Facing Discouragement

Have you ever walked up to someone that seems a little down and they just don't seem to be having a good day and you say, well, what's wrong? I say, well, I'm just discouraged. I'm suffering from discouragement. All of us get discouraged. It's an interesting emotion. We try to separate our emotions. They're very difficult sometimes to classify. I mean, there's sadness, there's depression.

Discouragement is slightly different than those. Now, they can all sort of feed each other. Sadness, depression, discouragement can feed each other. But discouragement usually has a very definable root cause. We get discouraged because we try so hard and we fail. Discouragement comes from a sense of failure. It comes from a sense of, I try so hard and my husband just never notices. Or, I try so hard and everybody else gets the promotion at work. Or, I try so hard to obey God and I keep the Sabbath and I don't work on the Sabbath and I don't go to the school events on the Sabbath and everybody else seems to be popular and everybody else seems to get all these blessings and I don't.

We get discouraged. We can define we're discouraged. There are other things sometimes it's hard to define where it comes from. We just get to the place where we look at how hard we're trying. We're looking at the effort we're giving and that effort is producing failure. You're not discouraged when you're having success. You're discouraged when you're failing. Even the word in English is very interesting. This is a prefix that means without.

So to be discouraged is to be without courage. This is to be without courage. That's what it means. It is an emotional state. It's a mental state. Many times it can become a spiritual state in which circumstances in which we feel defeated, we feel like our effort means nothing, in which we're trying so hard and in this sense of defeat we begin to lose energy, we begin to lose heart, we begin to lose drive, we begin to not want to keep going on.

I want to do something else. I am discouraged. I'm without the courage to go on. We believe in discouragement that the effort isn't worth the results. And so why go on? I become afraid to go on. That's very interesting because discouragement in the sense of defeat leads to the formation of a lot of fears in our lives. Discouragement leads to fear. It is a fearful state. Sadness isn't necessarily fear. You can be sad because something bad happened.

You can be sad because someone you know died. You can be sad because something happened in your life and it's just sad, but that's sadness you can work through. Discouragement goes back to a continual sense of defeat that leaves you in fear. Why should I try? I will only get hurt again. Why should I do anything? I will only fail. When we get to the place we have no courage to go on.

Because we have fear. Scripture is full of people who suffered from discouragement. All of us face discouragement. Because all of us face defeats. All of us face failures in life. Failure is part of life. I'm actually working on a sermon about how we can learn from failure because failure is part of life. But when we chronically begin to look at our defeats and our failures and we chronically look at the things that happen to us without our control, we begin to get discouraged.

We begin to have a lack of courage. It's amazing how many of us, if we're not careful because we see our society collapsing into sin, we see our society collapsing financially. Then we're becoming discouraged. Why even get up and work? Why go to work? It's all going to go down the toilet anyways. We don't have the courage to face the day anymore. And when you get discouraged, you don't have a positive attitude.

You seem negative. Everything seems negative. And at the core of it is a fear. And the more we are discouraged, the more fears we begin to have. It's an amazing thing. One kind of fear leads to another kind of fear leads to another kind of fear. So we're going to look at four causes for discouragement, in a very broad sense here. Four causes of discouragement, the results of discouragement.

Then we're going to go into the Bible and look at how you and I have to combat this lack of courage. I just want to give up. When you wake up someone, I woke up some mornings and thought, I'm so discouraged, I've got to do this today and this today and this today. I wish I could just go fishing. Now, if we don't do that, we don't just give up and go do it. It's in the act of doing many times that you actually gain the courage to keep going on.

Discouragement leads eventually to depression, which then becomes actually a chemical problem in your body. I mean, depression causes all kinds of problems with us mentally, emotionally, and physically. Discouragement, though, can be tracked down to, I'm defeated and I no longer have the courage to go on. I no longer have the courage to keep doing what I'm supposed to do.

Four causes of discouragement. One is discouragement can be brought about by disappointing circumstances or illness or feelings of failure, of stress, of anxiety. Anxiety and discouragement are tied together. You can see some people that have this remarkable amount of courage. They just face everything in life. No matter what happens to them, they seem to be able to face it head-on.

They do that for ten years and twenty years and thirty years and then one day they're just so discouraged they can't face anything. Because this cumulative effect of anxiety has built up because today I've got to get up and what's going to happen again today? Failure is going to happen again today. Bad things are going to happen again today. I'm going to be defeated sometime during the day by something. So why get up and face it? At this point the person becomes controlled by anxiety.

Remember I said one fear leads to another fear. That's very, very important because we're not to be controlled by fear. God's Spirit helps us overcome fear, and yet discouragement without courage, fear, is a major issue in the Christian life. All of us have suffered from discouragement, and chronic discouragement leads to all kinds of emotional and spiritual problems. A second cause of discouragement is that discouragement arises out of lack of goals and personal growth. That's a whole other subject here. Many times it's just we don't have any goals anymore.

