6 “ But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.”
See David is going through real emotional pain, but he focuses on that truth of God. He feels that internal emotion, but he doesn’t let that get him fully discouraged and into despair and hopelessness. We see this same very thing in Psalm 42, the very last verse.
Psalm 42:11 “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.”
See he’s almost talking to himself here. He’s saying I feel that pain, but I won’t let it discourage me. Praise the Lord for this great example.
Sources of Discouragement
Before I go into some practical things we can do to fight that temptation to fall into despair in discouragement in our trials, I want to just dig a little deeper into why we get discouraged, just so we can be aware in our own lives. As I mentioned, with that verse in John, most of our discouragement and hopelessness that we might fall into boils down to us losing one of God’s truths somewhere in our hearts. We are in a trial, but we forget God uses all things for good. We might be battling with temptation, but we forget there’s always an out with Jesus. We might feel down about the future, but we forget that God has a future and a hope for us.
See fundamentally, when we fall into that valley, we somewhere lose the truth. And those lies that we might take in, from the devil, it's exactly what he wants to destroy us. More specifically, sometimes our discouragement can come from unrepented sin in our lives. We might be in some cycle of sin. We might be watching something we shouldn’t. We might be doing something we shouldn’t. And we live in that. And God can’t live in the same place of sin. See if we look at David again, after he sinned with Bathsheba, and killing her husband, there’s a psalm where David talks about this period of time from when he sinned to when he repented.
Psalm 32:3-4 “ For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.”
See David is saying he was literally rotting from the inside when he was in sin. He kept it hidden and his strength was dried up. He was discouraged. And he was in despair. And it wasn’t until he repented that he came out of it. And this is exactly what we have to do. If there is sin in our lives, we have to, with the blood of Jesus, repent and wash it away.
Sometimes we might feel discouraged not by sin itself, but from our physical health and physical burnout! The Bible calls us to keep our bodies as a temple. And if we don’t take care of ourselves spiritually but also physically, we can fall down. It’s happened in my life so many times that I felt such stress, or some pain, that I stopped eating. I stayed up late. I stop sleeping well, and before I know it I feel 10x worse. And I just get so down. And we see a biblical example of this with Elijah. I won’t go into the entire story, but at some point Elijah in the old testament got discouraged and as we read, it was his physical health that failed him.
1 Kings 19:4-8 "But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God."
See there Elijah was so discouraged that he wanted God to take his life away. And an angel provided food, water, and sleep! He went through that twice. And then he went into his next journey in strength from that food for forty days and nights. See, sometimes it's spiritual. But sometimes it's that we just need to take care of ourselves physically. That once we do take care of ourselves, we realize what we were thinking and feeling wasn’t actually that bad.
But see sometimes our discouragement does truly come from spiritual attack. And we see examples in the Bible where people get spiritually attacked. We get tempted. We can get attacked. Great example of this is Jesus in the wilderness. He was isolated and alone, and he got tempted. If there’s any time we just randomly feel down, and there’s really no reason for it, we can’t really put our finger on why we feel that way. It very well can be spiritual warefare. And again it's in these moments we need to cling to Jesus.
Steps to Overcome Discouragement
The Bible gives us wisdom in practical things we can do to avoid that valley of discouragement. To avoid falling into hopelessness in despair. One of the great ways to help us pull out of that valley is to fix our perspective. And what I mean is when we feel down and we fall, we often think about just our moments right now, our problems right now, and we forget everything else.
Number One
One powerful thing to do is to focus on remembering God’s Character. Remember who he is. Remember what he did for you. Remember what prayers he’s answered before. So many times when we get discouraged we just focus on the problems we have, and nothing else! Let's look at another Psalm of David:
Psalm 103:1-2 “Praise the LORD, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the LORD my soul, and forget not all his benefits”
And look, David is saying praise the Lord! And forget not all his benefits! He’s saying don’t forget all of the things God has done for you! And let's read on, “Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” And David here goes on and on and on about the benefits of God. See we so easily forget that God forgave us for all our sins, heals us from diseases, redeems our life, renews our youth! Have you ever felt burnt out? Just low energy and ready to give up? Don’t forget God’s benefits! He’s the one who renews your youth like the eagle! Praise God. He just does so much for us. He loves us so deeply. And we just need to remember! Constantly remind yourself of God's benefits, especially when you’re feeling down and discouraged. And one of the best ways to apply this practically in your life is to keep a running list of needs and things you're praying for. And whenever those needs and prayers get answered, cross them off. Now do this for a couple months and then whenever you get into a trial and you feel down, or things are going really really bad and you just say ive had it im done. Open that notebook! Take a look inside! And i’d bet once you look inside you’ll see so many things crossed off. You’ll read them and think oh yeah, God did answer that one. Oh yeah I forgot about that one! See in the moment we always think about our problems, but after God answers a prayer, we so often just forget about it and move to the next thing. Well I do that often at least. But if we keep a notebook like that. If we can look back and see Gods benefits, like it says in Psalms, that can help us get perspective. I’m going through something I think I can’t get out of. But God has helped you time and time again. He’s all of a sudden not going to help you now? Of course he is! God loves us and he wants to give us a future. He wants to give us the desires of our heart if we delight in him. And I love this verse. At the end of Psalm 84
Psalm 84:11 “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly!”
