Encouragement, Endurance, Patience (Part 1)

Encouragement in Discouraging Times

This is a bit of an unusual video for my YouTube page and for my blog. Not completely unusual. I don't just do apologetics. Just yesterday, I ministered the Word of God at our church. I preached on 1 John chapter 2, verses 15 through 17.

That was a difficult sermon to preach. Any time you address a text like that, that tells us not to love the world nor the things of the world. The minister has to hear what he's saying, too. That can be very challenging.

Then last evening, Deuteronomy chapter 32. I do pastoral work and I sense very keenly my limitations. I do not consider myself much of a preacher at all, that's for certain. I was thinking about the subject of encouragement.

There are a lot of very discouraged saints these days. Personally, I tend to be a pretty upbeat person. I'm not one of those people who chooses to always be looking at the dark side of things. I think anyone who lives in this world experiences discouragement.

I certainly do. Sometimes doing what I do, I think I get less encouragement than other people do, simply because I am who I am and I do what I do. People just assume, well, if you do that kind of thing, who needs to encourage you?

We all experience it. Sometimes we take it as a sign of weakness. We don't even share that burden with others, or we know people who are just constantly down. They can never experience the joy of the Lord.

We don't necessarily want to be around folks like that. We tend to hide our own discouragements, hide our own times when we could really use the brethren and the sistren to stand by us. I was thinking about it, and I think partly because you look out over the world these days and there are some very discouraging things going on.

I think more and more about what the role of the faithful Christian is in a society that's clearly under the judgment of God, where there is much that will be constantly discouraging to the person who desires to see godliness promoted and things like that.

Microwave Christianity and the Need for Patience

One of the thoughts that crossed my mind was the fact that in our day, and I see this very intently in myself, in our day we have in essence become accustomed to what I can only liken to microwave Christianity, microwave sanctification.

We are not patient people. One of my greatest failings personally is patience. I've always recognized that. I see it all around me amongst Christian people. I look at the word of God and I look at the great heroes of the faith, and I cannot help but realize how many of them suffered difficulties, trials, tribulations from an earthly perspective that looked like they were abandoned by God for long periods of time, a lot longer than it would take me to start whining and complaining, that's for sure.

And I think most of my fellow believers are agreeing right now, yeah, me too. We think of Joseph and what he went through, and Moses, and just about anyone in the Old Testament, or we think of Paul and Peter in the New, and they often went through very difficult circumstances.

The Psalter and the Full Range of Human Emotion

So one of the things I really love about the word of God, sometimes as an apologist I wish the Bible was more systematic, cut and dry, it would be a little bit easier to defend. I mean the enemies of the faith are always picking on this little thing over there and that little thing over there, and when you actually go and look at it there's no substance of the criticism, but part of your job is pointing that out.

And one of the things a lot of people like to attack is you look at the Psalter, and in the Psalter you have the entire range of human emotion expressed. Muslims, for example, see that as a primary reason why it can't possibly be the word of God.

But you have the heights of joy, and praise, and rejoicing, and you have the depths of despair. And in fact, a couple times, not always, but a couple times, the psalmist doesn't even get a response from God.

As he wrote those words, as he experienced that difficulty, there was no answer from God as yet. And those are the difficult ones, they don't get preached on very often, but I'm awful glad they're there, because God deals with us in the real world.

Patient Endurance Through Tribulation and Silence

And the idea of patient endurance, the idea of a faith that lasts and that endures through tribulation and even those silent times, the older I get the more I realize that's the kind of faith God wants to form within me.