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)
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