Do Not Be Discouraged — A.W. Tozer

The Command Not to Be Discouraged

This is to me and some of you, but I am not going to talk about redemption, and don't assume it. It's found in Deuteronomy 1, 21, 1, 21. Behold, the Lord thy God has set the land before thee, the weapon possessor.

For the Lord God has said unto thee, Fear not, neither be discouraged. The weapon possessor, and remember that God has said, Fear not, neither be discouraged. I want to talk a little about discouragement and what the Christian can do about it.

This topic comes up ten or twelve years in this service. Perhaps it should come more frequently because I know what a discouragement is. It is one of the Christian's worst enemies. Maybe I doubt that it is the greatest.

Discouragement as a Spiritual Enemy

I doubt that discouragement is the greatest enemy the Christian has, but it could be the greatest nuisance the Christian has to deal with. And it is a valuable test on his war against the saints, because it is seldom recognized for what it is.

The Christian becomes discouraged. It's good Tom-Tom who says seldom, he's just being realistic. And he's forgetting realism. It is discouragement. And it works when no other temptation will. Not the guilty of any sin willingly, and who has victory enough that he doesn't, or she doesn't fall in unwillingly, may yet be visited by this impertinent dark shadow from the pit this thing we call discouragement.

And good in the Christian life. Now discouragement, as I've pointed out before on other occasions, is a mood. It is an emotion which can easily become a ruling emotion. And it is more than an emotion, it becomes position.

It becomes an outlook and an attitude. It becomes a lens through which we see everything. Dark glasses through which we behold everything before us. And of course mood is mental planning. It isn't the man, it's the weather that the man has on the landscape.

Just as weather isn't the field or the farm, but it goes a long way to determine whether the farm shall have a good crop or not. So mood is not the man, but it is determined whether there shall be a good crop and what kind of plants are going to grow.

Joy and power simply can't grow in the climate of discouragement. But fear and self-pity and self-engrossment are found there. Now you'd be surprised, I suppose, if you many Christians at any gathering are bothered by a degree, at least, of discouragement.

Because it spares no class of Christian, there's the young Christian and there's the old Christian. I find that after serving the Lord more or less raggedly and spotly, but serving him nevertheless for a long half or two-thirds of my life, I am nevertheless as prone to discouragement today as I was when I was seventeen.

So if I'm any sample, even a poor sample, it is safe to say that this discouragement, this sober-minded man, which he takes to be a solid, well-set-up and self-assured person, may be suffering from a deep discouragement, so deep that it's affecting him physically.

It's a radiant Christian. It's shining Christian. I meet a few of them, not many, but you meet a few radiant Christians. They're shining, they're brilliant Christians. They're overflowed. And yet, in the deeps of their hearts, very often they are discouraged.

They keep the shine on, and they don't mean to be hypocritical because they've learned to smile. The muscles are used more than the smile. But if you could get at the root of their lies, you'd find they were deeply discouraged over something.

And there are the very lucky ones who seem to dwell so very high that you could hardly believe it's possible that dwelling as they are, as if they were among angels, could be discouraged, but they do get discouraged anyhow.

And there are those tactical, down-to-earth Christians that are followers of the kind that are tactical and salty, and you say, well, surely they never would be discouraged, but they get discouraged too.

And so I met a lad here this morning, came to church with heavy feet, dragging what might not be feet, but that seemed to him like as if each one weighed 40 pounds, dragging them off to church because he felt he ought no particular urge because of the discouragement that's come upon him.

Elijah and the Discouragement of Isolation

Now I want to talk a bit about the causes of discouragement prescribed to us. You know, the difference between negative preaching and positive preaching is that negative preaching finds out what's wrong and positively prescribes for the remedy.

The doctor that would only diagnose, tell you what's wrong in a way, would only be half a doctor. And a book that would only tell us what's wrong with it would only be half a book. But this book then tells us what to do about it.

And I want to do that myself. Well, one of the causes of discouragement, there was the man Elijah. And he is a dramatic example of a gray man that became deeply discouraged. He was discouraged because there was nobody around him that understood him going his way.

He lacked the support of like-minded souls. It may be that in your home or in your office or where you must spend a major part of your time that you have no like-minded souls with whom you have fellowship.

Now that may bring to you, as it did to Elijah, a great sense of loneliness. And here is a little trick that I want to call to your notice that the loftier and more dramatic the character is, the farther down he can plunge into discouragement.

I suppose in his lifetime or perhaps in a thousand-year period in Israel's history, the mount and judge just called the prophets of Baal to make a test. Elijah did it. And Elijah went from that mount where fire barely came straight down to the cave and to the juniper tree.