We don't have any personal growth. So you get up anymore every morning with this sense of anxiety, or you face life with this sense of anxiety because, well, I don't even know what I'm supposed to do today, and whatever it is, it'll turn out bad anyways. In a sense of fear we begin to see life in just this negative sense. We see life negative.

We don't see what God is doing. We don't see the positiveness of God. In fact, we start to look on God as negative. You know, God's out to get me. God's out to cause problems in my life. God's the cause of this. You know, God's not going to help me have any success in life anyways. Of course, then we have to decide how to define success. That's reason for lack of goals and understanding the purpose of life. The third reason for discouragement is it arises out of uncontrolled worry.

Worry causes us to keep anxiety upon anxiety, because what we do when we worry is we envision worst-case scenario, until that's all we envision. Every time something happens, we envision worst-case scenario. Right? Your child takes the car...your teenager takes the car out. They're supposed to be home by ten. It's nine-thirty. You're already nervous. They've wrecked. They've died. They're blind. Their limbs are all broken. They'll never walk again. You know, it's quarter till ten. Oh, he probably got in trouble.

I bet she went and got drunk, or some people sold him drugs. Ten o'clock comes. You're walking around pacing. You know, oh, what if the tire blew out? What if, you know, the car blew up? What if he drew off a fifty-foot cliff? There isn't a fifty-foot cliff anywhere in San Antonio.

But you envision him going off a fifty-foot cliff. Three minutes after ten o'clock, he drives in and runs and says, ah, sorry, I'm late. I caught every light on the way here. And you're like, you rotten kid! Right? We build anxiety upon anxiety, and we envision this failure. And what we do is we do that long enough. We don't enjoy anything. We don't have the courage to enjoy anything. You want to read something interesting? Why don't you think about Job for a minute?

We think of all the trials that Job went through and how he must have been such a happy man before that. Because before the trials that God brought upon him, he was rich beyond imagination. He had wonderful children. He had a wonderful family. He had a wonderful wife. He must have had a great life, right? Job chapter three. One verse in Job today. Because we're not talking specifically about trials. We are talking about discouragement. Job chapter three. Of course, trials can bring on discouragement.

You know, illness. You ever get sick and just can't get better until you decide, I'm going to stay sick the rest of my life. I just can't feel any better. You know? That's how you get discouraged. I don't even have the courage to make myself get better.

You see people say, well, I know what it would take for me to get better, but I'm not going to get better anyway, so Krispy Kreme, here I come. Right? Because we get discouraged. We don't have the courage to do it. So we just go do some kind of comfort thing. Here's how happy Job must have been before his trials.

Job three verse twenty-five. Now, this is after his trials came. After he lost everything. His money, his wealth, his cattle, his children, everything. And his wife turned against him. First of all, he finally says, For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet. I have no rest, for trouble comes. He says, I knew this was going to happen. I knew one day I'd lose all my wealth.

I knew one day that I would break out in boils and be sitting in a nash heap. I knew one day this was going to turn out bad. Well, he wasn't happy before this. He had lived with a sense of anxiety and fear, even though he had. We think, well, boy, if I was rich, that'd solve all my anxieties and fears. It didn't solve his. It wasn't until the end, after all the trials and everything, he says, okay, God, I get it.

Right? I get this. You're God, I'm not. He finally got it. So we think, oh, why would God pick on old happy Job? He wasn't happy. He was a man filled with anxiety and fears, just like we are. He was facing his life many times without courage, because he knew he had all worked it out.

It was going to end up bad anyways. And then a fourth reason is that discouragement can be a result of sin. See, sin cuts us off from God, but not all discouragement is a result of your sin. This is just one reason. Many times we'll beat ourselves up. All these bad things that happen to me, I must be a very bad person. God must be angry with me.

Well, sometimes it's because of our sins, but you can track that down. That's one thing about discouragement. You can usually track back, if we're self-aware, track back to, why am I discouraged? Let's look at one passage here, Isaiah 59, just in this concept of sin. Because sometimes we are discouraged. The more you sin, just like the more we live with anxiety, the more we let ourselves be fearful, the less courage we will have. The less courage we will have. You know, it's very interesting, the Lance Armstrong, just the debacle of his life.

I would like to sit down and talk to him one day, because I would bet that all that time he had all the fame and the money coming in, if you would have asked him, and you could get to him to admit to his number one emotion, it was probably fear. Fear, they'll take this away from me if they ever find out. Was he enjoying it? Probably not. He'd have his moments, but, you know, alone at night, he was probably scared to death.

