How’s It Going?

1 Kings 19:4 NIV

"I have had enough, Lord," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors."

Do You Ever Get Discouraged?

Last Sunday I was.  I came home and could not shake my frustration with how things were going.  It turned into grumpiness that led to moping about the house and not wanting to be around anyone.  I would like to say my discouragement ended that night but it didn’t.  The entire next day I felt its oppression and even into the third day.  It made me moody and I had a tough time concentrating.  The trouble is, I felt like I had a right to feel sorry for myself and be upset.  That made it almost a moral right; that anyone in my situation would and should be dejected too.  I honestly did not see any reason why I should change my mood even if I thought I could.  No one could talk me out of being discouraged, because my frustrations seemed justified.  I didn’t reach out to anyone for support and didn’t try to cheer up myself.  I was all alone in my discouragement…or at least it seemed like it.  Like crawling into a closet and closing the door behind me, psychologically, I shut everyone else out and convinced myself that no one cared how I felt.

One of the great preachers of all time, the world famous Charles Spurgeon went through long and intense bouts with depression.  He made life miserable for everyone in his family when he went through them.  He isn’t the only Christian leader who suffered from despair.  Charles Stanley, the great pastor out of Atlanta battled discouragement even while leading a great church and wildly popular radio ministry.  When you get discouraged, what leads to it?  Have you wanted to quit, isolate yourself; have you ever become hard to be around because of how dark your mood was?  There is such a matter as clinical depression and doctors speak of chemical imbalances that lead to terrible despair but that is a topic for another time.  Today we are looking at discouragement and its implications.  What should we do about our discouragement and how should we think about it?

We find many in the Bible who became so discouraged that it led to despair.  One of the great figures in the Old Testament, someone who was a shining example of courageous faith is the prophet Elijah.  The brutal honesty of the Scriptures gives us great insight into the psychology of discouragement and its spiritual roots.  Although he was a great man of God, Elijah battled despair and even his faith did not protect him from despondency.  Elijah is best known for the stand he took against paganism on Mt. Carmel.  Elijah courageously challenged the pagan priests of Israel to a spiritual contest.  Whoever’s God sent fire down from heaven and burned up a sacrifice placed on an altar would be declared the true God.  Eight hundred pagan priests stood on one side of the mountain with their altar and slain bull while just Elijah stood on the other side by his own altar dedicated to the Lord.  Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire."  So they took the bull given them and prepared it.  Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. "O Baal, answer us!" they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.  (1 Kings 18:25-26 NIV)  There never was a response.  The pagan priests called late into the day but no fire came down from heaven for them.  Finally Elijah went to work.  Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord had come, saying, "Your name shall be Israel."  With the stones he built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed.  He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, "Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood." (1 Kings 18:31-33 NIV)

It was then that a great miracle took place that verified the majesty of the Great God Almighty before the people of Israel.  At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command.  Answer me, O Lord, answer me, so these people will know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."  Then the fire of the Lord fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.  When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The Lord-he is God! The Lord-he is God!"  (1 Kings 18:36-39 NIV)  Immediately the people at Elijah’s command slaughtered the prophets of Baal and declared their allegiance to the Lord as the one true God.

Such a great victory should have sustained Elijah and his faith to the end of his life but it didn’t.  The queen of Israel who was a staunch follower of the pagan religions when she found out about the massacre of the prophets of Baal, immediately ordered her soldiers to track down Elijah and kill him.  Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, Lord," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." (1 Kings 19:3-5 NIV)  Even the great Elijah saw no purpose in his life and could not imagine any way things would ever improve.  That is the nature of discouragement.  It may not be rational but it is reasonable.  Elijah witnessed one of the great miracles of all time and saw just how popular the Lord was still among his people but the threat of Jezebel the queen was enough to derail him.

The battle for Elijah’s mind did not end there in the desert.  He was never the same after this and finally God took him away in a fiery chariot.  It cannot be said that Elijah lacked evidence of God’s care and protection.  He was miraculously fed by ravens during a famine and raised from the dead the son of a widow who provided him lodging during a three year famine.  Elijah had more than enough evidence to believe in God and trust Him to take care of him but for some reason his faith in God drained out of him and he gave up on ever finding a reason to live.  Discouragement is not rational.  But it is reasonable.  No one could have blamed Elijah for seeing things as he did.  He had plenty justification for being afraid and thinking his situation was hopeless.  How could he ever out run Jezebel’s soldiers and who would stand up for him when they got to him?  He had no allies, certainly none as powerful as the king and queen.  God was not taking up his cause.  If He was, Jezebel would have accepted defeat and agreed that the Lord was God just as the ones on Mt. Carmel had.  Instead the Lord left him to fend for himself against the terrible and terrifying Jezebel.