Now, the higher you go, the further down you can go. They have a saying in the prize ring that the bigger they are, the harder they fall. And that same thing is true in the spiritual world. The farther up we get, the farther down we can come ourselves and take the means of grace to save ourselves from discouragement.

And the higher the ideal, some Christians are never very discouraged because they never had very much to aim at. They don't expect anything, and when they don't get it, they just say, well, I do it. But there are Christians with fine high ideals, higher than they're able to reach.

And six months of struggling for ideals that they can't reach or haven't yet reached may turn them back on them to discouragement. The loftier the ideals of spiritual aspirations, the wider they become to the invasion of discouragement.

Divine Companionship in Discouragement

Now, what is the cure? The cure is simple. The cure of discouragement is based upon an error. You think you're alone when actually you are not. In the first place, there are souls like you. There are merry clubs and red-headed clubs and bald-headed clubs.

I wonder why we shouldn't form a little club of those who are prone to be discouraged and talk it out with each other. You'll find that there are a lot of you. And if you were to go to heaven and gather around you this morning, a group of little beings, who have gone to be a thousand of them, and they get up and testify, let me tell you that if they told the whole truth they'd remind themselves when they felt pretty blue about this whole business of serving God in a bad world like this.

So there are thousands like you and you're in awe. And your discouragement is based also upon a failure to remember that God is with you and that you're never alone. The old men in the church used to sing a song.

I haven't heard it. I think sing. I've heard the lightning flashing. I've heard the thunder roll. I've seen senior pelicans breakers bashing, trying to conquer. And I've heard the voice of Jesus telling me still to fight on.

You promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. And the chorus was, No one alone. Well, that's true, all right. I guess the song doesn't great among the great but it has the truth in it. And you're never alone.

You're never by yourself. Are not the angels sent forth to minister unto them that shall be heirs of God? If you say yes, yes, that's all right. Saint Teresa and Francis and Penny and Sergeants. No doubt helps them.

What kind of a mother would it be that gave all of her attention to her healthy children and let the sick ones lie in rots? And what kind of God would God be if he sent his angel Justine and Julian and forgot us poor people that need it?

No, no. He sends his angelic minister unto them who shall be heirs of salvation, but for a moment are in a tight spot. And wasn't it when our Lord was in blood, was sweating blood that the angels came and ministered unto him?

It was not when he was in Joseph's shop helping his father here and there and getting in the way and growing up to be a big boy. That wasn't when he needed the angels. But it was with flowing from his pores as it were swept or sweated blood.

So if you're one, you're the very one the Lord has pointed out. In fact, I have scripture for this because it was when Elijah was in deep discouragement so asleep and blue and despondent that God said to an angel, go down and feed Elijah the prophet.

And he went down and baked cake for Elijah. Not a ravious prophet, but a discouraged, despondent prophet. And an angel had that job to do. None that may discourage us Christians is the wickedness of the people and we have Jeremiah for our Bible example.

Jeremiah, Wickedness, and Shining in Darkness

Look around him and every place he looked with wickedness. Just every place. He had no newspapers in that day, but if he had he would say most of the rest of the paper covered with wickedness or reports of wicked deeds or wicked plans.

And Jeremiah just got plain talking and not had anybody paying attention to it. He's called a weeping prophet, but he's a long way from being a weeping prophet. You get discouraged. And if what are you going to do about it now?

You remember that man who is grounded by iniquity? The stars in yonder heaven don't shine in the daytime when they're all ready to light upon the earth. Why do they shine at night? Because the darkness makes them invisible.

And so in all the periods of history that have been reasonably decent the great saints have always stood out when the darkness was upon the earth. When our Lord came with the church burst into paganism as into the deepest figure of darkness.

At least came not at a time when everybody was praying, everybody was praying. See, they came at a time when nobody was praying. A handful, they called the Holy Club. At least nobody we knew about was praying.

Twenty-six hundred years have gone by since Jeremiah prayed and preached in discouragement. And for years believing men and women have learned how to live and shine in darkness. And they learned it from the very Jeremiah so much of the time.

Captivity and Ezekiel's Vision of God

Then captivity. Did you ever feel that you were captive? Did you ever when you heard somebody talk about our free American way of life? You say to yourself, Scree, how do you get that way? I haven't been able to get away from these four or five children for a month.

And I love them and God knows I'd die for them, but I'm born free. And you fellows that get up and go to your job, go to your work, punch the card and hear the bell, get out again and go home and back and it's a repeating in and out and up and down, day in and day out until in the two weeks vacation they give you, it doesn't help you at all because you take your work with you and carry it backwards.

Maybe two weeks, do not. And you say I'm captive. I feel I'm captive. And then if I've got anything out in income tax, and if I've got anything left from income tax somebody gets needs an extension or I have to pay that out.