They will find me out, and I will lose everything. And he didn't have the courage to do what was right and be a mediocre athlete. You know, in his courage, if the man had courage, we would admire his courage. But you know what? He would have been a mediocre athlete. He'd have probably never won a race in his life.

Would he have been happier as a mediocre athlete? Yeah. As in 59.1, Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that he cannot save. There is ear-heavy that he cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from God, and your sins have hidden his face from you, that he will not hear. There are times where we have no courage because we're fighting God.

We're fighting God, and then wondering why we're in defeat. You can't win. Right? I mean, how many times have you heard me over the years say, Don't box with God, your arms are too short. You can't win that one. Sometimes there's discouragement in our lives because we're trapped in a sin, and we won't face it. We won't let God help us overcome it, and so we get to the place where we have no courage. We're afraid to face God. We're afraid to face life. Now, temporary discouragement is normal. You experience it.

I experience it. It's part of life. It's part of life. So you're not going to go through life without ever experiencing discouragement. The problem is when it becomes chronic. So what happens when we begin to fall into chronic discouragement?

First of all, discouragement saps us of our physical and emotional energy. It saps us of our spiritual energy. The more discouraged you are, what happens when you go to bed at night thinking about your defeats? When you wake up in the morning, what are you thinking about? Your defeats. How much energy do you have five minutes after you wake up? Zero. It's not there. You've just mentally just taken your body and drained its energy out emotionally and even physically because it's like, oh no, I have to face another day of my defeats and my failures.

And we program ourselves into discouragement. A lot of times it begins with what we think about before we go to bed and what we think about the moment we wake up.

Those two times determine so much of what happens during the day. And we become without courage. You might stumble through the day filled with what? Anxiety and fear. Two emotions that God wants us to overcome. Prolonged discouragement leaves the just giving up. But in that, it's very interesting about prolonged discouragement. I think of the times of my life where I've let discouragement go too long. And I can tell you this from counseling. I can tell you it from just reading many, many, many books on counseling on this subject, counseling hundreds of people going through discouragement.

And I can tell you from my discouragement that I've had in my own life. You let it go long enough and you begin to form phobias. It's the strangest thing. You let this lack of courage go long enough. You just live in this fear of anxiety long enough and pretty soon you're just joking about everything. We become motivated by fear, not by love, not by the drive to succeed, not by wanting to accomplish anything, not by service, all these other reasons we should be motivated.

We simply become motivated by fear. And a lot of times when a person gets to that place, you know the only way you can make them do something? Motivate them, right? Honey, either get out of bed or me and the kids are leaving. But my fear is anything we have left to motivate the person because we're so discouraged. We don't have to courage to face life anymore. Now we slide into depression at this point.

But phobias are what I really want to zero in on. Irrational fears. And as you become more and more drawn into irrational fears, you become more and more selfish. This is the thing about discouragement. It leads us away from the core concept of what we're supposed to be as Christians. Outgoing love and concern for God and others, the more discouraged we become, the more we become motivated by lack of courage, the more we become motivated by fear, the more selfish we become.

Because when you're filled with fear, it is real hard to care about someone else's situation, isn't it?

When you're afraid, it's hard to look at the person next to you and say, can I help you? Because when you're afraid, what you're looking for is someone to help you.

And so the more, the less courage we have. And I tell you to face life as a Christian in this world, it takes courage every day.

It takes courage every day. That's what we have to have. You can't just coast through life as a Christian because you don't live in a world that will let you coast through life as a Christian.

We have to have courage every day. There's times when that anxiety and that fear becomes overwhelming, and when it does, we become more and more selfish.

I read something many years ago by Catherine Fisher. She has the, I guess, honor, dubious honor. She founded the Phobic Society of England back in, well, it must have been around 1970. It was a long time ago. The Phobic Society of England. And she was a counselor. And basically, she just created a support group for people who had phobic fears. They were just controlled by fear all the time. She made a comment in one of her books, though, that's absolutely amazing. She said, although each case of a phobia is unique with many different root causes, the one common thing I found is that the sufferers become selfish because that's all you can think about is your fear.

When you're overwhelmed with anxiety, it is what you think about because it is the overwhelming, controlling emotion in your life. You can see where discouragement leads us more and more away from God. Discouragement makes it so centered on our own problems that it begins to damage relationships with others. That's why when you're discouraged, some of us won't. People can see what's wrong. They can see your discouragement. Well, reasons are, well, I don't have any courage today. No guts.

And yet, that's many times what we're facing.

Discouragement eventually can actually lead us to rebellion against God. Numbers chapter 21. The way this is translated in the New King James is interesting. The word has a slightly, subtly different meaning in Hebrew, but when you put the two together, you understand something here about our discouragement and part of the cause of why we become so easily discouraged.

