Slaying the Giant of Discouragement

A man was driving home from work one day, and he stopped to watch a local Little League game. As he sat down behind first baseline on the bench, he asked one of the boys what the score was. And the boy said, "We're behind 14 to nothing". He had a big smile on his face. "Really," asked the man, he said, "I have to say you don't look very discouraged". He said, "Discouraged, why should we be discouraged? We haven't even batted yet". (read stories from book- pgs. 20-21)

According to the dictionary, the word "discouragement" means to deprive of courage, to deter, to dishearten, to hinder. Actually, the word "discouragement" only appears once in the New Testament, but there are some other words which are translated in some of the more modern translations by the word "discourage". The word that most often gets translated that is a word of discouragement is the word "faint," and it's surprising how many times that appears in the letters that Paul wrote to his friends. He said in 2 Corinthians 4:1, "Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart". Paul mentions this in Ephesians chapter 3, he says, "Therefore I ask that you do not lose heart at my tribulations for you, which is your glory". In other words, "Don't get discouraged about what I'm discouraged about". Here's one that we can all identify with. The Lord Jesus said this in Luke 18:1, he said, "Men ought always to pray and not to get discouraged, not to faint". Jesus says, "When you pray, don't get discouraged 'cause it's easy for you to get discouraged when you pray". So today, as we learn about discouragement, I want you to remember again that this is not a term that's foreign to the Bible. It's a term that you find in the Scripture. Sometime if you feel discouraged, you may think, "Well, I'm not very spiritual". Well, I don't know about that. I just know that discouragement is an issue that's addressed in the Scripture. And once again, I want us to turn to the Old Testament for our story to illustrate the principles of discouragement and how we deal with it. This particular situation, we're going to look at the book of Nehemiah, and we're going to focus in particularly on the fourth chapter. Let me set the stage for this story and get you up to speed as quickly as possible. This was a very unique period in Jewish history. Almost 70 years before the Babylonians had invaded Jerusalem, and they had not only destroyed the city, they destroyed the temple. And they had carried away captives to Babylon and those captives had, for seven decades, been away from their homeland. During the end of the period of captivity, the Persians were in control and Cyrus the Persian gave these Jewish exiles permission to go back to their homeland, and to reconstitute it and begin to build it again. First of all, under Zerubbabel, there were some who went back to begin the building of the temple. And then later on, there were two prominent men whose names are found in the Old Testament who went back to Jerusalem. One of them was a priest by the name of Ezra, and the other was an administrator by the name of Nehemiah. In fact, in the early days of the collection of the Old Testament Scriptures, Ezra and Nehemiah were just one book. It wasn't until later that they were separated out into two different books. Ezra was the priest who came back to renew the hearts of the people, and Nehemiah came back to restore the walls of the city so that they could live in safety with their neighbors. As we come to the fourth chapter of Nehemiah, this administrative leader has galvanized the troops in Israel, and they have begun this immense building program to rebuild the walls around the whole city of Jerusalem. In fact, this project is now halfway done. You can well imagine that when the walls started to go up around Jerusalem, the neighbors of the Israelites weren't very excited. They rather liked having Jerusalem lying in rubbles with the stones burnt in the ground. So, from every side of this project, there was all kinds of resistance and discouragement. There were men like Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the Ammonites, they formed a kind of dark alliance against Nehemiah. They decided… "You're not gonna build these walls, not while we're here". They did everything they could to shut down this project through discouragement, and subterfuge, and manipulation. But by the power of Almighty God, Nehemiah had led them now, the walls are halfway up. And when we get to the fourth chapter of the book of Nehemiah, we're halfway through the project. Now already you know, when you're halfway through, that's when you're in jeopardy. That's when you're in the most serious trouble. How many of you know halfway is not a good place? The Bible Bible tells us that these walls were about halfway built. And so, things began to happen. The people began to get discouraged and Nehemiah had to deal with the problem of discouragement in his day. In fact, it's interesting to me that the same principles of discouragement that are observable in Nehemiah chapter 4 are the principles we deal with in our day and age as well. Let’s see how Nehemiah handled the problem…what did he do and what do we have to do…

1. Recognize Discouragement

There were several factors that were causing the people to become discouraged. These exact things happen to us…

A. Factor 1- Fatigue

It says in the tenth verse of the fourth chapter at the beginning of the verse,

Nehemiah 4:10 (NKJV)

Then Judah said, “The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall.”

They had been working at this for many days. In fact, the building of the walls took a total of 52 days, if they're halfway through, they had been working steadily now for a month trying to restore the walls of the city of Jerusalem, and the people are tired. Vince Lombardi said that “fatigue makes cowards of us all” How many times have you discovered how much more vulnerable you are to discouragement when you are really, really tired? You have worked late, you have been working on the weekends or other things have happened in your family or in your neighborhood. And you have just been under the gun for such a long period of time. And all of a sudden, you discover that in moments like that you are really susceptible to the enemy's attack. That's what was going on in Jerusalem. Through fatigue, they had become discouraged. You have limits, and when you push them, you start to crack. And when will the enemy attack? When we are strong or weak?

