Overcoming Discouragement

Let's turn to the book of Joshua, Joshua chapter 1, and the title of this morning's message is

Overcoming Discouragement, Overcoming Discouragement. So discouragement is what makes you want to stay home on Sunday morning.

Discouragement is what causes people to have a bad attitude, and discouragement can really just make you feel like giving up.

I'm sure everybody knows the feeling. Therefore, discouragement is really the enemy of faith.

That's why in this message we're going to talk about how, hopefully, to overcome discouragement.

Because here in Joshua chapter 1, before Joshua became their leader, in the days of Moses, the children of Israel, and even

Moses himself, you remember the story, they became very discouraged. They lacked the faith to enter into the promised land.

You remember the story, there were the 10 spies, remember they brought back the bad report.

There were giants in the land. I know God told us to do it, God told us we could do it, but, you know, we're getting focused on these people over here, and it causes us to doubt ourselves, and I don't think we can do it, and then they didn't do it, and they were discouraged because they lacked the faith to enter into the land.

So discouragement is the enemy of faith, but let's read about it. Joshua chapter 1, verses 1 through 9, because, and notice that God keeps telling

Joshua, you repeat something, have courage. You can sort of hear the word, you know, discourage, have courage.

So keep that in mind. Joshua 1, 1 through 9, says, after the death of Moses, the servant of the

Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying,

Moses, my servant, is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this

Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving them, the children of Israel.

Every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you.

As I said to Moses, from the wildernesses of this Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river

Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and to the great sea, toward the going down of the sun, it shall all be your territory.

No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life. And as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.

I will not leave you, nor forsake you. So be strong and of good courage, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land which

I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do all according to all the law which

Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go.

This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it.

For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

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.

And may God have his blessing to the reading of his word. This is a very encouraging passage, is it not?

Imagine if God said this to you. I'd feel pretty encouraged, I'd feel pretty good about it.

But obviously Joshua has to obey what God told him, and that's really the key here.

And that's the key for us. So you see in verse 6, the Lord tells Joshua, what?

Be strong and of what? Good courage. In verse 7 he says, be strong and very courageous.

And then in verse 9, be strong and of good courage again.

So let me just define this word. The word courage is defined as a willingness to confront danger, or the bravery and determination to do something that frightens you.

So courage can't exist unless there is some sort of opponent, some sort of obstacle, some sort of problem that needs to be overcome.

So you need this issue, this obstacle to overcome to even be able to have courage.

So there's going to be a time of testing, we see that. Now here in the Old Testament, in the book of Joshua, with the

Israelites conquering the land of Canaan, obviously these are physical battles, right?

That's what we're talking about in the book of Joshua. So it clearly took courage to take a sword and a shield and march into the land of Canaan and fight physical battles, yes, that took courage.

But all of this, even though we're not fighting physical battles, all of this is an illustration for what?

For the spiritual battle that we face as New Testament Christians. So most of us are never going to fight these types of physical battles, but we are fighting spiritual battles every single day.

And I've told you this before, if you say, well not me, I'm not really seeing any battles,

I don't see what you're even talking about, that means you're losing. You're losing big time if you don't see the battles.

It's a daily thing. So today, again, not fighting physical battles 99 % of the time, but today

Christians are not told to take up the sword and the shield, we are called to take up what? The sword of the spirit, which is the word of God.

So the enemy that we face typically is not a physical enemy. We wrestle not, right?

The Bible says we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Our enemy is a spiritual enemy, which in some ways makes it even more difficult.

So one of the biggest threats you will likely to face in your Christian life, really the threat of discouragement itself.

Who was it? Roosevelt, who said, we have nothing to fear except fear itself.

Right? Well, I don't know if that has anything to do with this. It just came to mind, but fighting discouragement is half the battle.

With all the opponents and the things we face, our own feelings sometimes are what hinder us from moving forward.

So you just have to be careful and not let discouragement hinder you.

So we've all been there. We've all felt discouraged. Maybe you felt discouraged for a day, maybe for an afternoon.

It might even last multiple days or even weeks. And the longer discouragement lasts, the greater the damage.

When Christians get discouraged, they typically stop praying, stop serving.

They might even drop out of church. And some cases, worst case scenario, they feel like giving up on God altogether.

I mean, this is the tactic of the enemy. If he can just get you discouraged, he's winning.

He's winning. And the devil just knows if he can keep us in that state, we will be of no use to God.

So the goal in overcoming discouragement is to never allow it to get to that point.