Numbers 21 verse 4. Then they journeyed. These are the Israelites they had come out of Egypt. They journeyed from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea to go around the land and eat them. The soul of the people became very discouraged on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness, for there's no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread? Now, remember, they did have food. That is not a true statement. They had manna. They had food. But this discouragement led to a fear and a discontent and an anxiety and that we're just going to die. Why even go on? You want us to take down the tent and move on? Why? You know, in a couple weeks we're just going to be bleached bones out here in the desert anyways. And they had no courage to go on. And it says they were discouraged.

The real Hebrew word there means that they had no patience.

One of the great causes of our loss of courage as human beings is that we have a hard time waiting on God. We have a hard time waiting for His answer and for His solution. We just become impatient and we lose courage. You want me to do what? How many times have you really said that to God? I've said that many times. You want me to do what? But if I do that, someone won't like me. If I do that, someone may yell at me. If I do that, you know, I may lose my job. Right?

He says, yes, have the courage to do what's right and then wait on God to take care of us. We get discouraged. We don't have courage. And when we don't have courage, we can do a lot of things. We run and hide. We try to fix it ourselves, which usually the way we fix things isn't good. It doesn't turn out right. A lot of times when you have courage, depending on your personality, you'll try to fight. Right? Some people cover lack of... You know, you could always tell the guy that was scared in high school because when he'd get in a fight, he really wouldn't fight. He'd just swing his arms crazy. You know, arms and feet. Nobody wanted to fight that guy. Arm and feet were just going out all over the place like some crazy guy.

So how do we fight discouragement? Let's look at some ways now we can fight discouragement.

First of all, part of our reason for discouragement is spiritual.

We are physically designed to be in a different place called Eden. You're spiritually designed to be in relationship with God. You're not designed to live in Satan's world. Therefore, it just wears us out. We give up our courage. We just don't have the courage to get up and do it anymore. You have to go seek God to give you courage. Seek God to give you courage.

Now, Lamentations. Lamentations we don't read from very often. Lamentations chapter 3, I might read from Lamentations 1 every 2 or 3 years, mainly because it just makes me depressed. Lamentations chapter 3, Jeremiah is just suffering. I mean, it's what Lamentations means. It means I'm suffering and I'm crying out.

And he's just suffering. And there's points in here where you see depression. There's points where you see discouragement. There's points where you just see him go through all these different human emotions. And chapter 3, age is so discouraged. Now, he has no courage to go on at all.

I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. Because I've seen God destroy my nation. I've seen God what God does. And my life has no meaning anymore. And why should I even try?

No one listens to me anyways. Nobody ever repents. Why should I even try?

And Jeremiah just didn't have the courage to go on anymore. He has led me and made me walk in darkness and not in light. Surely he has turned his hand against me time and time again throughout the day. He has aged my flesh and my skin and broken my bones. I won't go on because we'll all be weeping pretty soon. Okay? I don't... I can't even get up. I can't even face life anymore.

Verse 19. Remember my afflictions in roaming, the worm word and the gall. My soul still remembers and sinks within me. He says, God, remember me and what I'm suffering because I still remember it. I can't get... I can't even forget it. It's like, God, please remember my suffering because I'm not. I just can't deal with this. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Two or three years ago I gave a sermon on hope. That's the last time I read from Lamentations because I read that verse. I have hope. Though the Lord's mercies... through the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed because of His compassion's fail-not. There is somebody who does not fail.

There is somebody who does not experience defeat. There is somebody you can go to who does always win in the end. And we have to go there and get courage. He says they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. He says it's new every day. I can go back. I can say, I can't face the defeats of this day. I can't face the things of this day. I don't have the courage to do this. And see, we have to admit at times, my problem is I just don't have any guts today. I don't have any courage to do this. So I'm going to ask God for some courage. Give me what I do not have. Now that doesn't mean you jump up now and go slay all the giants. He may give you something, but we've got to do something with it. That's why it becomes difficult in this process.

He says, The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore I hope in him. Verse 25, The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.

It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Wait quietly. That's courage. Sometimes you wait quietly for God to do something.

You know, as Mr. Lockhart went through the sermon, this whole thing with Lance Armstrong, it's just, here's a man that five years ago I looked up to as a man who accomplished something, someone you could look up to as a hero who fought through the odds, a man of courage.

In other words, that's all a lie. Not only that, he destroyed people to maintain that.

Those people that he destroyed, there were times they did not have the courage to go on.

They were discouraged because of what was happening to them. We've all had to go through that.

Remember, Paul said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Now, you go ask God, give me courage. And what we expect is not to have any fear anymore.

Courage doesn't mean lacking fear. It means doing what's right in spite of the fear.

See, God will give you the strength, but sometimes you're still afraid.

God will give you the ability, but sometimes you're still afraid.

