Stay Encouraged

One major effort in life is just staying encouraged.  If we fail to do this, we start to be carried along by the cares and worries of life.  The “everyday” things of life become the main thing and our hope in the impossible and the wonderful start to fade – fast!

One way to stay encouraged is to keep hearing a word from the Lord.  This word may come in the form of a sermon, of reading scripture, of hearing a prophetic word of knowledge or wisdom.  These words don’t even need to involve you.  Just knowing that God is moving and speaking in enough for most of us to have hope live on.  It is when we feel like God is doing nothing and we are a part of nothing, that the darkness grows.

So how do you stay encouraged in a discouraging world?  Do you plan on encouraging yourself?  Do you take steps to hear the Lord?  Do you spend time with God listening to His plans and not just listening for “what needs to be fixed”.  A constant gaze at what is not happening can discourage us.  We can train ourselves on finding “what is wrong” and miss all the good things that are happening all around us.  I know this by experience.

Have you ever tried to get someone who was depressed to see the good things of their life?  In my experience, this is hard.  They look up for a moment and then find three or four negative things to comment on.  God may have just performed a miracle for them and all they can see is what was not done.  The focus is on what is not happening.  Maybe this is what was going on in the lives of the people who saw Jesus, but did not except Him as the Son of God.  Maybe these people saw all the good that Jesus did but they saw MORE all that He did not do. 

I also think we need to stay encouraged so that we can fight against sin.  When we are down, sinning seems not to matter as much.  Our hope is lost.  What does it matter if I sin?  We also tend to use sin as a tool for encouragement.  I think we turn to sin because we do not feel like God will lift us up.  Like Adam and Eve in the garden, we love God but question weather this life has more “goodness” than He is offering.  We take matters into our own hands and seek more hope and encouragement apart from Him.  It seems good for a moment, but then guilt and shame press the darkness even deeper into our soul. 

To say encouraged I need to keep alive and active my relationship with the Lord.  To do this, I am going to try some of the following disciplines. I got these from the Desert Fathers and others through history.

• Eat and sleep right
• Take time to think, be alone, ponder
• Choose to be obedient.  I don’t need to do everything.  I just need to hear and obey.
• Avoid grumbling and complaining.
• Read Scripture aloud.
• Practice the giving and receiving of hospitality
• Try to do hunting with a good friend (I added this one myself)

One final note on encouragement.  When we hear a testimony of someone else, we ought to be encouraged.  We should rejoice in our inner man that God is on the move and His love is touching the earth.  We also can be angry when we hear a testimony.  Sneaky jealously can make us envy, judgmental and just mad about the love of God being shown to someone else.  We can become so self centered that what God is doing on the earth brings us no joy unless is blesses us.  This is deep darkness as even the light is dark to us.

Thanks be to God, that He can break us free, even from this yoke.  No matter how deep the pit, God is deeper still and desires to redeem us.  Taking His grace and adding effort, we walk with the Spirit in the direction that He directs.  In other words, those of us who feel we are so bad that God is not able to help us, we are WRONG.