You're going to feel discouraged. I mean, that's just, that's just the way it is. But is it going to last for a few moments?

A few hours? Again, if it lasts for a long time, the devil's winning.

Proverbs 12 .25, I think this is an important verse on this topic.

Proverbs 12 .25 says, worry weighs a person down, but an encouraging word cheers a person up.

Pretty basic. But if you think about it, if you always go through life worrying and you're anxious and oh no, what will happen here?

And you're constantly in this state of worry, that can get you discouraged. But we need to lift each other up and encourage one another and help cheer somebody up.

If they look down, give them an encouraging word. That's very important. It goes a long way.

So the first thing you need to realize that if you feel this way, there's nothing wrong with you. That's the first thing

I want to tell you. If you feel discouraged right now this morning, it's normal, okay?

It is very, very normal. You are certainly not alone. There is a statistic,

I've shared this many times, something about 40 to 50 % of all pastors who enter into the ministry, they quit after the first five years.

And you ask them, why? Why are you quitting? Because of discouragement. So if that's how the shepherds are feeling, if that's how the leaders are feeling, you can just bet that the sheep are feeling that way.

So when you feel discouraged, you feel like your prayers aren't being answered. You feel like nobody cares.

You get down on others and you get down on yourself.

One common problem that probably everybody faces. So one key to overcoming discouragement is don't get focused on other people.

And don't focus too much on yourself. With the Israelites, right? They were told by God, take the land, enter into the land.

I am giving you the land. God literally told them that a promise from God that they would be successful.

But why did they back down? Why did they not go in? They were focused on the

Canaanites. They got focused on other people. They're too big. They're too strong. And then they looked at themselves.

They started focusing on themselves. And what did they say about themselves? We're like grasshoppers in their sight.

They're giants and we're small. So they got discouraged when they were focusing on others and when they focused too much on themselves.

Now this isn't an insult against other people, cuz we all have our own problems and we can all fall into this.

But when I get too focused on other people or what somebody else isn't doing right or they should be doing, that discourages me.

But it's not really about them, is it? Or maybe I failed in some area and I get all down on myself.

What good does that do? Doesn't do any good at all. Where should the focus be? Yeah, focus on the

Lord and his word, what he has promised. But sometimes, right, we're listening to these other voices, and that will get us down.

Look at Joshua 1, verse 1, again, we'll go through this. After the death of Moses, the servant of the

Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' assistant, saying, Moses, my servant is dead.

Now therefore, arise and go over this Jordan, you and all this people to the land which

I am giving them, the children of Israel. So if you remember the story going way back,

God first promised this land to who? Right, Abraham.

So we're talking about hundreds of years later at this point. And we read from the book of Hebrews.

We learn that Abraham and his son Isaac and then Jacob, they were all sojourners in the land.

And they dwelt in tents because they never really owned the land themselves.

So the point is, God made a promise to Abraham. Did Abraham ever see that promise fulfilled in his life?

No. Now Abraham was not a guy who lived in discouragement. He's called the father of the faithful.

He was a great man of faith. But technically, the thing that God promised him, he never actually saw it fulfilled in his lifetime.

You could say he had a reason to be discouraged, but was he? No. Why? Cuz he had faith.

He was focused on that promise of God and he did pretty much everything that God told him to do.

I mean, he had failures, everyone does, but he was a man of faith. So the point is, when

God makes a promise, even though you know it's in his word, you believe it's gonna happen, just because you're not seeing it right in front of your face, don't get discouraged about that.

Many of the promises of God, most if, I don't wanna say all, but most happen later on, even the greatest promise for us.

What's the greatest promise that we have as New Testament believers? Eternal life.

Eternal life. Have you seen eternal life yet? There's a hope of heaven, eternal life, your names are written in heaven.

Have you seen that yet? I know some people claim to have traveled to heaven and come back to tell about,

I don't really buy into all that. People have written books, but yeah, none of us has actually seen heaven yet.

None of us have had or possessed our new glorified body. So even the greatest promise we have, we haven't even seen it fulfilled yet.

Do you believe it though? Yeah, we believe it and we walk by faith. This is the whole point, you walk by faith and not by sight.

So don't get focused on other people, that's the first thing. Second thing, don't get too focused on yourself.

I mean, people who are just self -absorbed and focusing on themselves. Yeah, these are the most miserable people on Earth.

So don't do that, and then don't walk by sight.

We need to walk by faith. So Joshua was a man, he is given this order, this commandment to cross the

Jordan, take the promised land. He saw the previous generation, they failed to do it.

