Discouragement is a spirit and it comes often when you do the right things, but get little or no result.
Many of us will walk through a life-altering tragedy at some point in our life. But for most of us, most of the time, the deepest challenge of life is not weathering some earth-shattering, once-in-a-lifetime disaster. The greatest challenge at any given moment is negotiating the garden-variety discouragements of life.
There are two ways to do life as a believer. One, gradually grow cynical by allowing the discouragements of life to beat out of you the acute sense of eternal destiny and wonder that God gave you at conversion. Two, leverage the discouragements of life into deeper reality with God and the doctrines you confess.
Discouragement is still the Devil’s tool. Not many people realize he’s using it on them. Life is full of discouraging circumstances. Even the most blessed people, the most successful, the most spiritually mature, face constant disappointment and discouragement.
Therefore remember, that you would honestly face discouraging problems or people and situation served up to you in life, but rather by acknowledging the problems and discouragement, you should remember:
1.Slow Growth Is Real Growth
Perhaps you feel as if your growth in Christ is too painfully slow. What healthy Christian don’t? Healthy Christians are confounded at their slow pace of growth. This is the blessed frustration of a heart alive to God and joy and beauty. The great danger is not that you grow slowly. The great danger is that you stop fighting to grow.
2.You Have Everything You Need
Discouragement about the state of your Christian life is the result not of lacking spiritual resources, but of losing reality with spiritual resources. A billionaire beggar’s problem is not lack of funds but lack of accessing those funds. “His divine power has granted us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3).
3.Christ Is Bigger Than You Imagine
In your discouragement, plunge deeper in Jesus Christ than ever before. Collapse onto him with greater abandon than ever before. Pour out your heart to him. Wrestle with him. Freshly surrender to him. Whatever you do, don’t look elsewhere other than Jesus as you seek to outgrow your discouragement, like a toddler looking everywhere except to his or her own mother when tired and hungry.
He’s an endless Christ. Let him loom above your discouragements, fortifying you afresh. You don’t need an easier life. You need a bigger Christ.
