So Top Ten Sins and Struggles. Let's count down shall we? Let's count
down our top ten sins and struggles based on the survey, given our survey
information, given to us by the church. So top ten, starting from the ten down;
laziness, anger, cursing and gossiping, pride, neglecting church, then coping with
change number five tied at number five coping with conflict. Tonight we're going
to look at number four, easily discouraged. Another struggle issue comes
in at the fourth position. Interesting from ten down to 6, the first five are
sin issues and then the five, tied at five, and number four are
struggle issues. That's why it said the sins and struggles. So we're
getting some struggle issues here. Before we go directly to the issue
of easily discouraged or easy discouragement, I want to make a
comment about the reality of discouragement. At times, not always, but
I've heard this throughout my ministry career, the idea that Christians are kind
of immune from being discouraged. Some people think that. Your house
burns down, you have no insurance, 'Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!' You've just
been informed that you have cancer, nothing to worry about, God won't put
anything on me that I can't handle. Your Christian brother has lost his wife and
is very depressed, just get in there and cheer him up, he'll see her in heaven one
day. What are you so sad for? There's this unhealthy and unbiblical push to deny
the very real truth that sometimes life is very sad. Sometimes life is very
difficult and sometimes it's very, very discouraging. Of course, we want
to hope for a better day. We want relief from our sorrows. Who doesn't want a
happy ending, but when these are slow in coming or they don't come at all, it's
natural to feel discouraged. Just because you're a Christian doesn't mean you
can't feel the weight of the world on your shoulders and some people
actually feel guilty because they feel they ought to never feel discouraged as
Christians. They're saying to this, 'Well, I'm a Christian, I ought to be
better than this. I ought to be able to take this kind of bad news and
bounce back.' Really? Seems to me when I visit people in the hospital and they
have cancer, the Christians, they're suffering cancer in exactly the
same way that the non-christians are suffering the cancer; now their attitude
might be different and their hope, but I'm saying the toll that that disease takes
on their body is the same. Solomon says that there was a time for
everything and that includes discouragement, because discouragement is
a natural feeling caused by adversity. The key of course is not to allow this
feeling to lead us into a loss of faith or a loss of hope or a loss of love
for God and for other people, then it's really sad when the disease or
whatever it is robs you of your faith or your hope, robs you of your kind
spirit, then that's the real tragedy there. Now if you noticed on the survey,
we asked people if they were easily discouraged, not just discouraged. Easily
discouraged, being easily discouraged, is different than simply being discouraged.
I'm not just playing, splitting hairs here, there really is a difference.
Being discouraged is a feeling that comes with renewed failure or consistent
adversity or repeated rejection or loss. It's
normal to feel that way. You have a set back at work and your hours are cut
just at a time when you're needing more money to take care of some matters and
then your child is sick and all of a sudden the doctor says, 'Well, he or
she's going to need some therapy that's expense.' It never rains but it pours,
right? It's normal to feel discouraged. It's like, 'Man, what else is
going to go wrong?' Being easily discouraged, however, is becoming negative
and unsure at the very first sign of trouble, it's giving up without even
making an effort and that's what I was trying to get to in the survey. These two
they sound the same, but they're really different problems and they require
different approaches to resolve them. So let's start with just discouraged, OK?
Remember, I said there's two. There's discouraged, that issue. Easily
discouraged, completely different issue.
So discouraged, overcoming discouragement requires less the adjustment
of our attitude and more the adjustment of our approach. I mean it's natural to
feel discouraged if we're rejected or we fail at something or were burdened with
too much you name it; too much work, too many deadlines, too many responsibilities,
too much information, too much emotional stimulus. Once told you the story of our
son Paul when he was little at Christmas and you know how Christmas time, some
Christmases are thin, some are a little thicker, more cash flow or
whatever and there was this one Christmas time where just there
was more money going around and grandma sent stuff and Uncle Joe sent stuff.