I love that! God wants to help and give us good things. It's just when we get discouraged, we forget! We can even just sit down for 30 minutes and list out all the things you’re grateful for, anything that comes to mind. Through that we’ll remember God’s character. And we’ll get that new perspective. Okay that’s number one. Focusing on remembering God’s character and what he did for you.
Number Two
And this is a powerful one: get a word of encouragement from a brother or sister in Christ. Specifically, sit down and talk to someone you know and trust, and get a word of encouragement from someone that is outside of the valley you feel like you’re in. Just like step one of remembering God's character, we so easily lose perspective of life, that someone else can help us just reset and see what’s actually happening. I mean in my life there’s so many times where I got discouraged, and I just got so close minded, whether it was frustration at someone or something, or even myself. I just didn’t want to think of anything else except that frustration. And my wife would sometimes say a word of encouragement. And I think, oh yeah, maybe it isn’t that bad. Or maybe it's not what I think. Or maybe I’m just wrong. Like I mentioned in the beginning I made this sermon because I fell into a deep valley of discouragement. Everything felt horrible and I couldn’t get out of my own emotions and feelings. I just closed up completely. That was wrong, but I did.
So I ended up reaching out to my pastor, and just chatted with him. I explained how I was feeling and my problems and we ended up chatting for like 4 hours, and he gave me so many words of encouragement. I mean he mentioned stories from his life, pieces of advice, and all of that just gave me so much perspective. I mean some of the stories I heard just made me think man what I’m dealing with and complaining about is nothing. Others have had it worse and have come out of it. And he said some verses and some other stuff and after that chat, I just left feeling so encouraged. None of the problems were solved, but I had that new perspective. And I just felt so much better. A few hours ago I was ready to give up. But a few hours later, I just felt so much better.
And we see a biblical example of this with Apostle Paul as well. If we look in:
2 Corinthians 7:4-6 “I have spoken to you with great frankness; I take pride in you. I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds. For when we came into Macedonia, we had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn – conflicts on the outside, fears within. But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus.”
See look at what Paul says, he was restless, harassed, internal and external conflicts. But GOD comforted him by the coming of another Christian, it was Titus! The encouragement from Titus literally uplifted and encouraged Apostle Paul if you read further. See that's the power of getting encouragement from someone else in Christ. God so often uses his people to minister to others, and that could be the exact thing for you. And that could be the exact thing that stops someone from giving up, and to instead just feel reinvigorated. But in some cases, people might have this pride in themselves that no one can know something is wrong in their life. That they put on this cover in front of others to look like everythings okay. I mean you hear these stories of people with issues for 10, 15 years sometimes because they just keep it hidden, and they never want anyone to encourage or help them. God so often can and will use the Christians around you to encourage and help you when you need it! I mean that's what our church is for! To lift one another up! If you’re struggling, use that to your advantage! Find a small group of Christian friends you can confide and trust in. That you can be open with. It’s so uplifting and encouraging to have a band of brothers and sisters, close knit and able to help one another. Praise God!
Number Three
Just like others can encourage us and lift us up, it is such a blessing to also be the one who actually does the encouraging. See we often look inwards when we get discouraged, it all becomes about me, me, me. And it might turn into you always being the one asking for help and encouragement, but you never being the one to do that yourself! When God calls us to encourage one another, that's a two way street right? And it’s such a blessing when you can be the one to help someone out of their valley with some words of encouragement. And that's also a blessing to us as well! And it can change our perspective in the same way. You know we might often over exaggerate how big problems are. But most often, there’s always someone out there that is having a bigger trial, bigger battle, that you can help. Look around you, maybe one of your friends aren’t in service today. Maybe they’re feeling so discouraged they didn’t even bother to come today. You can be the one to help remind them how great Jesus is, and all the truths in the Bible they might’ve forgotten in their hearts.