Discouragement is the self-absorbed reaction to stress.  Despair is simply discouragement taken one step further.  Elijah fell into despair because he lost track of where he was.  He wasn’t off in the desert by himself.  He was not alone to face the great threat of Jezebel’s henchmen.  He was with God and standing in His might.  Now we must be careful here as we address this matter of discouragement.  The tendency is to feel sorry for those who are discouraged because they face such great trials and they can’t help being knocked down by them.  Of course the trials we face could be monumental and life altering but they may be insignificant too and not change the course of our lives in any measurable way.  It is not the size of the threat that determines how discouraged you become.  It is the loss of perspective.  My sister-in-law once had a conversation with her son that still makes me laugh if it were not so serious to those who were in the conversation.  The son came to his mom and complained about the actions of his sister, wanting something to be done to her obviously.  My sister replied, “Now who are you in charge of?”  She wanted to establish that he was not the parent of his sister, even if she was out of line.  My nephew quickly answered, “Myself!”  This was of course correct.  That was how he was supposed to respond.  But my sister-in-law immediately realized the error in that sort of thinking because he was not in charge of himself, his parents were.   If he was in charge, then he could do whatever he wanted and that could not be the case.  To clarify, she shot back, “No you’re not, I am.”

Discouragement is the emotional reaction to forgetting God is in charge of your life.  Rather than trusting Him to work out everything, you get tired of waiting for God to do what you want done and decide you know better than He does how everything should go.  Your frustration at not getting your way can be too much for you to handle and discouragement and despair often follow. The disciples were discouraged and dismayed when Jesus was arrested but our Lord wasn’t.  It was the way God was going to work out salvation for the world.  When my ego becomes too big to let God have final authority in those matters that impact me, then I become agitated and discouraged by what I don’t understand or like.  You don’t become discouraged because things are going badly, you become discouraged because you think you are smarter than God and know more than He does about what is best for you and others.   Your frustration at no getting your way either becomes anger or discouragement and you start moping and feeling sorry for yourself.

Once you hide your life in God and trust Him to in love take care of you and those you cherish, you will find that your joy and peace will bubble back up to the surface and your discouragement will leave you like a scared lizard.  Say this prayer when you are disappointed by how things are going and there seems to be no way out of your troubles.  “Lord, I don’t have any idea what to do and I don’t feel like I can take much more of this.  I need you to protect me from Satan and from fear and from discouragement.  Give me peace today.  Give me joy and help me let go of my problems and trust you to take care of them.  In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen.”  Remember this simple little statement in the Bible.  What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31 NIV)

Good

Luke 18:19 NIV

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good — except God alone.”

What Is Really Good?

Can I be blamed for thinking that California is one of the best places on Earth to live?  Of course there is much that is wrong with the state but nearly all of its problems can be pinned on the values and actions of those who live there.  There is something to be said though of a region that has both Yosemite and Muir Woods, the beaches of San Diego and the San Francisco Bay.  California certainly isn’t perfect but there are some aspects of it that approach perfection.  I was driving with a friend through Mississippi and he introduced me to the woods there, pointing out how lovely the forests were.  It was about like when I went with a classmate to visit his family living in Southwest Missouri and he commented on the beauty of the Ozark Mountains.  Now I am not one to denigrate another person’s “pride and joy”  but I had difficulty complimenting the skinny pine trees of Mississippi after hiking through redwood groves in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  And I must say that there are mountains and then there are MOUNTAINS.  Who am I to tell someone what to like and not like.  Perhaps New York pizza really is better than Chicago style and Japanese cars are better than Russian ones.  Yet am I correct in telling you that you would be happier living in the San Francisco Bay Area than you would be  staying in Amsterdam or Beijing, or Branson, Missouri?  We have a right to our opinions…and every one of us has them!