So there was a big pile of gifts there for Paul and of course he's our
eldest, he was the first one, so we didn't have all the others
there, and he was sitting there with all these
presents and he started opening them and you know how they are and he tore all
this stuff open and he had all these gifts and it just went on and on and on
and he started to cry. He started... Why? He was just over stimulated. Well,
sometimes there's just too much stuff going on. We want to cry. It
doesn't even have to be all bad stuff. So feeling discouraged is our body's way of
telling us we may be outmatched, we may be outnumbered, whatever is before us is
more than we can handle for some reason or other and the discouragement we feel
is our body's way of registering that fact. Now sometimes we have to go a long
time before we feel this way. Maybe we've gone eight or nine rounds
with the project or the illness or the relationship or the problem before we
start feeling discouraged whatever that is. We're dealing with a relationship
issue and things happen and it blows up and you get back together again, you try
again and you say, 'Well, people were human, I made a mistake, I
spoke too quickly, blah blah blah,' but after the seventh blow up you
start asking yourself, 'Wait a minute. Something's wrong here. I
don't know if it's them or me, but I'm getting a little tired of this.' Well, what
you're really saying is 'I'm becoming discouraged at the potential that this
relationship will succeed,' and that's a good thing, the little light's got to
come on at some point, but when it comes that feeling signals the fact that we
may not be winning or succeeding regardless of our best efforts,
regardless of our best strategy, regardless of our most sincere prayer,
this thing is not working
and the feeling of discouragement is the light going on telling us, 'Hey, you need
to.. Something's not right here.' So what do you do when you're genuinely and
rightfully discouraged by the situation that we find ourselves in or
we're facing another round with a difficult opponent? How do we deal with
discouragement? Well number one, re-commit. In some situations, such as a marriage
for example, or leadership roles where a deep commitment is made and necessary,
some of our problem may be that we're getting shaky in our commitment and the
shakiness of our commitment is affecting our actions, affecting the results of our
work or our relationship or whatever it is. Christians for example, who have a
lifetime commitment often become discouraged along the way because they
secretly begin to doubt and as a result, their commitment waivers and so does
their ability to follow Jesus. You know Jesus, how many things when He
said to His [disciples], 'Are you going to leave me too?' when He said, 'You have to eat this flesh and drink My
blood,' and the Bible says, 'Well, many couldn't take that saying
and they left Him.' Whoa! They said, 'OK, that's it. We're done. We can't
follow. Eat Your flesh? Drink Your blood? Really? We're out of here,' and
then Jesus turned to His apostles, 'Are you going to leave me too?' What a great
answer Peter says, 'Lord, where are we going to go? You're the One that has the
word of eternal life. What other option do we have? We don't
have another option.' So we have to ask ourselves, 'Do I believe
or not? Am I going to follow through or not? Is this till death do us part or not?'
So many times a recommitment to our core values will send a shot of adrenaline
through the entire system which will in turn enable
to succeed where we once failed or give us the strength to accept the situation
or the failure that we have encountered in a more positive and hopeful way.
The leaders in the church, they exhort us. We offer the
invitation, but what's the invitation many times? Other than to come forward
and be baptized, many times the invitation is to re-commit. I've been
shaky in my Christianity or I haven't done my job well in the church, whatever
that may be, right? I haven't been the person I want to be. All these
people that come forward or send in cards that say, 'Pray for me. I've not been
the Christian that I want to be.' What are they saying? I'm recommitting.
I'm recommitting myself to my core value and what is my core value? Well, I
believe Jesus is the Son of God. I believe He has the words of life. I
believe this is the right way to live despite the fact that I find it
difficult at the moment, despite the fact that I may be compromised or
whatever, but I still believe that this is the right way to go and I am
recommitting myself through prayer, through confession, whatever. Another way
of dealing with natural discouragement, re-examine. Only a fool will continue
repeating the same methods when they repeatedly fail. Isn't that the
definition of insanity? Using the same method over and over and over again and
expecting a different result? When we're in the heat of battle we think, 'Boy, if I
just try a little harder. I'm gonna, if I just bear down a little bit more,
grit my teeth, try just a little harder,' so we exert more pressure, more energy,
more willpower and many times we still fail and of course, we feel discouraged
because of it, hopefully before we wear out and burn up all of our resources.