And that means, if you're going to first seek God to give you strength, the second thing you have to do is get control of your daily life by having physical and emotional and spiritual goals. We're back to that goal setting, which once again is a different subject. But lack of purpose is one of the reasons for discouragement.

So that's the second point. I don't want to spend a lot of time on that, because I really want to get into some of these other points. The third point, so you're seeking God, you're getting control of your life. Lack of control is one of the things that gives us fear. Well, you and I can't control much, so you get control of what you can get control of, and that gives you courage. I can control this, so I won't control this, and that will give me courage. I can't control other things. Don't let other people's negativity control you.

Other people can sap away our courage. And the less courage you have, the more negative you are.

The more negative you are, the more you sap other people's courage. Deuteronomy, I mean, this is the perfect example. Deuteronomy chapter 1. You all know this story by heart.

Deuteronomy chapter 1. What happens is that the Israelites now, after 40 years, are wondering, are about to go into the provised land. And God comes to them and says, before you go in, I want you to remember, some of you do remember, there were a few that were alive 40 years before when they stood at this exact same place. And they sent in these spies.

And the spies went in, and they came out and they said, yep, the land is everything God said it would be.

Verse 26. Nevertheless, you would not go up or rebel against the command of the Lord your God. And you complained in your tense and said, because the Lord hates us, He has brought us out of the land of Egypt to deliver us to the hands of the Amorites, to destroy us. Where can we go up? Our brethren have discouraged our hearts, saying, the people are greater and taller than we, and the cities are great and fortified up to heaven, or over there they have the sons of Enochim. These people are warriors. They have cities.

And there are a lot of them. And they are a whole lot bigger than us.

And our brethren have discouraged us. Discouraged our hearts.

Once again, because the Hebrew language is such an expressive language, literally that is, they melted our hearts. They just melted our hearts, though. I am weak in the knees, and I am crying, and I am looking at this and thinking, wow, I will go in there, and now some guy will stab me and kill me, and then they will take my wife and make her a slave, and my children will grow up as slaves, and all of them will just stay in Egypt. But then we have to go back across the desert again, and we will all die out there. God just hates me! God hates me! It says, because the Lord hates us.

Because our brethren have made our hearts melt. They have discouraged us.

And we don't have the courage to even do anything anymore.

So they didn't get to go into the promise land.

Other people, we have to be able to withstand and sometimes just walk away from people who are so negative that they will cause us to lose faith in God.

There are times you just have to look at someone and say, no, God will do this, and have the courage to move on.

Because others will just drain that courage out of us.

And the more anxiety and fear you have, the more you drain others of their courage.

That's why when you suffer from discouragement, it's good to go find somebody and talk to them about it. Say, I'm suffering from discouragement. I don't have the courage to go on. I don't have the courage to face my boss. I don't have the courage to do this. I don't have the courage to love my wife the way I should. I don't have the courage to face another day with 300 children, and the crop in the field, or whatever it is. I don't have the courage to face this anymore.

It's interesting. In Joshua, Joshua leads them over into the Promised Land. So, right after this speech here, Joshua, of course, Moses dies not long after this, and Joshua leads him into the Promised Land. And God keeps telling him something. Go to Joshua chapter 1.

Why would God keep saying this? It's so easy to say, come on, come on, have some courage. Every war movie, there's some guy frozen up, and someone yelling, come on, come on, you know, have some guts. And I'm thinking, yeah, you have the guts. Now, you know, if I'm the guy, I'm going to lay here, and they're not going to shoot me. You have the guts.

Look what God says to Joshua. Look at verse 1. After the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, who came to pass, and the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of done, Moses' assistant, saying, Moses, my servant, is dead. Now therefore rise, go over to Jordan, you and all this people to the land which I am giving to them, the children of Israel. He says that he's going to give them all this land. And then verse 6, he says, Be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land I swore to their fathers to give them. Verse 7, only be strong and very courageous. He says, you know, you're going to have to be a little, you're going to have to be a man today, Joshua, and you're going to be afraid, and you're going to have to do it anyways. See, it's interesting. God didn't say, I'll take away all your fear, Joshua. Don't worry about it. He says, you're going to have to have some courage today, and you're going to have to have some courage tomorrow, and next month, wait till you see Jericho. It's going to scare you to death.

He says, I'm going to take care of it, and you're just going to have to have some courage.

If he wasn't going to be afraid, he wouldn't have told him this, right?

The words have no meaning unless Joshua was going to say, Lord, you want me to do what?

I want you to do what? These people really are big. These people really are big.

He goes on to verse 8, he says, this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, that you may observe it to do according to all that is written in it. Verse 9, have I not commanded you? Every day, this is a command God gives to you and me. Because there are days when Jericho looks too big. There are days when I'm thinking, how do I get all these people across the Jordan? Remember, he didn't know yet he was going to open the Jordan. He's looking at a river. He's looking to three million people, and he's looking at a river.