And here I am. Call me a free American? Oh dear friend, you're the freest person in the world even politically, yes. I can stand up here and condemn anybody from the president down to the coroner police.

And not only have a loud speaker out in front condemning the policeman loudly, you can do the same. Freest nation in the world, we thank God for the stars and the stripes that are white with the prayers of a thousand saints and residents of ten thousand men who died to keep us free and blue with the baldrick of the skies, the poet said.

Let's thank God, but still even though you're free you don't feel you're free. You feel you're captive. And you don't used to get like that too. Just when I say to myself now, I can shake my head and be free, I get a space and there's something to do.

And brethren this man Ezekiel was captive. He was sitting among the captives by the river T-Bar. I don't want to travel all the time. I don't want to travel. I could have gone to a half a dozen or twenty different countries and had my way paid over the last year.

Because I find that almost everything in Chicago you'll find anywhere else. And if it isn't you can always read that. But I would like to see the river T-Bar. I really would. I'd like to sit down there and dangle my toes in the river T-Bar, a stream flow by and try to recapture the emotions that must have visited that young priest of Israel as he sat there despondent knowing that he was now a captive, a slave in a stream.

And everywhere he looked he saw harps hanging on willow trees and a silence that you could cut with an axe. Except for some old lady or the petulant cry of a child, not a sound. Ezekiel sat by the river T-Bar.

He was discouraged because he was a captive. But you know what? Ezekiel saw a captive that he didn't see before he was a captive. He saw heaven opened and had visions of God. And you know that it's right from where you visited all people want to serve God the hard way and I never could understand why.

I was here some time ago and answered to a question about how a young student going to college can get free so that he can work and can still pray as much as he ought to. And I made several suggestions and I said among them why readjust your life adjust it so that your praying time fits in with your study time and all the rest.

And that sanctify, consecrate your study so there's something good too. And people wrote me more and joined the cult of of positive thinking. And what do you mean brother told you? That you mustn't tell young people that they're there to readjust their prayer life.

Whether you make good grades or not. I didn't tell them not to pray. I only told them that they could get academic captivity if they knew what to do about it. Nobody wanted them to know. I guess. Anyhow that was Ezekiel.

What a captive he was. He was home and back again and the kitchen and the baby needing attention where there's something else. Say I'll lie down five minutes and you lie down five minutes, the telephone rings, somebody's banging on the back door.

All he's wanting you to do is take a package for Mrs. Jones next door. Which you would please and you do. But your rest has been broken. So you feel you're captive. If you could only look up, you might see heaven open.

You might have visions of God. But always remember that when we're too free we get carnal. And a fellow who has his own way is not likely to be looking for God's way. But it's when we have our own way taken from us that we get our get a feeling of discouragement but out of it all and through it all the light of heaven may shine.

Opposition from Other Believers and God's Presence

Then there is a gloomy book that says just a few verses down from the text that I read. It says that the brethren made our hearts to be discouraged. The brethren made our hearts discouraged. Whither shall we go is what they said.

Our brethren have discouraged our hearts that are greater and taller than we. Half my lifetime has been spent, I think, telling reassuring people that aren't bigger than we are. But they're just not, that's all.

They may rate higher and way more, but in God they're not big as we are. Nobody who's a Christian walks in the will of God. He's bigger than anything you can bring against him any time. God be in us for us who can be against him.

These discouraging brethren. I like to meet old Tom Hare because he's never discouraged. Now I have no doubt that that is. I have no doubt. He's a human being as long as he's in the flesh he'll have his time.

But I have never met him when he was, I think. But I meet so many gloomy brethren. They're always anticipating something that is going to happen. Usually it doesn't happen. But often they think it's going to.

Well do you know the answer and the cure for the gloom that is shed upon us Christians? It is my presence shall go with thee and I will give you rest. Now that's what God said to Moses. The brethren said we can't go up.

And God said to Moses my presence shall go with thee. And if the presence of God is with you should you be afraid. You know the answer too well and we'll pass it on. Then I want to point out another. The people of the Lord if they're conscientious reading Christian biography does.

Christian Biography and Honest Accounts of the Saints

You say now wait a minute I've heard you recommend I do recommend we read Christian biography but you've always got to know how to do things. It isn't the doing it is knowing how to do it and then doing it.

If we do the right thing wrong that's not so good at all. Christian biography you're wrong. It may harm us instead of help us. Because we read about the great souls that have lived and then we compare ourselves and we begin to wonder if we're Christians at all.

We get very blue with their results. Now I'll tell you what causes that and what you can do about it. In June I enter Oh Lord help me I don't know why I ever promised to do it. But I got to go to Houston convention there of editors and writers and journalists too.

And they had two subjects they wanted me to handle. Neither one of them which I am capable of. But they put a little pressure on so I said yes. One of them is the obligation of the Christian biographer to his public.