Discouragement helps us to kind of take a step back and look at
ourselves rather than look at our problem. Many times the trouble is with
ourselves. The problem is our approach or our solution or our attitude, in other
words, the problem is not there, the problems here, and re-examining helps.
Isn't that what counselors do? In marriage counseling with the big task of
the counselor, the person giving the counseling, is to help the couple
examine their respective roles. When they're in conflict I'll ask one of the
partners, 'OK, now, I mean, you've got to be able to tell the truth.'
If you're going to counseling, number one thing is tell the truth, otherwise you're
wasting your money. So the question I asked both partners, 'Now I'm going to
ask you first, what is it that you have contributed to this problem?' A lot of
times it's, 'Whoa! Well, I came here so that person, you could straighten
out that person, because she's the problem or he's the problem,' but when we
say that, it demonstrates, 'Boy, we sure have not really examined this issue
very much,' if that's what you're in counseling for. Counseling is there to
help you take a step back and examine the situation anew. So this is a good time
to ask for help or go for a second opinion. Solomon said, 'Without
consultation plans are frustrated, but with many counselors they succeed.' The
old-fashioned way of saying that is that there is wisdom in the multitude of
counselors, that's the way I learned that original passage there. Proverbs 15:22. So
how do we deal with discouragement? Well, one re-commit, recommit and two re-examine
the thing that's discouraging you, the person that's discouraging you, the
situation that's discouraging you, step back let's take a fresh look at this,
and then I mean I could make a list of 10, but I kind of keep
it to two or three, relax. I was going for all "Re"s. Re-commit,
re-examine and re-lax. A lot of times our discouragements are as the great writer
once said 'much ado about nothing.' Tempest in a teapot. We either overreact over
small matters or we get run over by a freight train of trouble that we
couldn't stop no matter how hard we try.
You know, survivor guilt. You're both supposed to go to the movies that night
and you decide, Nah, I don't feel like it. You go. You go. You go.' And then
that person goes and gets hit by car and dies. I mean I'm just picking
an easy one there and the other person deals with survivor guilt. That
could have been me if I would have went, if I would have said no stay home or if
I would have been driving it would have been different, you know all the survivor
guilt, all this discouragement. Either way we become emotionally exhausted and
spiritually spent leading to that queasy feeling of discouragement and our
fatigue becomes our worst enemy because it makes us unable to deal with other
issues leading to further discouragement. It's not enough I got this
problem, now I've spoken a little too sharply, a little too loudly
to my husband or to my daughter and now they're mad at me now. It
gets worse. We have to learn to relax. Notice I said we have to learn to relax?
Because relax is a learned thing. It's a learned skill. Here are a few things
that you need to know. A lot of times when we think about relax, we think
about things we need to do, but in order to really get to be able to
relax, you have to know things, not just do things. So here's some things you have
to know if you want to learn how to relax as a part of your approach to deal
with discouragement. Number one, know when to take a break. Unbroken effort leads to
strain and loss of perspective. Allow yourself a time out from your problem,
from the challenge, whatever, so you can regain your perspective. I tell people
who are full-time caregivers, I'm taking care of my 90 year old mother,
I'm taking care of my wife who is disabled or who had a stroke or you know
what I'm saying, full-time caregiver, not paid caregiver, there's a
difference, I'm talking about a full-time, you got a job or you're a homemaker or
whatever it is and also you're taking care of your sick mom or dad who's down
the street or across the town or whatever, you're in charge. A lot of times
I tell them, 'You need to take a break.' 'Yeah yeah yeah.' 'I said, no, no, you really
need to take a break with people who will not talk to you about how your
mother is doing. You need to go find yourself something to do that has
nothing to do with caregiving. Go bowling,' you know what I'm saying? 'Go to a movie,
go to a goofy movie, do something that will completely take you out of your
caregiving role and make it a rule with the person that you're with that we're
not just going to go bowling and in between turns all we're going to talk
about is mom and why our brother is not doing more to help,' you know what I'm
saying? When me, Michael, when I'm behind in my study, I mean I have targets, right?