B. Factor 2- Frustration

Something was happening here that was causing great frustration among the people of God. They were working diligently, but they were fighting a war that wasn't very exciting. It says one of the things that caused them to be tired was that there was so much rubbish that they were not able to build a wall. Now, the reason for this was when the walls were burned down and torn down, all of the stones, we're told as we read history, were burned and they were ground, and they were just big piles of rubbish everywhere. Before they could build the new walls, they had to clear out the rubbish of the old walls, find the foundations and the wall of the city. And, you know, it's kind of fun building new walls, but it's not fun cleaning up old ones, I guess. I haven’t built too many. And so, what happened was this, every day they would work hard. And they would come back the next day, and it seemed like nothing was there to show for their work. All they had done is gotten some more rubbish out of the way. And every time they'd try to build, there was this massive task of cleaning out the rubbish, and they got frustrated. There's a lot of talk these days about burnout. I don't know if you read the journals or hear about it, and I have people ask about burnout. Somebody said there's three ways to live, you can live out, you can wear out, or you can burn out. I'm hoping to live out, and I'm sure most of you agree that's the best way to go. But burnout is often misunderstood. burnout is working too hard at something you can't do, something that maybe can't be done. It's pulling the whole weight up the hill by yourself and realizing that when you get to the top, you're gonna get almost there and then you're gonna fall back down again, have to start all over again. Burnout is a very difficult thing. And the people in Nehemiah's day were suffering from the burnout of rubbish removal, always having to do this and not ever being able to see. And they couldn't see the great wall in the future or the great city, they just saw rubble. So, sometimes discouragement comes out of the frustrations that we face in life.

C. Factor 3- Failure

And then if you keep reading and you read this verse again, you'll discover that they, they were also convinced that they were gonna fail. Sometimes discouragement comes as a result of failure, or at least the sense in our minds that we're gonna fail.

Nehemiah 4:10 NKJV

Then Judah said, “The strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall.”

And you can just hear the negative talk coming back from the people. They decided that it wasn't possible. “we are not able to build the wall.” All of us in our lives, if we live long enough, will experience some failure. Failure is part of being a human being, we all fail. the enemy sneaks in with his little innuendos and before we know it, we're beginning to believe the lie sometimes out of fatigue, and sometimes out of frustration, sometimes out of failure. There's one last one, maybe the most powerful one of all, and that is fear.

D. Factor 4- Fear

It says in verse 11 of Nehemiah chapter 4, that while they were trying to build this project, the adversaries came and they said, Nehemiah 4:11

Nehemiah 4:11 (NKJV)

And our adversaries said, “They will neither know nor see anything, till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease.”

"They will neither know nor see anything till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease". In the next verse it says, "They told us ten times". So, get what's going on, this little guerrilla warfare that's happening in all the piles of rubbish around the wall. The enemies from the north, and the south, and the east, and the west, were filtering in among the builders and saying, "You just wait. When you're not thinking, when you're not watching, when you don't know we're coming, we're gonna slip in amongst you and we're gonna kill you. And one by one, we're gonna pick you off until there will be no builders left, and then we won't have to worry about this new city in our midst". How many of you know criticism can be very discouraging? When you're already kind of struggling to keep things going and moving forward, it can just wear away your resolve.

So, what do we do about it? How do we deal with discouragement? How do we respond?

2. Respond to Discouragement

The first thing you do, which is normally the last thing we do, the first thing you do is cry out to God.

First Response: Cry out to God

How many of you know that most of the time if we're not careful, we wait and do that last? We have this little phrase that goes like this, "All we can do now is pray". My goodness, why didn't you start there? Notice what happened when the attacks begin to intensify upon Nehemiah's workforce. It says in verse 4 and again in verse 9 these words,

Nehemiah 4:4 (NKJV)

Hear, O our God, for we are despised; turn their reproach on their own heads, and give them as plunder to a land of captivity!

Nehemiah 4:9 (NKJV)

Nevertheless we made our prayer to our God, and because of them we set a watch against them day and night.

Try writing it out in a journal, telling the Lord what is on your heart, what has you discouraged. Sometimes seeing it written helps you get a different perspective. Then cry out to God. Find you a quiet place, and let it out. I’ve done this a few times in my life, and it helped me, and I believe the Lord heard my crys.

Second Response: Continue the work God gave you

What is it that we are prone to do when we get discouraged? Quit. we stop doing the one thing that has the greatest possibility to help us get through the process. Satan knows that if he can demoralize us and neutralize us through discouragement, he can stop the work that God is doing through us. And what is interesting to me is that when Nehemiah was discouraged, when the discouraging word came, the Scripture tells us that he continued to do what he was already doing. Yes, he had to deal with the problem, but he didn't stop building the wall.

