(1) My Battle With Discouragement

I have always been a particularly positive guy. Always enjoyed life. Love to laugh and play. Until . . .

I remember it so clearly. Laying in my bed awake when everyone else was well into dream land. Staring at the ceiling, praying to God that He would take my life and bring me home to be with Him. Depressed? No, I don’t think so, just deeply discouraged. Feeling hopeless. Feeling like the struggles would never end. Struggles with my own fallen nature getting the better of me at times. Struggles with conflict with others and opposition in ministry. Struggles with trying to encourage everyone else to have a positive outlook and trust God while not feeling like I had anyone to keep me encouraged. I just felt spent. I felt like I had nothing else to give. I felt like the world, my family, and my church would be better off without me. But I didn’t give up. I determined that as long as God kept my lungs sucking air and my heart pumping blood I would keep going, trying to be faithful to Him.

This wasn’t a one time event. It actually occurred a few times. Other times, I came short of asking God to take my life but I did beg Him to change things in my life. There have been a number of times as I went through those few years of growth when I felt like quitting. I felt like there was no hope of relief, no hope of change. Oh, I kept going through the motions, putting my best foot forward, really trying to do the right thing, but my heart wasn’t always in it.

God taught me a lot during those years. He taught me about trusting Him. He brought me face to face with my wrong thinking, attitudes and values. He lead me to a greater understanding of principles in His Word and the glories of His character. He taught me about defeating discouragement.

Discouragement. It’s a fact of life. We all experience it. Sometimes we can see it coming, but most of the time it comes upon us unexpectedly. Some of us are less prone to discouragement and infrequently become discouraged. On the other hand, some of us are more prone to discouragement and are frequently discouraged.

Discouragement grows from a variety of sources and challenges in life. It can come and go quickly with little impact on us, or, discouragement can be prolonged and quite dangerous. It has the potential for consuming us, and can even grow into life dominating depression. It must be defeated or it will defeat us.

Now, some people try to defeat discouragement by simply trying to think happy thoughts or speaking positive mantras in hopes that these thoughts and words will produce reality. Or, we may just resort to denial and seek to ignore the problem in hopes it will get better. Others may pursue substitution to compensate for their foreboding thoughts. Hey, let’s go shopping, go to a movie, get a pizza, that will make me feel better. But these solutions are about as helpful as an aspirin for healing a broken leg. The only way we will truly get victory over discouragement is to combat it with truth. So, we must turn to God’s Word

Next:  Discouragement in the Bible