Wednesday night, a class has got to be ready. Sunday another class has got to be
ready and a sermon's got to be ready. I don't go get these things at the
supermarket. I've got to write them. Marty has to write them. There's a blank piece
of paper right there, you got it. So when I'm behind in my study
or my lesson and or it's just not coming together properly, sometimes I just I let
it go and I go do something completely different for a while before I come back
to it. Jesus often took His disciples away to a quiet spot so that they could
recharge. You also have to know your limits, so important. Every person has a
burnout point. It's different for each one, but I guarantee you, everybody's got
one. Discouragement is a kind of a yellow warning light that you are getting close
to your burnout, you're entering burnout territory. So don't extend your limits, it
will not help you or discouragement nor will it solve your problems. I'll just
try longer. I'll just you know. And know who's in charge. Much discouragement is
the result of human effort without reference to God's presence. The big
mistake that we make as Christians is that we don't want to bother God for
little things. We want to bother him for life and death things, but we don't want
to bother him for like the little things, 'Help me be on time,' 'Help me get
this thing through.' My wife leaves, I always kid her, but she prays for parking spots.
I said I'll pray for parking spots, that doesn't work. Whoops and there's
a parking spot right next to the handicapped parking spot and she doesn't
say a word thankfully. She whistles though. I think that may be a sign of something.
We push, we try, we grit our teeth, but the rock of our discouragement
just won't move and yet Jesus said, 'If you have faith as a mustard seed you'll
say to this mountain move from there and it'll move and nothing shall be
impossible for you,' Matthew 17:20. So relax and remember to take a break
realizing that you are a weak human being and that in the end God's will
must be done in your life. And so discouragements will come because
there's always adversity in life, but when discouragement comes, re-commit to
your basic core values and beliefs. Re-examine yourself and be ready to try
perhaps a new approach or let somebody help you. And learn to relax, God is still
in charge. He will give you the victory or the courage to live with loss all
according to your faith and trust in Him. You see a lot of times all we pray for
is the victory, but sometimes the answer to our prayer is that God will enable us
to live with the loss. Alright, so that's discouragement. We haven't touched
the thing that's in the survey. In the survey, it's easily discouraged. Let's
talk about that. Being easily discouraged a different problem than being
discouraged. Discouragement is a natural byproduct of repeated failure on ongoing
problems. Easy discouragement has a different source and a different cause.
People become easily discouraged because they lack things, alright? First of all,
they become easily discouraged because they lack core values and beliefs
greater than themselves. For the one who's simply discouraged, I tell them,
'Go back and recommit to your core values.' People who give up right away,
become easily discouraged right away, usually the problem is they don't have
core values or they don't know what their core values are. You see what
enables a person to persevere despite discouragement is usually the fact that
they hold to a belief or value system greater than themselves. People
die for their country, yes, and they die for their ideals or they'll die to
protect their home and their family or they'll die as a witness of their faith.
When discouragement comes they look to their beliefs and values to sustain them
and comfort them and motivate them to press on, that's people who have
core values. In Matthew 13:1-23, Jesus explains this principle in light of the
Christian faith using the parable of the sower and the seed. So Matthew 13, I have
it here on the slide, he says, "And Jesus spoke many things to them in parables,
saying, 'Behold, the sower went out to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell beside
the road, and the birds came and ate them up. Others fell on the rocky places, where
they did not have much soil; and immediately they sprang up, because they
had no depth of soil. But when the sun had risen, they were scorched; and because
they had no root, they withered away. Others fell among the thorns, and the
thorns came up and choked them out. And others fell on the good soil and yielded
a crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.'"