Nehemiah 4:6 (NKJV)

So we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.

On a later occasion, Sanballat and Geshem tried to get Nehemiah to leave the work that he was doing on the wall and come down and have a conference with him. And I always have loved this response.

Nehemiah 6:3 (NKJV)

So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?”

What was he saying? He was saying, "I'm gonna keep on doing the work that God has called me to do. And sometimes you have to put both feet on the floor with some authority and say, "I don't feel like doing this, but I'm going to do this because this is what God has called me to do". By the way, I've been learning as I'm getting older that there's this strange thing that life does to us. It goes like this, the time you feel like doing it the least is the time you need to do it the most like exercise, right? When we feel like bailing, we need to keep on building. And when we feel like walking, we need to keep on working. And God can help us as we work through our discouragement.

Third Response: Concentrate on the Big Picture

You see, what was going on in Nehemiah's time was that these people were working on little sections of the wall. There were spaces between each of them to the point where they didn't have a lot of communication with each other, and all they could see was the little pile of rubbish they were dealing with, the little bit of wall they were building. It was hard to get any perspective. Sometimes when all you can see is what's going on in your life, you look around and you think the whole world is just like what you're dealing with. As far as they knew, there was nothing going on on the other side. They just kind of lost perspective. And Nehemiah did something very, very important.

Nehemiah 4:13–14 (NKJV)

Therefore I positioned men behind the lower parts of the wall, at the openings; and I set the people according to their families, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked, and arose and said to the nobles, to the leaders, and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses.”

I can imagine the Jews as they were spread out around the wall. They couldn't see what was being done, and they needed somebody to rally them together so they could see the big picture and not get lost in their little vision of one part of the wall they were working on. So, Nehemiah organized the people and he gave them a sense of community, and he developed them so that though they were spread out from one another, they knew that they were not alone. Discouragement so often comes when we lose sight of God's purposes and we get out of perspective. You may remember Erma Bombeck. During her 30-year career, she wrote a daily humor column, published 15 books, was recognized as one of the 25 most influential women in America, appeared on the "Good Morning America" program, and was on the front cover of "Time" magazine.

But during that same time, most people don't know this, Erma Bombeck also experienced incredible troubles. She had breast cancer, she had a mastectomy, she had kidney failure, and she always somehow was able to work through those difficulties and have this perspective of the whole picture. She said, "I speak at college commencement, and I tell everyone I'm up there and they're down there, not because of my success, but because of my failure. I had a comedy record album that sold two copies, a sitcom that lasted about as long as a doughnut lasts at our house, a Broadway play that never saw Broadway, book signings where I attracted two people, one who wanted directions to the restroom and the other who wanted to buy the desk". She said, "What you have to tell yourself is this, I'm not a failure. I failed at doing something, but there's a big difference. As Christians, we have to open our eyes to see the view from where Jesus sits. When I am discouraged and my hope runs thin, I remember that I'm part of something much bigger than I am, Zoom out, look at my church I’m a part of, look at the global church I’m apart of.

Fourth Response: Claim the Encouragement of God’s Promises

Go to the Word, go to the Word of God. The one thing that you're prone to do when you get discouraged is to say, "You know, I don't feel like reading the Bible today. I'm so down". I tell people you need to learn the principle of force feeding. Get the book out, open it up, stick your feet on the floor, put your body in a chair, put the book on the desk and start reading it out loud. Sometimes I've said, "I'm not gonna quit reading till I hear from you". And God will come, and he'll talk to you, and he'll help you There are actually two passages in the New Testament where the word "discourage" is found and it reminds us that it's possible for us to get discouraged doing good things.

2 Thessalonians 3:13 NKJV

But as for you, brethren, do not grow weary in doing good.

Did you know you can get discouraged doing good? Friends, you can be out making calls on people in the hospital. You can be teaching Sunday school, giving your heart to it all. And in the midst of it all, you can get discouraged. Did you know that? And the Word of God says, "Don't get discouraged doing good". And the book of Galatians says the very same thing. "Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we don't get discouraged".

If you read verses 16 through 23 in the fourth chapter of Nehemiah, you're gonna find something interesting there. You're going to find over and over people helping each other, some people carrying, some people guarding, some people building, all of them wearing a sword. At the end of the passage, it says they stayed up all night. They didn't even go back to their homes. They stayed and says, "We didn't even change clothes, except for washing". What were they doing? They were protecting one another and helping one another, and coming together in community to make this happen. They were carrying one another's burdens. God hasn't meant us to carry all of our own burdens. He's meant for us to carry the burdens of one another and to encourage one another. Remember- give what you need, and it will come back to you. If you want encouragement, go sow some and it'll come back to you. I never ever heard of anybody say, "I was encouraged too much". But there are a lot of people who live in encouragement deprivation, and you and I can be the answer.