Simple Rules when You are Discouraged: by AW Tozer

 

Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The LORD, the LORD, is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation." Isaiah 12:2

Christian men and women should be aware that there is a danger in a defeated spirit within us, for it can plunge us into discouragement.

Discouragement, by the way, is hardly a sin.  However, it can lead to any number of sins, for to discourage is to dishearten. In such a case we may still go to church but have little appetite for it.  Nothing means anything. Even the hymns and choruses are dull and tasteless and the sermon is a bore.

I want to give you some rules for the time of discouragement:

 

1. One thing you may want to do first is: NEVER accept the judgment of your own heart about the matter. A discouraged heart will always go astray, so do not think about yourself the way you feel about yourself. Instead, go to Christ, and more often than not, he will tell you like he did Gideon who was discouraged, “Get up, thou mighty man of God.”

 

2. Secondly is:  Make no important decisions while you are discouraged.  DON’T resign your job.  DON’T sell your property.  DO ask God to remove defeat out of your spirit and TRUST Him again. GOD IS NOT THE GOD OF SECOND CHANCES.  HE IS THE GOD OF AS MANY CHANCES AS YOU NEED, JUST CALL ON HIM.

 

3. Thirdly, get your Bible from its dusty space, wipe if off, and read about the promises of God for all of us. Claim His promises, and remember this: THE LIVING GOD IS EVERYTHING. OUR VICTORIES CANNOT ENRICH HIM AND OUR DEFEATS CANNOT IMPOVERISH HIM.  Live in the brightness of his love and promises, not in the darkness that is away from Him.  

THE SEED - A Grain of Wheat: by Andrew Murray

 

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abides by itself alone; but if it die, it bears much fruit. He that loveth his life loses it; and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. John 12:24-25

All nature is the parable of how the losing of a life can be the way of securing a truer and a higher life. Every grain of wheat, every seed throughout the world, teaches the lesson that through death lies the path to beautiful and fruitful life.

It was so with the Son of God. He had to pass through death in all its bitterness and suffering before He could rise to heaven and impart His life to His redeemed people. And here, under the shadow of the approaching cross, He called His disciples: “If any man will serve Me, let him follow Me.” (See Matthew 16:24.) He repeated the words: “He that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”

One might have thought that Christ did not need to lose His holy life before He could find it again. But so it was: God had “laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6), and He yielded to the inexorable law that through death comes life and fruit.

How much more should we, in the consciousness of that evil nature and the death that we inherited in Adam, be most grateful that there is a way open to us by which, in the fellowship of Christ and His cross, we can die to this accursed self! With what gratitude we should listen to the call to bear our cross, to yield our “old man” (Romans 6:6) as crucified with Christ daily to the death that he deserves! Surely the thought that the power of eternal life is working in us ought to make us willing and glad to die the death that brings us into the fellowship and the power of life in a risen Christ.

Unfortunately, this is rarely understood. Let us believe that what is impossible to man is possible to God. (See Matthew 19:26.) Let us believe that the law of the Spirit of Christ Jesus, the Risen Lord, can indeed make His death and His life the daily experience of our souls.

Be Still & Know: from Jesus Calling by Sarah Young

 

Luke 12:22-26
And he said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. ²³ For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. ²⁴ Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! ²⁵ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ²⁶ If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

Demonstrate your trust in Me by sitting quietly in My Presence. Put aside all that is waiting to be done, and refuse to worry about anything. This sacred time together strengthens you and prepares you to face whatever the day will bring. By waiting with Me before you begin the day's activities, you proclaim the reality of My Living Presence. This act of faith--waiting before working--is noted in the spirit world, where your demonstration of trust weakens principalities and powers of darkness.
     The most effective way to resist evil is to draw near Me. When you need to take action, I will guide you clearly through My Spirit and My Word. The world is so complex and overstimulating that you can easily lose your sense of direction. Doing countless unnecessary activities will dissipate your energy. When you spend time with Me, I restore your sense of direction. As you look to Me for guidance, I enable you to do less but accomplish more. 

Ephesians 6:12
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Proverbs 16:3
Commit your work to the Lord,
    and your plans will be established.

Redeeming the Time: by Henry Blackaby

 

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.       Ephesians 5:15-16

These days we are bombarded with opportunities that entice us to invest our time and energy. Each day the voices of urgency cry out for every available moment. So many causes promise that time spent on them will reap great rewards; how can we recognize God’s voice among so many competing voices?

A fool makes unwise choices with his time. With every new opportunity that comes along, the fool chases off in a different direction, not questioning whether that is the best choice. The loudest voice gains his attention. At some point the fool discovers to his dismay that he has squandered the investment of his time.

The days in which you live are evil. Marriages are under tremendous pressure, families are disintegrating. Multitudes are dying each year without hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Investing your life wisely is critical to you and to those around you. Foolishly spending your time in sinful or wasteful pursuits can cost you and others dearly.