I want you to note that the seed on the rocky places comes up fairly quickly,
there's shallow dirt there so the plant has to break through the
surface, but it doesn't have a deep root system. Now watch what He says in verse
20 and 21 when He explains this to His apostles, He says, "The one on whom seed
was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately
receives it with joy; yet has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary,
and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately
he falls away." So immediately falling away,
what is that? That's easily discouraged, give up right away. Why Jesus says. well
There's no firm root within. Now in gardening if the plant has no extensive
root system to find water in dry times, it'll just dry up and die. In human terms,
the root system is our core system of faith and values, a faith that has broken
the surface of our hearts, sinful hearts, and established itself firmly within us.
So people can do the easy stuff of religion, anybody can do the easy stuff
of religion. And what is the easy stuff of religion? Well going to
church, that's the easy stuff. Enjoying the fellowship, that's the easy stuff.
Hearing the good news that we're going to heaven and having eternal life, that's
easy. Receiving ministry, people visiting us when we're sick or helping us, that's
the easy stuff, but when the hard stuff comes along, well what hard stuff?Well,
resisting fleshly lusts. Your flesh craves something that it must not have
because that's sinful. Or doing the right thing even if it's going to cost us
something. Or serving other people when it's inconvenient to serve those people
or serving other people that you don't particularly like. Or persevering
through difficult trials yet maintaining a sense of joy, a sense of hope. Someone
whose faith is only skin-deep, someone who doesn't base decisions on their
convictions about Jesus Christ, this person will become easily discouraged
when it becomes difficult. Another reason for easy discouragement, self reliance.
If you're often easily discouraged one reason may be that you rely on yourself
too much and it's easy to fall in that trap because we here in America
constantly hear the success; stories the person picks themselves up
by their bootstraps. 'Come on buck up boys, suck it up. Let's do this. Get on.'
Yeah, yeah. I mean we live in that kind of society, the American society where
we praise people who are self-made men and women. Whenever some story comes
along, the one who gets all the praise is the self-made man or woman in
business or sports or whatever. We live in that culture, but
the psalmist says of the Israelites, that group of people, he says, "For by their own
sword they did not possess the land, And their own arm did not save them, But Your
right hand and Your arm and the light of Your presence, For you favored them." Now
didn't the Israelites have to actually fight those battles with the
the people's in the land that God had given. Yeah, sure, and yet the
psalmist says, 'Yes, but it wasn't your prowess at war that won the battle,
what won the battle is that God was with you, that's what won the battle.'
Self-reliance, self-made, self-sufficiency is man's greatest goal and it's also
man's greatest delusion. The psalmist put this concept into perspective when
speaking of man's position in regards to God in the matter of supplying needs. I
just want to read a couple of these psalms. It says of God, "Who gives food to
all flesh, For his lovingkindness is everlasting." Who gives food to
all flesh? God does. In Psalm 73:26 it says, "My flesh and my heart may fail, but
God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." When he says God is my
portion, he's saying God is my reward, the reward of heaven is that I get to be
with God, the reward of heaven is I get to be with God without the interference
of sin, here I get to be with God but sins always getting in the way,
heaven is I get to be with God always but sin isn't is gone, there is no more
sin. So people who have only themselves to rely on or rely only on human wisdom
quickly lose heart when they realize how puny, how futile, human wisdom and human
strength really are. Oh, some people may persevere for communism or they
may laugh unrepentingly in the face of death, 'I'm not afraid of death,'
but they are simply more diluted than others when they think this way.