And he says, God, why didn't you send me some engineers?

And he's saying, just have some courage here.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Verse 9, write that down, post that, and read that all the time.

Read it all the time.

Now, the problem here now... Okay, I'm pumped up. Okay, yep, I'm going to have courage today. I'm going to go face it. Here we go. God's with me. What do I do now?

You get up and you go do. Now, this is the hard part.

What do I do now? You do. Well, what do you mean? I mean, you put on your shoes, or you take a shower first. That's probably good. And you put on your clothes, and you get in the car, and you go do. Yeah, but God's got to do something. That's right. So, go see what He's going to do.

See, Joshua gets to say, okay, everybody stay in your tent, so we forgot to go do something.

He marched him up to Jordan, and just, okay, God, you're going to have to open the river. He marched him up to Jericho and said, you have to knock the walls down.

For five years it took him to subdue the land of Canaan. And every day was, how am I going to do this? And God's answer was, ask for courage. But I'm discouraged.

I mean, this is a fight that goes on and on, and when does it stop? And it has to have some courage. Verse 9 had to be played out in His life every day for the next five years.

That has to be played out in your life and my life every day. Have courage. Be strong.

So we've got to go face it. Remember, the difference between Saul and David was that Saul said, he's so big, how can I win? David said, he's so big, how can God miss? David was afraid. David faced Goliath one time. How many times did Saul face Goliath?

A thousand times. How many times did he wake up in the middle of the night screaming in a cold sweat? How many times did he think, if I would have just faced him, I would be king, and my family would be king, and I would have a dynasty.

The man slowly went into insanity because of the fear he lived in. Saul became insane.

And part of it was the fear that he lived in. He faced Goliath a thousand times. You have to do that. You do it in little pieces. You do it in little pieces. Remember, David did not face Goliath without having a lot of little battles beforehand. A bear, a lion. There were lots of things he faced.

God built him up to Goliath. You're going to have to realize, you're going to have to face this. You have to go out and do this. You can't hide from life. You're not allowed to hide from life. You're not allowed to hide from being what God wants you to be. You're not allowed to hide from success. Sometimes as Christians we think we have to fail. Oh no, I can't make good money. I could never make good money. I'm a Christian. Christians have to be poor. Some of us are always going to be poor. Some of us are going to be rich. Most of us will be sort of somewhere in between.

Right? We say, well, God determines that. Not always. You and I determine a lot of that.

You and I determine it by what we face and what we do. You have to do. And you do it in little pieces at a time. I worked with a woman one time years ago. This was 30 years ago. This woman was so fearful that she could not leave her house and she wanted to come to church.

Now I've told this story to many of you here because I tell it to you in counseling all the time. And this is one of a hundred cases that I could talk about, but this one is just so profound. And because it's so long ago and no one would ever know who she was, I could use it. Okay? And my wife and I went to visit her. And what we did was we said, okay, you need to come to church. I can't. I can't leave my house. So every day for a week, she had to get up, get ready for church, go out and get in her car.

She did that for seven days. After seven days, she had to get up, get dressed, go out, sit in her car and drive around the block. You have to understand, to this woman, this was so fearful this would be like facing Goliath.

The third week, we had her get in the car, drive around the block and drive down the street and buy herself a cup of coffee every day. Drink the coffee, get back in the car in her home.

The fourth week was then the real one. She had to drive to church every day.

But that savage, she had to get out of the car and come in.

It was amazing to watch her walk through the door.

We don't do.

We're too afraid to take the action. I might fail. I guarantee you.

Your failures in life will not be near as bad as the fear you face.

Sometimes experiencing the failure is an enormous release. Oh, good. I got that failure over.

It's not near as bad as the fear and anxiety played out in our minds because we are discouraged. A new man.

God doesn't want us to live this way. He didn't give us the spirit of fear. Remember?

We went through nine sermons about the spirit of God's spirit, and we went through trying the spirits and all these different sermons about God's spirit and how God's spirit works in us. God did not give us the spirit of fear. And here we are. We are people who are discouraged a lot without courage. And then what do we do? We beat up on ourselves, so I don't have any courage.

So then we beat up on ourselves. I'm discouraged. I'm worthless. Well, yeah, why even try?

We just do it over and over and over again to ourselves. We feed it.

Well, the Bible says, gird up your loins. I'm not even sure what that means. But gird up your loins and go do whatever happens. It can't be as bad as what you've made up in your mind.

Well, they may kill me. Well, at least you won't be afraid anymore.

At least you won't be afraid anymore.

You must force yourself to take that action. You know, the more discouraged we are, the more indecisive and more procrastinators we become. It's an amazing thing.

I have made myself discouraged because I have work I don't want to do.