Romans 8:28 “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him”
God might use your own trials and valleys that you got out of, and it might become even a testimony that you can use to share! That’s what my pastor did when he talked with me. And it helped me so much. And its such a blessing to do that. God is using you to uplift one of his children, one of your brothers or sisters in Christ.
Number Four
And this is by far the most important one. Above all, to get out of the valley of discouragement or despair, we need to focus on getting the truth of God from the Bible into our heads, and then from our heads into our hearts.
As we looked at earlier that the Bible is pretty clear on what our reaction to trials should be. And we can look at some more:
James 1:2-4 “ Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Romans 5:3-5 “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
When we get trials and tribulations, we are called to rejoice and even count it as joy. But sometimes, because we’re human. We get discouraged. And if we get really discouraged we can fall into hopelessness and despair. We think God’s promises aren’t real. Or what we’re going through is too much to handle. But what happens here, is somewhere somehow we fall into our fleshly emotions and pull ourselves away from the truths of God. Yes we are human. And we have real emotions. But in those moments we need to cling onto the truths of God and not let ourselves fall down into discouragement. Because there’s a reason for those trials. There’s a reason for what we so often go through.
And like those verses say, count it joy when we face trials. Rejoice in our sufferings because that produces endurance, character, and hope! See its such an opposite reaction to what our fleshly bodies want. We can so easily go negative. We can so easily lose hope and think its all over when we get discouraged. But praise God that the Bible gives us clear truths that we can cling to, to help us stay out of those valleys!
But to cling onto these truths in the moments when it's hardest, we have to pray, read, study, and truly understand these truths. We have to get that spiritual oil so that when things get tough, we have the strength and our hearts so full of the truth of God, that it doesn’t affect us. We stay strong. We stay encouraged even in the midst of pain and trials because of who Jesus is! See if we look at our spiritual gas tank and its always on E, of course we’re going to easily forget and fall into discouragement. And this is something we need to do.
This is that path of sanctification that once we are in Christ, we grow, we mature, we learn, the hardships we go through mold and shape us into the image of Christ! And that’s such an encouragement when you look at it from the big picture! And while we see stories of these men of God falling into discouragement, we are also called by Jesus to not be. And while we see examples of David being up down, but we also have great examples of Apostle Paul and Jesus himself staying encouraged, and staying strong even in the midst of something that seems like it should be so discouraging. I mean Apostle paul was beat up and torn down every step of his ministry. He was even in prison writing letters, counting his situation as joy because he can spread the gospel through it. Out of anyone he could’ve so easily fallen into a negative spiral, especially being in prison for his faith. But he clung onto the promises of Jesus. He rejoiced in the midst of his trials, and he was encouraged! He kept the words of Jesus in his hard continually.
And the best example of them all, Jesus! He was beaten, mocked, crucified, but he always looked to his father. He felt sorrow, he felt pain, even to the point of bleeding in his sweat in the garden. But he never fell. He never lost hope in his father. He always knew what the end mission and goal was. Praise God. And if we look back at that verse in 2 Corinthians that I read in the beginning:
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
See Apostle paul is saying while the world will press us, we don’t get crushed. We get confused, but not in despair. We get attacked, but we arent abandoned. There’s this fight between the world, and how we should be taking it in our hearts.
But if we look at the one verse before this, verse 7, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”
See he says “jars of clay”, and in KJV he says “earthen vessels”. He’s talking about us! He’s talking about himself. We are fragile, we are temporary. But the power all comes from God! It’s God’s power that keeps us encouraged even when we get struck down. It’s God’s power that keeps us praising the Lord even when our bodies want to give up and collapse. On the outside we may be attacked, in trials, battling, but on the inside, in our jars of clay, we are just rejoicing at Gods grace, mercy, and love because he is shaping us into who we need to be, in his will.
Praise Jesus. I hope we got something practical out of this. I don’t who might be actually feeling discouraged right now. And maybe you're doing amazing right now. But I hope that we can cling onto some of these practical things we look at that when we do feel pressure. When we do feel a bit down. When we might start to just question things. We can get help from other brothers and sisters in Christ. We can remember how God has helped us so many times. We can help others in the midst of our own struggles too. And above all, just continually seeking God's truth. Having faith that he will pull you through all the trials and hardships.
God is so good.