People who don't know God and His Word are easily discouraged when their mask
of self-reliance is quickly ripped off by a sudden calamity. God never says this
in His word, but He could say it if He wanted to, 'Not such a big shot now
are you? You're not such a big shot now,' right? He never says that, He's much too
kind, but many times we deserve having that said to us. 'Not so smart now are
you?' Number three, people become easily discouraged because they lack values and
beliefs greater than self, self not disciplined but self-reliance because
they rely too much on themselves, and thirdly, they lack focus, they're easily
distracted. I go back to Jesus' parable of the sower and the seed in Matthew 13:22,
He says, "And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns,
this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the
deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful." Notice that
what costs this person his soul was not some great immorality or a
lot of adversity, he was simply distracted. He allowed the normal things
that clamber for attention to divert his attention from where it should be.
Interesting it says "the worry of the world," in the Greek there the word
"worry or cares" in some Bibles comes from a Greek word which means "to separate or
to divert or to distract." In other words, this man in this parable here, he allowed
the riches of this world to give him the false impression that they were worthy
of his attention. They distracted him. Shiny things, beware of shiny things.
So the net result was that he became focused on the wrong things and
consequently the word and the Spirit and the kingdom began to lose its influence
and power in him and over him. One of the fruits of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, kindness, perseverance. Perseverance that's a spiritual thing. So
we're left to conclude that when adversity did come, this man quickly
became discouraged in Christ because why? Because he lost his focus that's why.
What do coaches... I see Johnny over here. See what coaches, what are
they continually saying to their players and it doesn't matter what sport it is?
Stay focused. Stay in the game. Pay attention. Keep your eye on the ball.
Whatever. Isn't that the biggest problem? You ever seen little kids
like four years old play soccer? It looks like there's a ball and bees
around the ball. Both teams around the ball. Looks like a
scrum where some kid is in the field waiting, he's
defense and then all of a sudden, he looks around and there's a dandelion
there and all a sudden, 'Oh, a dandelion. Look at this.' Zoom. The ball goes... Well, we
anticipate that from little kids obviously, but sometimes we're like that
in life. We lose our focus. So the danger of so much busyness in the world is that
it leads us to distraction and then distraction ultimately leads us to
discouragement. So let's summarize. Heard the bell. Discouragement is normal, it's
our emotional alarm that we're fighting a losing battle at times. Number two, big
idea tonight, there are ways to deal with discouragement. There are things to do in
cases of legitimate discouragement. Re-examine your beliefs and reasons.
Why am I doing this? What's the important stuff? Recommit to valid
promises. I gave my word that I would bring this project in and I'm going to
bring this project in. And relax. Let go, let God work in your life. Big idea
number three, easy discouragement however is not normal and is often caused by
lack of core values or beliefs or too much self-reliance or distraction. And
one other idea, one main thing to do to overcome easy discouragement, focus and
stay focused on God's Word. It will instill a bedrock faith in the Lord
Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. "Faith comes by hearing and hearing the
words of Christ." People say, 'I want a strong faith. How do I do that?' Keep your
nose in the Word. Develop a daily Bible reading habit. Come
to Bible class. Keeping our focus on God's
Word will reveal his eternal promises that will provide comfort and hope in
every time of your life and it'll help you remain focused and fruitful as you
await the return of Jesus Christ. The seed is sown in the honest
heart and that honest heart bears fruit and don't be discouraged because
sometimes Jesus said what do you produce? Thirtyfold, sixtyfold, hundred
fold. That means that at different times in your life your production is going to
be different. Sometimes you do your best, you try your best and what happens? 30-
fold, it's a 30-fold harvest and sometimes you just
went to it and tried to boom a hundred fold and sometimes it's not
always the same, don't be discouraged if you don't always hit a home run for the
Lord. Important thing is staying in the game. So in this, of course, if this
is your problem, easily discouraged, you want to do something concrete to
overcome it, as I say I would say the first step for those who feel
discouragement often is to make the commitment to be a regular Bible reader.
That's the first step and that step will take you to all the other steps. OK,
that's our class for easy discouragement, number four. We're almost home. Anybody
know what number one is? Yeah, I'm not telling you. OK, we'll see you next week
if the Lord is willing.