I hate doing paperwork. So you know what I do? I do everything else. Of course, you know, you start at eight in the morning, it's nine o'clock at night, and you still haven't done your paperwork.

Oh, good. Man, I'm glad I didn't have to do that today. But, you know, so the next day, you lay out your day and you put your paperwork, you know, real late in the day. Well, someone gets sick, you go to the hospital, and this happens, that happens pretty soon. Well, I move my paperwork to the next day. So one day I wake up and I have an eight-hour block of nothing but paperwork, and I hate it. Then now I'm really discouraged. I don't want to get out of bed.

I don't have the courage to face my computer. So you get up and you do it anyways, right? You do it.

And then you say, man, I'm never going to do that again. And then you do. We have to do. We have to take the steps. We have to set in our minds whatever happens. Well, it can't be as bad as what I'm going through. And you go do it.

Failure doesn't kill us. Defeat doesn't kill us. We all go through it. I remember I had a job one time for one day. They sat down with me and said, you know what? You're a hard worker, but you know nothing about construction. Goodbye. You know. Boy, that was discouraging. I was one day, one eight-hour day, here's your pay. You know, you work hard, kid, but boy, you're dumb.

But you know, you don't die, do you? Oh, no, that went on my permanent record. Whatever that is. Remember school. I don't know your permanent record. I don't know what that means. I mean, as the FBI in this permanent record in the sixth grade, I, you know, failed a test. I'm not sure what that means. I really don't care anymore, right? That was an easy failure to learn a lesson.

It wasn't that bad. I went home and my mom still fed me. You know, life, it's some failures a little harder than that. I mean, we've all been through some tough failures. Sometimes, you know, we just lose the courage to go on. Can you imagine what happened if Peter and John would have said, you know, we're a little anxious about preaching. They threatened us, so we're just going to sort of hide out for a little longer instead of going into the temple. Can you imagine what Paul would have said? You know, we know the people just stoned me and left me for dead. You know, God, I'm just a little discouraged here. Of course he was.

Well, you know, we think, well, no, not Paul. The people stoned him and left him for dead.

The man hurts all over. I can't imagine this palerof begins the groove and this hand comes out, and, you know, the guy sits up. He's all black and blue and covered with blood, and he gets up, and he's probably got a couple broken ribs and a big crack on top of his head, and he's, you know, shaking around. It's like he looks around and, well, what would God tell me to do? Well, God told me to go preach to those people. Well, they just tried to kill me. What did he do?

See, it's what he did that matters. It's not how discouraged he was, because I can guarantee you he was scared to death. He walked back into the town. He walked right back into the same town.

They didn't try to kill him this time. They thought he's so crazy. Let him live!

He did. You and I have to do in spite of the fear, in spite of the anxiety. Or this world will eat us up, but God says he'll give it to us.

That means we have to develop a proper perspective of what really is important.

Matthew 6. These words of Jesus Christ are probably read more than any other words in the entire Bible.

Matthew 6, verse 25.

Therefore I say to you, Jesus says, do not worry about your life. I worry about my life all the time.

I mean, I'm going to the dentist in a week. I'm already worrying about it. I think I've probably got a cavity here and one here. What am I going to have to do? I need that drill.

Last time I went, I had a titanium screw put in because I had a front tooth break. You can't go on television with a big front tooth out.

So they put this screw in. They're putting this screw in and it goes clear into the bone.

He looks at me and he says, when your face is all scrunched up, he said, is this hurting?

Well, I thought they're in the bone. Of course it's going to hurt. I said, yeah. He said, oh my, it shouldn't hurt. I gave him about three more shots and I'm thinking, oh, I could have asked for that before. I had no idea that, you know, it was the novacane that had worn off and he's drilling into my bone. I mean, it was unpleasant. Now I don't want to go back. I'm all worried, right? Well, I'm not so worried now because I know I'll say, hey, time out. Give me another shot. Do not worry about your life, what you shall eat, what you shall drink, nor about your body, or what you'll put on. It's not life more than food and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sown or reaped or gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And that question, you know, why we read this so much? We haven't mastered this little section yet. Are you not more value than they? And the truth is, many of the times we do not believe that. We don't believe our value that we have to God. And because you do not believe the value that you have to God, we don't have the courage to face the day. We don't have the courage to face what's happening. And so we get negative, and we're worried, and we develop phobias.

We can develop a phobia about the Tribulation. Right? We just worry about it all the time.

Just worry about the Tribulation coming all the time. That's not what we're supposed to say, how we're supposed to face it. He says, Which of you, by worrying, can add one cubit to a statue?