And did Joshua obey God's command? Yes, he did, look at verse three. God tells him, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon,

I have given you, as I said to Moses, from the wildernesses and this

Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates and all the land of the

Hittites and to the great sea toward the going down of the sun, all of this, he tells him, shall be your territory.

Now, it has been argued, and I think rightly so, that the Israelites, even though they did go in,

Joshua led them in. We all know the story, most of us do, the conquest of the land of Canaan.

Did Joshua lead them in and take the land? Yes, now, did they possess all of the land?

No, they didn't. Matter of fact, to this day, Israel never actually possessed the fullness of the land.

I know some people try to claim that they did, and there is a verse or two that seems to say that they did.

But we all know there were tribes that didn't get eliminated, they didn't get all the territory.

So, reality is, even though they went in, took the land, they didn't get all of it.

Another potential reason to be discouraged, but you can't let that happen. So, even though today, you know, we see encouraging signs,

I mean, this was a big encouragement for a lot of Christians who believe the Bible, Bible believers in 1948, 1949,

Israel reconstituted as a nation. It seems like God is maybe doing a new thing in the world, and that really encouraged people.

But you say, well, they have the land today. Well, no, they don't. There's still other people there, and they're still fighting, right?

But this is the point, they've been fighting, they've either been out of the land or fighting in the land ever since.

There have been some times of peace, but it's just an ongoing thing. Reasons for discouragement, but you can't get focused on that, you need to focus on the promise of God, and then do what

God tells you to do. If you do that, you will be joyful, you'll have God's blessing, you will not live in discouragement.

Look at verse five, the Lord tells Joshua, no man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.

As I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.

Now, this is a promise to who? Joshua. Now, it is repeated in the

New Testament, and I do believe it applies to every Christian. If you're a born again believer this morning, this applies to you.

God says, I will neither leave you nor forsake you. If that's true, okay, if that's true, no matter what's happening right now,

I should be encouraged. God is with me, he will never leave me nor forsake me.

If we can just keep that in mind and keep that first, we should be okay. We should be good to go.

And we see here in verse six, he says, be strong and of good courage.

And this is all God trying to motivate Joshua and encourage Joshua. He says, for to this people you shall divide as an inheritance the land, which

I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and very courageous.

So there is a condition, you might say. And what is the condition? For Joshua, God promises,

I'll be with you, be strong, be courageous. But you have to do something,

Joshua. There is a condition. What's the condition? You gotta do what?

You gotta do what I tell you to do. And this is the big problem, of course.

And again, we're not talking about perfection, but we gotta do what God tells us to do.

He tells Joshua, do not turn to the right hand or to the left. Basically, they have the law.

The law was given to Moses, to the children of Israel. They have the commandments. God is saying, you need to obey this.

You need to follow this. Do what I say. If you do that, you will have good success.

I always say that because sometimes people, and it's true, faith and works are different. They're not the same thing.

But works should be the logical conclusion of faith. If you believe

God, you believe what he says, you should do what he says. So sometimes there's a disconnect where a person will say, well,

I believe God, I have faith in God, I trust in God. And then God says, okay, do this.

Well, I don't want to do that. We need to go back to step one.

I don't think you really have faith. And again, not talking about people who sin, because we all sin, we all fall short, we get it.

But your general pattern of life has to be one of doing what

God says. If Joshua didn't do what the Lord said, then all of this is really a moot point.

Look at verse eight. The Lord said, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it.

Now, I do want to say something, because this could easily be taken the wrong way. And this is supposed to be an encouraging message, right?

God tells him to have courage. We should have courage and be courageous and all the rest.

But if this was the message, hey, you need to do everything that God says, and then you'll be blessed and everything.

Well, what's the problem with that? There's not a man alive who has done everything that God says.

So I don't want you to misinterpret what I'm saying, because did

Joshua fail to do some things that God said? Yeah, he told him to annihilate all of the

Canaanites. And they all had to go. And if you read the story, I forget if actually,

I forget if it was Joshua, but there were some treaties made and some deals struck. Okay, this tribe will allow you to stay and will allow you to stay.

And Joshua didn't actually drive out everybody. Now you could argue it's because he tried and he couldn't.

But the bottom line is that is not the message. You need to do everything that God says or else none of this applies.

Because that would cause me to be discouraged, because I know that I fall short. So that is not the point.

