Living with Discouragement
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It’s A Wonderful Life opens with a conversation between God, St. Peter and Clarence, angel second-class. Clarence is about to get his big chance as a guardian angel, and upon hearing that his charge, George Bailey, is in desperate need of his services, Clarence asks with urgency, “What’s wrong? Is he sick?”
To which God replies, “No. Worse. He’s discouraged.”
The verb to discourage means “to deprive of confidence, hope or spirit; dishearten, daunt.”
What Causes Discouragement?
What Causes Discouragement?
WRONG = A lie from Satan is the source of every discouragement. Fear, unbelief, self-pity, and self-condemnation are by-products of Satan’s lies. You become susceptible to Satan’s lies when you lose sight of God’s ways or do not put your confidence in Christ’s provision for your every need.
How to deal with discouragement:
15 steps to overcoming discouragement crosswalk.com “15 steps!? thats discouraging.”
Craving
Craving
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.
But not now—now he is homesick for God, existing on his tears rather than the streams of water that spring from the city of God (46:4).
Confusion
Confusion
and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
His confusion stems from his faith, not a lack of faith. The God in whom he believes and with whom he has a relationship has inexplicably let loose the chaotic waters that have swept over him and knocked him off his feet - v.7
Correction
Correction
When what we believe to be true about our God clashes with the actualities of our lives so that nothing makes sense, our faith requires speech. Faith must appeal to God,
Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people, from the deceitful and unjust man deliver me! For you are the God in whom I take refuge; why have you rejected me? Why do I go about mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? Send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling! Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.
This isn’t right, I’m coming for you. I’m coming back to where you are for worship.
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
The brilliance of the psalms is that this interaction works time after time. Psalm 42–43 is a resource for devastated readers who cannot bring themselves to give up on God and for readers confident that God will deliver them.