Goodness has the feeling of being just another aspect of opinion.  If you say you’re good, does that mean you are?  Serial killers and pedophiles and vandals who tag sidewalks may say they are good and really believe they are but is it true?  Probably even Stalin’s mom saw something good in him and Hitler was respected and honored by quite a few people.  It is funny though how easy it is for us to see the good in ourselves and not see it in others.  We use a sort of sliding scale when we evaluate people…whether it is ourselves or others.  Part of the reason we can see good in “bad” people is that there still is in each of us the hint of the good God put in us when he made us.  It may not be developed goodness or disciplined goodness we see, it might only be strand of what was left in us when the Lord put us together but it is there and we fool ourselves into thinking that is who we are rather than the hint of the good of God Himself. 

The account of James and John thinking they were good because they wanted fire to come down from heaven and burn up a poor Samaritan village because the people had the audacity to not want to pay to feed and house Jesus and His disciples is too true to human nature ever to have been fabricated.  As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.  And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?"   But Jesus turned and rebuked them,  and they went to another village. (Luke 9:51-55 NIV)  I am sure, and probably you are too, that James and John thought they meant well, thought their hearts were in the right place but clearly Jesus saw things differently.  It was not good that fueled their anger at the Samaritans although if you had asked them before Jesus rebuked them, they probably would have seen themselves as good people.  You and I can’t judge them.  We might just as well have said exactly what James and John did if we were there.  This though is the problem with the strand of good we all have and make much of.  All too many of us think we are so good that we don’t need God…don’t need Him to significantly change us, don’t need Him to remake us.

I can’t imagine Jesus was very happy with one of the discussions the disciples had when He was gone.  If it were not for the fact that it was so very telling of the human condition, we might get a good laugh at it.  Also a dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be greatest.  Jesus said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors.  But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. (Luke 22:24-26 NIV)  Now if we just think a bit about this whole argument, there is a critical observation we must make.  At no point do the disciples consider what part God must play in their lives for them to be good!  It is all about them and their abilities, their morality, their skills, their religion.  God is not even needed.  Did they have to be saved?  Was there any hint in them that salvation was required?  It is fascinating, this strange reluctance to see ourselves, to really look at who we are without God.  We have that strand of good in us to keep us content but the truth of who we are eventually hits us.  We need a Savior.

Consider the sad case of Joseph and his brothers.  Joseph’s brothers were fed up with Joseph.  They had enough of Joseph being the favorite of their father, enough of his proud strutting about with his fancy coat and enough of the dreams he claimed to have had that according to Joseph foretold that they all, even their mothers and father would bow before Joseph one day as if he were some sort of king.  The boys decided to fix Joseph and with their dad not around, sold him into slavery.  So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe — the richly ornamented robe he was wearing — and they took him and threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it.  As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.  Judah said to his brothers, "What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?  Come, let's sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood." His brothers agreed.  So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt. (Genesis 37:23-28 NIV)

Evil like that is tough to comprehend.  How could anyone do such a thing and yet it was done.  Each one of those brothers thought he was a better person than Joseph.  Each believed Joseph was arrogant, selfish and self-righteous.  You don’t sell your brother into slavery if you haven’t decided he is pretty bad.  Here is the irony of this.  Each brother felt like he was good, a decent soul because that strand of good was in him, and yet…At least two of them became murderers, one slept with his father’s common-law wife and one sought out prostitutes after his wife died.  We don’t know about the rest…they were at least bad enough to sell their own brother into slavery.  Here is what we see in all of us.  Each brother thought he was the good one…at least better than his brother was and each brother thought his brother was worse than he was, more evil and needing to be fixed.

There is a passage in Isaiah that does not receive the attention it deserves.  It has a profound message describing what God is going to do with us.  He will save us, that is true…or we should say He does save us.  The prophecy was made eight hundred years before Jesus brought us our salvation though and it says something quite important about what that salvation will do for us.  A voice of one calling: "In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a highway for our God.  Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.  And the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all mankind together will see it.  For the mouth of the Lord has spoken." (Isaiah 40:3-5 NIV)  You and I are that desert.  You are the one God will Himself make right so that you are a fit place for Him to live.  The good you think is good will be made perfect.  No strand of self-righteousness will be left to it for God Himself in Christ will make it truly good.  The evil in you will be leveled, and torn out and the glory of the LORD will be revealed in you.  Everyone will see it…that you are perfect, lovely in every way.  God will walk in you and make His home in you and nothing, not the worst of your sins, not the ugliest of evil that could ever be found in you will be there anymore.  There will be no corrupted goodness, no pretend morality or broken love or fractured peace.  Only goodness, real goodness that perfect God can make of you.  He has spoken.  And once again God will say of you.  “You are very good.”