Here's the thing, Jesus came. You know, Joshua is the Old Testament name for the

New Testament name of Jesus. So Old Testament Hebrew Joshua, the

Greek name, the New Testament name is Jesus. So Joshua is a type or a foreshadow of Jesus.

So here's the thing, Jesus came and he lived his life and he actually did do everything that God said.

So in all the areas that we fall short, Jesus took care of that. He literally did everything that God said.

And now what Jesus asks from us is that we would simply follow him and trust in him.

Okay, pick up your cross daily, follow me. So that's what the Lord asked. He's not asking perfect obedience.

I mean, that is obviously perfection. That's the standard. None of us can meet it. But as long as we are willing to follow

Jesus and do what he says, and that's, again, the general pattern of our life, we will be having good success.

We will be strong and courageous. Christ has done it for us is the point.

Now, I do want to get into some of the application here about not getting down, not getting discouraged, and maybe end with some advice.

I said that, number one, the one thing you don't want to do is get what? Too focused on other people.

Don't get too focused on yourself. What was the third thing? Walk by faith.

Walk by faith. Walk by faith and not by sight. Good. So these are kind of the basics of how we can avoid discouragement.

And then, yes, generally what God says is commands follow through.

When you fail, we know the process. Confess our sin. You stumble and fall, pick yourself back up.

God will pick you up. Confess your sin, move forward, and God will be with you.

But some other things that we can do and some reasons why we are discouraged, because, again, we all get that way.

The acronym JOY, I know I feel like I've brought it up a lot lately, but it just seems to fit in a lot of the things that I'm trying to teach here.

Jesus, others, yourself, right? J -O -Y. Focus on Jesus, him first.

Others, focus on them. Put them above your own needs. Think about them more than you.

And you are last, right? And then if you do that, you'll have more joy.

So I do get discouraged. I'll share with you. I do get discouraged sometimes.

Most of the time, I beat myself up over my own mistakes.

I see an opportunity that I missed. There'll be something, oh,

I wish I had said this and not that. I wish I responded this way or did something different.

And I get too fixated on my own mistakes. And I beat myself up. And I don't, I mean, that's maybe healthy to a degree.

But when I get focused on myself, I get really discouraged. And that's one thing

I would encourage you to avoid. Sometimes we think, why do people do that?

They think that if they get down on themselves, it'll make them do better next time. There's some sort of thought process of maybe this is helpful.

It's really not helpful. Most of the things you get down on yourself about, other people aren't even noticing these things.

Someone else would never get down on you for this. But you're beating yourself up about it. So I only mention that if this describes somebody here this morning, you're down on yourself.

You're beating yourself up. There's something you did or said. You just rethink it, relive it again and again in your mind.

Stop doing that. That's my advice to you. My commandment to you, stop beating yourself up.

I'm trying to think of when God gave that commandment. But I can't think of it. So I'll give a commandment. It doesn't do any good.

But then getting focused on others. And maybe it's not even other people. Here's one thing that discourages me.

I'm out and about. I'm going all these different places. And I'm seeing this rainbow, not the rainbow in Genesis 9, but I'm seeing this other rainbow just popping up everywhere.

And you know what, that kind of gets me a little discouraged. You know, you can't go to the doctor's anymore without seeing the rainbow.

I went shopping at a, I won't mention the place, but it's a grocery store.

And at the front desk, guess what I see? This rainbow. Why? Why is this here?

So this is just one of those things. You know what I want to see when I go around? I want to see the Christian flag.

That's what I want to see. Where is it? Over here. That's what I want. That's the flag

I want to see. I want to see the American flag, and I want to see the Christian flag. That would make me encouraged.

Can you imagine if you went through Amherst, instead of all these places flying the rainbow, you're seeing, you do see the

American flag sometimes, but you start seeing the Christian flag popping up in these places. Wow, that would make you feel good, wouldn't it?

You know what, can that happen? We think, oh man, that'll never happen.

But it might. Here's the thing, if we get down and discouraged, and we don't do anything about it, is it ever going to happen?

Not if Christians are that way. Here's a little, you don't have to take this advice, but sometimes

I try to encourage myself, which I think is biblical. Remember David said he encouraged himself in the

Lord? Remember that passage? It doesn't really tell us what David did. So one day, I went in to this grocery store, and I saw that rainbow at the front desk, and I went up to the front desk and I said, you know,

I wasn't belligerent or anything like that. I believe in being kind. And I'm like, why is that thing here?

Why is that there? Like, I'm shopping for groceries. Why am I looking at that?

