Don’t let discouragement stop you from loving and serving the Lord with all your heart and living the life God has called you to live and doing what God has called you to do and enjoying your relationship with God and your relationships with others and all the blessings God has so graciously lovingly mercifully bountifully bestowed upon you! Please don’t let discouragement stop you!
I have struggled with discouragement on and off for all my life, but I have learned how not to let discouragement stop me! Now I am here to encourage you to not let discouragement stop you!
I believe one of the biggest tactics of the devil in his three-fold mission to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10) is to try to get followers of the Lord Jesus Christ DISCOURAGED. Why would the devil go all out to try to cause discouragement?
Because the devil wants desperately to harm our relationship with God, to keep us from loving and serving God with all our hearts, to prevent us from loving and serving others, to hold us back from fulfilling God’s will for our lives, and to get us so down and discouraged we get stuck and paralyzed and can’t enjoy God and others and all His blessings!
Discouragement feels yucky, awful, and debilitating. It makes us down and downhearted. It steals our energy and makes us feel like we might as well give up. It makes it hard to be bright and joyful and eager about loving and following Jesus and doing what God gives us to do each day. It makes it nearly impossible to enjoy our relationship with God and to enjoy God’s blessings. It makes us feel like the icky-ness of it will never go away. And sometimes it goes hand in hand with depression. Ugh!
But I have good news for you! We can have victory over discouragement! How? Cry out to God! Call out to Jesus! Pray, pray, pray! Read the Bible! Be totally devoted to God! Live for Him! Call upon Him! Ask for a fresh filling of His Holy Spirit!
Reach out to fellow Jesus followers for love, encouragement, prayer, help, and support in following the Lord!
Praise God! Yes, praise the Lord! Sing to Him aloud! Rejoice in Jesus! Worship God! Go against the feelings of discouragement and choose to be joyful in the Lord! Stomp all over the devil by loving and serving God with all your heart and praising the Lord to no end!
And even if you FEEL discouraged, don’t bow down to the devil and that miserable feeling! Bow down to God and WITH THIS STRENGTH DO WHATEVER HE CALLS YOU TO DO! Don’t let discouragement stop you! If you surrender yourself to God and cry out to Him, He will enable you to go forward following Him! Be encouraged!
Discouragement is a yucky feeling and state of mind. But we don’t need to allow discouragement to remain! Cry out to the Lord and trust Him to lift you up out of the pit of discouragement! Keep praising God! And leave the discouragement behind! Hallelujah, AMEN!
There is one guaranteed place to find encouragement! IN JESUS! Turn, turn, turn to the Lord and cry out to God to deliver you and set you free from the discouragement and rejoice in Jesus, AMEN!
“For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” Colossians 2:1-3 NKJV
“Glory in His holy name; Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the LORD!” Psalms 105:3 NKJV
Please note where per the King James version of the Bible David found encouragement! In the New King James version, the Greek word translated into “encouragement” in the King James is translated as “strengthened”. If you need strength and encouragement, cry out to God!
“And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God.” 1 Samuel 30:6 KJV