Often, it is not evil pursuits that rob your time. Rather, the temptation is to sacrifice what is best for what is good. The enemy knows that blatantly tempting you with evil will be obvious, so he will lure you with distractions, leaving you no time to carry out God’s will. He will tempt you to so fill your schedule with good things that you have no time for God’s best. You may inadvertently substitute religious activity for God’s will, pursuing your own goals for God’s kingdom instead of waiting for His assignment. Time is a precious commodity. Be sure to invest it wisely.

Christ-Awareness: by Oswald Chambers

 

…and I will give you rest. —Matthew 11:28

Whenever anything begins to disintegrate your life with Jesus Christ, turn to Him at once, asking Him to re-establish your rest. Never allow anything to remain in your life that is causing the unrest. Think of every detail of your life that is causing the disintegration as something to fight against, not as something you should allow to remain. Ask the Lord to put awareness of Himself in you, and your self-awareness will disappear. Then He will be your all in all. Beware of allowing your self-awareness to continue, because slowly but surely it will awaken self-pity, and self-pity is satanic. Don’t allow yourself to say, “Well, they have just misunderstood me, and this is something over which they should be apologizing to me; I’m sure I must have this cleared up with them already.” Learn to leave others alone regarding this. Simply ask the Lord to give you Christ-awareness, and He will steady you until your completeness in Him is absolute.

A complete life is the life of a child. When I am fully conscious of my awareness of Christ, there is something wrong. It is the sick person who really knows what health is. A child of God is not aware of the will of God because he is the will of God. When we have deviated even slightly from the will of God, we begin to ask, “Lord, what is your will?” A child of God never prays to be made aware of the fact that God answers prayer, because he is so restfully certain that God always answers prayer.

If we try to overcome our self-awareness through any of our own commonsense methods, we will only serve to strengthen our self-awareness tremendously. Jesus says, “Come to Me…and I will give you rest,” that is, Christ-awareness will take the place of self-awareness. Wherever Jesus comes He establishes rest— the rest of the completion of activity in our lives that is never aware of itself.

Self-Awareness: by Oswald Chambers

 

Come to Me… —Matthew 11:28

God intends for us to live a well-rounded life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside. Then we tend to fall back into self-examination, a habit that we thought was gone. Self-awareness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of our life in God, and self-awareness continually produces a sense of struggling and turmoil in our lives. Self-awareness is not sin, and it can be produced by nervous emotions or by suddenly being dropped into a totally new set of circumstances. Yet it is never God’s will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him. Anything that disturbs our rest in Him must be rectified at once, and it is not rectified by being ignored but only by coming to Jesus Christ. If we will come to Him, asking Him to produce Christ-awareness in us, He will always do it, until we fully learn to abide in Him.

Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it. Beware of allowing the influence of your friends or your circumstances to divide your life. This only serves to sap your strength and slow your spiritual growth. Beware of anything that can split your oneness with Him, causing you to see yourself as separate from Him. Nothing is as important as staying right spiritually. And the only solution is a very simple one— “Come to Me….” The intellectual, moral, and spiritual depth of our reality as a person is tested and measured by these words. Yet in every detail of our lives where we are found not to be real, we would rather dispute the findings than come to Jesus.

Hungry & Thirsting: by Henry Blackaby

 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

For they shall be filled.”

Matthew 5:6

Hunger and thirst are the body’s way of telling us that we are “empty.” Our natural response to physical hunger and thirst is to seek food and water to satisfy our need. Each Christian has an inner longing that only Christ’s righteousness can satisfy. But we cannot be filled with righteousness if we are filled with self.

Throughout the Scriptures God emphasizes that the one who longs for Him with all his heart will find Him (Jer. 29:13). As we crave righteousness, we will repent of our sin, and God will remove it from us. Our selfishness will be replaced by the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). The Spirit will make us to be like Christ.

Righteousness is not to be taken lightly, nor is it easily attained. Holy God does not give His righteousness to people indiscriminately. He gives it to those who know they cannot live without it. Our desire for personal righteousness must be powerful, all-consuming, dominating everything we do. Pursuing righteousness means that we value the opinion of God far more than we treasure the opinions of people.

Righteousness is not merely an absence of sin. It is allowing God to fill us with His holiness (Rom. 6:11). It is being like Christ. Jesus is our model of One who sought God’s righteousness first, and then the Father glorified Him. We are not only to seek the kingdom of God, but we are also to pursue His righteousness (Matt. 6:33). If we will hunger and thirst for righteousness, we will be satisfied!

Calling to Closeness: from JESUS Calling by Sarah Young

 Psalm 37:7

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
    fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
    over the man who carries out evil devices!