So why do you worry about clothing? He says, Are the lilies of the field? How they grow, yet they neither toil nor spin? Yet I say to you that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not a raid like one of these. Now God so closed the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is, thrown into the oven. Will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore, do not worry. The word worry there is be anxious in Greek. It's not just, I mean, we all worry sometimes about it. Not all worry is wrong. We say, Well, I worry, therefore, now I'm bad, so I worry about being bad, now I'm worrying about my worrying. Okay, we've got to stop that cycle someplace. Not all worry is wrong, but this anxious, this fear, this anxiety that builds up with us and we fear. He says, Why do you have this fear? Do not have anxiety saying, What shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear? For after all these things the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Do you believe that?

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. That's the promise. It's a promise.

Do what is right is first. Do what is right first.

Then we'll worry about the other stuff God says, and I'll take care of it.

Do what is right first, and God says, I'll take care of the other stuff.

Therefore, do not have this anxious thought about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Verse 34, I repeat that verse to myself many times. There is a month that goes by that probably I don't repeat that to myself two or three times. Come on, Gary. Don't worry too much about tomorrow. Today is enough.

There's enough today. Let God worry about the rest of it. Take care of today. That verse I say to myself all the time. Take care of today.

Fear and discouragement can be one of the most destructive forces in our lives.

I want you to remember something. When Jesus Christ became a physical human being, and as it says in Hebrews, who is touched with the feelings of our infirmities, He knows what it's like to feel fear.

Before He came as a human being, He never felt fear. What is God afraid of?

Nothing. He knows what it's like to feel fear. He knows what it's like to be discouraged. He knows what it's like to go to God and say, Let's do this another way.

I said, There's got to be a better way. I know it made sense then, but I'm not sure it makes sense now. He knows what it's like, as He said, and He looked at Jerusalem and said, I just want to fix this and you people won't let me. And He just cried.

He knows what it's like to say, I can't go on today. I'm tired. He knows what that's like.

He let Himself go through that so He can say to us, I know. He didn't have to do that.

He didn't have to do that. He could have saved us a different way. But He went through all that so He could say, I know. I felt that way. I know what it's like.

He's right beside you every day.

Every day. He's right there. We forget God isn't just wanting to punish us all the time. God is our cheerleader. He wants us to succeed. God doesn't want you to fail, but you're going to fail once in a while. God doesn't want you to be defeated, but you're going to be defeated once in a while as life. We grow up and we acknowledge that. Don't fear so much. Face this life with a courage that God's going to get us through it. Here's your worst-case scenario. You go out here, get hit by a car, and die today and come up in the resurrection. Is that so bad? No, I'm not making light of our troubles. You know, you step back and you say, wait a minute, let's look at really what God is offering us. Let's look at where worst-case scenarios really are. Let go of the anxiety. Let go of the fear.

Find that quietness that Jeremiah talks about he found in Lamentations.

When you do, let's go back. Let's finish back again, Joshua. Because when you do, in those times when you think, I don't want to do this, I'm afraid of this, and we all face fears all the time. We all have a little phobias. You know, your phobia may seem strange than somebody else. You have a fear of water, and this person's a swimmer, but your fear of water is real.

You have a fear of... I don't know why I always feel real nervous every time I go before one of those judges and ask off for jury duty. I have no idea why. I mean, I'm a minister. They always let me off. It's never going to be an argument. It's never going to be a problem. But I always have to stand up in front of the whole room. I always get caught in these places. I have to stand up in front of the whole room, and the judge, and everybody, and I have to give my little testimony.

And then I think, well, wait a minute. That's what I'm supposed to do. Last time I did the judge, he got up and said, wow, this is interesting. He says, you know, it doesn't happen very often, but there are people who don't do this for religious reasons, and he's a minister. Let me explain to you what his constitutional rights are. He gave a ten-minute lecture on my constitutional right to stand up for my religion and not, you know, to a room of about a hundred people. And I'm thinking, wow, this is strange. Yes, Mr. Petty, you're free to go.

Oh, I was surprised everybody else didn't stand up and say, oh, I'm part of his congregation.

How do I convert?

Joshua 1, when you find those moments of quietness, I just told you that because I don't know why. I always experience anxiety when I do that. I don't know why. I've done it like a dozen times, but there's always this little anxiety. What's he going to do? Put me in jail?

No. And if he did, that's not the worst thing he can have to a person.

Right? But he couldn't. He can't, anyways.

When you do have that quiet moment, when you let God calm you down, instead of having all this anxiety and fear, here's what you'll hear. He said, well, Jesus Christ is right beside me. Good. He's here. He'll take away my fear.

No. This calmness comes. There's still the anxiety of facing the situation.

You now have to go do. You have to face it. You must face life as a Christian every day.

And you'll hear this. As God says to you, verse 9, have I not commanded you?

This isn't a suggestion from God. It's a commandment. Have I not commanded you?

Be strong and of good courage. Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.