And the guy said, well, you know, it's a corporate thing. And I'm like, yeah, but you local people put it here.

And I don't want to say go give the clerk a hard time, because they probably had nothing to do with it.

But I said something, and he's like, well, we have this flag, the American flag. I'm like, are you really comparing the

American flag with the rainbow? I really wasn't giving him that hard of a time, but I spoke up.

I don't know, I felt good about speaking up. I encouraged myself.

And why did I do that? Just for my own sake. I was doing it for the

Lord. I really was. But you know what would have encouraged me even more than that?

If I saw somebody else doing it. And I started seeing, and not just about that one thing, the rainbow, but just people standing up for what's right.

If I just saw, if we all just saw more and more people standing up for God's truth and for what was right, man,

I would feel, I'd feel a lot more encouraged. So that's one thing you can do. Could be something small.

You can just ask a question, just speak up. Actually do something.

And then there's a lot of Christians out there that don't identify themselves, and they may see that, and you may see others.

And this is just one way that I thought of that we can be encouraged in the faith.

Because going along with it doesn't encourage anybody, that's for sure. A few final things before we close.

Keep God, yes, keep God first. Keep him first in your thoughts, first in your actions.

That's number one. Number two, have realistic expectations. Some people get discouraged because their expectations are way up here, and it's just not gonna happen.

Okay, so recalibrate some of your expectations for life, society, other people.

Unrealistic expectations can be a great cause of discouragement. Number three, talk to somebody.

If you are discouraged, if it's lasting more than an afternoon, talk to somebody.

Here's what a lot of people do. They get discouraged, and down, and depressed, and what do they do? They isolate themselves, and they don't talk.

And they stay home, and they don't come out of their room, and then it just kind of spirals, and it gets worse, and worse, and worse.

If you're feeling discouraged for more than a day, pick up the phone, talk to somebody.

Number four, accept people for who they are. This is an excuse for bad behavior.

Oh, that's just what they do, and that's who they are. That's not what I'm saying, but maybe go back to the expectations thing.

Some people are, they are who they are. Try to love them the way they are.

Encourage them to maybe move in a direction of faith and godliness, but accept people for who they are.

This is the point, you can't control other people, so don't get discouraged when they don't do what you want them to do.

Number four, or number five, along those same lines, don't worry about things you can't control.

There's 99 % of things out there that would discourage you can't control them anyways.

Don't focus on that. Number six, be good to yourself. Be good to yourself.

Don't beat yourself up. And a few other things that we don't always talk about in church, but your physical health may be part of it.

If you're feeling really down and weighed down, think about your diet, exercise.

Get out in the fresh air, get out in the sun, spend time with other people. Be good to yourself.

Sitting in front of the TV watching bad news all day, that got me down.

I had to cancel cable. I couldn't watch Fox News all day. But hey, if that's your thing and you're encouraged by it, go for it, bud.

You gotta figure out what works for you. Another thing, don't compare yourself with others.

God made you unique. It's not a competition between you and other people.

But in conclusion, Joshua was God's man and God told him.

We think of Joshua as this courageous guy and I guess he was, but God had to tell him to do these things.

God had to remind him. That tells me that Joshua was flawed. Joshua in and of himself, left to his own devices, he might have gone the other way, but God tells him, and we'll just close with this verse,

Joshua 1 .9. He says, have I not commanded you, Joshua, be strong and of good courage.

Do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

That same promise applies to you this morning and if you keep that in the forefront of your mind, you'll overcome discouragement, amen.

Let's close. And Father, I thank you for all of your people who are just pitching in, doing everything they can for the gospel ministry and just to lift one another up, to pray for each other, to pick up the phone and to give someone an encouraging word.

Lord, I thank you for your people, but I thank you most of all for your promises and just knowing that each and every promise you made will be fulfilled.

And of course, Lord, we know that greatest promise is the forgiveness of sin because of Jesus and what he did on the cross, dying, rising again on the third day.

We have that assurance, the assurance of salvation to all who believe.

Lord, I thank you so much for that. And as always, if there's somebody who has never placed their faith in the gospel of Christ crucified and risen,

Lord, I pray that they would be encouraged to move forward in the faith.

And Father, I just ask that you would change their heart, that they would receive Christ even at this very moment and say,

Lord, I'm a sinner. I know I have sinned against you. Please forgive me. I believe that Jesus died for me and rose again.

And Lord, if they turn to you, we believe that you will answer that prayer and save them and give them the gift of eternal life.