I continually call you to closeness with Me. I know the depth and breadth of your need for Me. I can read the emptiness of your thoughts when they wander away from Me. I offer rest for your soul, as well as refreshment for your mind and body. As you increasingly find fulfillment in Me, other pleasures become less important. Knowing Me intimately is like having a private wellspring of Joy within you. The spring flows freely from My throne of grace, so your Joy is independent of circumstances.
     Waiting on My Presence keeps you connected to Me, aware of all that I offer you. If you feel any deficiency, you need to refocus your attention on Me. This is how you trust Me in the moments of your life.

Psalm 131:2
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
    like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child is my soul within me.
Psalm 21:6
For you make him most blessed forever;
    you make him glad with the joy of your presence.

Wild Rumours: by CS Lewis

 

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 2 Corinthians 5:16-18

What man, in his natural condition, has not got, is Spiritual life—the higher and different sort of life that exists in God. We use the same word life for both: but if you thought that both must therefore be the same sort of thing, that would be like thinking that the 'greatness' of space and the 'greatness' of God were the same sort of greatness. In reality, the difference between Biological life and Spiritual life is so important that I am going to give them two distinct names. The Biological sort which comes to us through Nature, and which (like everything else in Nature) is always tending to run down and decay so that it can only be kept up by incessant subsidies from Nature in the form of air, water, food, etc., is Bios. The Spiritual life which is in God from all eternity, and which made the whole natural universe, is Zoe. Bios has, to be sure, a certain shadowy or symbolic resemblance to Zoe: but only the sort of resemblance there is between a photo and a place, or a statue and a man. A man who changed from having Bios to having Zoe would have gone through as big a change as a statue which changed from being a carved stone to being a real man.

And that is precisely what Christianity is about. This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumour going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.

Abiding in Christ: by Andrew Murray

 

Abide in Me, and I in you.
—John 15:4

Jesus is set before us as a man among us doing a work here on earth and continuing that work in heaven. But many Christians never advance beyond an external Lord, in whom they trust for what He has done and is doing. They know little of the true mystery of Christ in us as an indwelling Savior.

The former and simpler view is that of the first three gospels. The more advanced view is found in the gospel of John. The former is the aspect of truth presented in the doctrine of justification. The latter is the teaching concerning the union of the believer with Christ and his continual abiding as taught in John and the epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians.

This abiding in Christ and Christ in you must be more than a truth you hold in its right place in your gospel doctrine. It must be a matter of experience that inspires your faith in Christ and relationship with God. To be in Christ, to abide in Christ, is not a matter of intellectual faith, but a spiritual reality.

The full manifestations of God and His saving love can come in no other way than by indwelling. In virtue of Christ’s divinity and power, He can, as we abide in Him, dwell in us. To the degree our hearts are given to Him in faith and our wills are given in active obedience, He comes in and abides in us. We can say, because we know, “Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

If we are to live with Christ in us and we in Him, then we must be renewed and strengthened in our personal relationships with God in the morning watch. Our access to God, our expectation from God must all be in living fellowship with Christ. If you feel that you want to realize God’s presence more fully, come to God in Christ. Think how Jesus, a man on earth, drew near to the Father in deep humility and dependence, in full surrender and obedience. We must come in His spirit, in union with Jesus.

Seek to take the place before God that Christ has taken in heaven, that of redemption, victory, and of full entrance to glory. Do it by faith in His indwelling power in you here on earth. Expect your approach to God to be accepted according to your heart’s surrender and acceptance in Christ. Then you will be led on in the path in which Christ, living in you and speaking in you, will be truth and power.

Jesus Calling by Sarah Young: Walking in the Word, in Christ

 

Isaiah 42:3
a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;
    he will faithfully bring forth justice.

Come to Me when you are weak and weary. Rest snugly in My everlasting arms. I do not despise your weakness, My child. Actually, it draws Me closer to you, because weakness stirs up My compassion--My yearning to help. Accept yourself in your weariness, knowing that I understand how difficult your journey has been.
     Do not compare yourself with others, who seem to skip along their life-paths with ease. Their journeys have been different from yours, and I have gifted them with abundant energy. I have gifted you with fragility, providing opportunities for your spirit to blossom in My Presence. Accept this gift as a sacred treasure: delicate, yet glowing with brilliant Light. Rather than struggling to disguise or deny your weakness, allow Me to bless you richly through it.

Isaiah 54:10
For the mountains may depart
    and the hills be removed,
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
    and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,”
    says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
Romans 8:26
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

Spiritual Receptivity May Be Increased by Exercise: by AW Tozer

 

Psalm 42:2
 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?

Pick at random a score of great saints whose lives and testimonies are widely known. Let them be Bible characters or well-known Christians of post-biblical times. I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual receptivity. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to the heavenly vision!

Receptivity is not a single thing; it is a compound, rather, a blending of several elements within the soul. It is an affinity for, a bent toward, a sympathetic response to, a desire to have. It may be increased by exercise or destroyed by neglect. It is a gift of God, indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any other gift if it is to realize the purpose for which it was given.

The idea of spiritual cultivation and exercise, so dear to the saints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It is too slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramatic action. We have been trying to apply machine-age methods to our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotions and rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy by attending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling story told by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar.

It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to biblical ways!

DECEPTION: by TA Sparks

 

I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. (2 Corinthians 11:3)

Deception is not something out there that is put upon us willy-nilly, or in spite of ourselves. All deception has its own ground in man. What is that ground? It is the fact that man is now a psychical being. Now if you can get to the bottom of that, if you can apprehend that, you will understand the whole thing. The ground of all this is in the fact that man is a psychical being, and when Satan interfered with man at the beginning and man consented along the line of his own soul-life, Satan made man suitable to his own government. It was not that he came and set himself up as man’s ruler and subjected man by sheer force to his own government. How did he do it? By breaking into that realm in man’s being where man was linked with God, and that was in the realm of man’s spirit. “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” and man was in fellowship and communion with God by means of his spirit, not his soul, not his body. These two were under the government of his spirit. The enemy, the Deceiver came to man’s soul, and instead of man reacting by his spirit-fellowship with, and knowledge of, God, he dropped down on to his soul, came out of his spirit and reacted in his soul.

What is soul? It is reason, emotion, feeling, desire, and then, of course, choice, or will. And the enemy reasoned through the desires and captured the will by deception. You see what happened when man violated the very organ of his union with God, his spirit.... So the enemy governs man, and the whole of the race now through the nature of the soul-life. What is the basis of deception? It is just that! How do you get a counterfeit Holy Ghost operating? By reason of your psychical nature. You can become mediumistic in your very psychical nature and open all the avenues of your being to supernatural guidance and come under the power, the sway, dominion, of deceiving spirits operating in a multitude of ways. You can so suspend your soul and come into a state of utter passivity that you are open to everything to play upon you. You can have your quiet hour in your soul, which is the most perilous hour of your life. That happens by suspending all spiritual activity and becoming utterly passive and opening your psychical being, which is a most dangerous thing. God never asks you to become spiritually passive. Waiting upon God is not being spiritually passive. God wants us active in spirit even when waiting on Him in silence.

The Devil Never Forgives Those Who Escape Bondage: by AW Tozer

 

Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Acts 5:3

AS WE MOVE FARTHER ON IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE we may expect to encounter increased hostility from the enemy of our souls. Although this is seldom presented to Christians as a fact of life it is a very solid fact indeed as every experienced Christian knows, and one we shall learn how to handle or stumble over to our own undoing.

If Satan opposes the new convert he opposes still more bitterly the Christian who is pressing on toward a higher life in Christ. The Spirit-filled life is not, as many suppose, a life of peace and quiet pleasure. It is likely to be something quite the opposite.

Satan hates the true Christian for several reasons. One is that God loves him, and whatever is loved by God is sure to b e hated by the devil. Another is that the Christian, being a child of God, bears a family resemblance to the Father and to the household of faith. A third reason is that a true Christian is a former slave who has escaped from the galley, and Satan cannot forgive him f or this affront. A fourth reason is that a praying Christian is a constant threat to the stability of Satan’s government. The Christian is a holy rebel loose in the world with access to the throne of God.

Satan never knows from what direction his danger will come. Who knows when another Elijah will arise, or another Daniel? or a Luther, a Finney or a Booth?

Delivered into Your Hand: by Henry Blackaby

 

And the LORD said to Joshua, “Do not fear them, for I have delivered them into your hand; not a man of them shall stand before you.”      Joshua 10:8

No greater confidence will ever come to you or to any other Christian than the confidence of knowing you are doing God’s will. God will not commission you to do anything without ensuring your success. God assured Joshua that there was no reason to fear as he prepared to battle the Canaanites. God would allow the Israelites to fight the battle, but the outcome was settled before they ever picked up their weapons. What confidence this gave them as they fought! Even though their enemies fought relentlessly, Joshua’s army was certain of eventual victory.

God does not promise you victory in every task you devise, but He does promise that you will be successful whenever you follow His will (Deut. 28:7, 25).

Does it appear that people are keeping you from obeying God’s will? Rest assured that God will not allow anyone or anything to prevent His children from accomplishing His purposes.

Be careful to evaluate success in the way that God does. Perhaps He is working to produce His peace in your heart as you face troubling times. Perhaps He is working to develop a forgiving spirit in you when others mistreat you. Perhaps He is working to eliminate a particular sin in your life. If you accept the world’s understanding of victory, you may feel defeated. If you look to see what God is accomplishing through your situation, you will find that He is succeeding. When you face opposition but know you are doing what God has asked, have confidence that He will accomplish everything that He desires.