Some convictions on that and I'm going to tell you at least one little thing I'm going to tell them. That most Christian biography is not so. Because the biographer feels that if he were to tell the truth about he'd discourage the readers or take away something of the glamour from this great character.

So he tells all the high days and never mentions the low days. He tells about all the light shining peaks of his life and never mentions the deep heart. He tells about the time he was victorious and never mentions the time that he got defeated.

Tells about the time that he prayed all about the time that he fell asleep about 9 o 'clock and didn't make it. And tells always the good things to bad. Now that is intellectual dishonesty. And it isn't fair to the public that reads.

One of the obligations we owe to our public if we write biography is to tell the whole truth. I told almost the whole truth about A .D. Simpson. In Wingspread. And some people huffed and puffed and shook their feathers and said, short.

I didn't sell him near as short as I should have. Because though he was a saint, he was a mighty human saint. And there never was a saint yet who didn't have a human side to him. And that's why Thomas DeCampus, himself a great saint, had peace of mind, examined not too closely into other men's matters.

And he was talking about Christian men, too. Around four-week spots, you'll find them. Have you noticed that Christians, that is the biblical biography, always helps you? Whereas the other kind of biography tends to discourage you, often.

Because biblical biography tells a story. David wrote a hymn? Sure he did. David slew the enemy? Sure he did. Stole Bathsheba's wife? Stole Uriah's wife, Bathsheba, and murdered Uriah? He did that out of the biography.

The Christian Christ, but not the one the Holy Ghost wrote. You can know the whole thing about a person. Be nearly as discouraged as if you only read the very top peak of experience. Then you will say, well, I never read that.

Like the man we heard about whom I've often mentioned, who heard a fellow testify how it had been that there was a great storm, and the ship was ready to sink, and he prayed and the Lord delivered them.

He went home and cried half the night. He said, Oh, God, you've never delivered me. God said, Have you ever been to sea? He said, No. He had never been to sea, but he wanted to be delivered. Now, what's the answer, the discouragement that comes from reading about the great saints?

I read about St. Francis and the others, and I stand as a Christian. I'm nothing. Well, let me tell you. First place, you didn't see the other side of it. It is they're dead. They're dead. If David Simpson were to stand up here, I'd promptly shrink down to the height of his shoes.

But he's dead. He sleeps on the hillside at night, and I'm still able to walk dogs better than a dead lion. And so even though you're not as mighty a soul as Holy Ann, you're dead. We've gotten to a place here now, after nearly 40 years of history back at this little church, a place here now where we get misty-eyed and nostalgic as we talk about the great souls that we once had here in our country.

They've gone to heaven, and they can't win a soul. They can't teach a class. They can't do what you're called on to do. They're not. They can't keep a missionary in Borneo. They're gone. And they're blessed, are they?

And they're rewarded. But they're gone. And if God depended on the saints that are dead, their work would grant them terrible jobs, and all the churches would fall apart. So God has to take what he's got, and what he's got for you and me.

And we're all God has now. So instead of being discouraged, get your teeth sunk in a little, and bet your chin a little, and trust God, and say, Father, I thank thee that though I'm not as great as the great souls of the past, I think, why, I nevertheless love thee.

Just think what you could do with a biography. If you were to take just any of us here, and I could be here, or me, or Brother Jacob here, or any of these, I happen to fall on. Just think what you could do if you'd write a biography about us.

And never tell one thought we had. Just tell what souls we were. Tell all the good. And magnify that. And put it in a perspective just where it looked shiny. Why, we'd have things all over the church here.

Halos everywhere. The simple fact is, we know each other too well to believe all that about each other. I know how he lies on his face and prays by the hour with me, and with Brother Moore, and others three times a week.

We have our prayers up here. I know his love of God and his worship. I also know his thoughts. I'm telling you. And he knows his mind. He shakes his head. So my brethren, thank you. And not somebody else.

The little boy was asked, Who would you rather be, yourself or Lincoln? He said, Why, Lincoln's dead. And there's a sense in that, a good sense. So my friends, remember this, and then we're through for the morning.

Trusting God When Walking in Darkness

Three words. The Lord God will help me, therefore shall I not be confounded. I set my faith like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He is near that justifies me. Who will contend with me?

Let us stand together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God. Who is he that shall condemn me? Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment, and the mock shall eat them up. Be among you, and feareth the Lord, that he shall obeyeth the voice of his servant that walketh in darkness and hath no light.

Let him trust in the name of the Lord. So if you've been coming through shadows and darkness, and if you've been threatened by the devil or your enemy, you have a perfect right to stand up and say, The Lord God will help me, wherefore should I be confounded?

And hear God say, All who walk in darkness and have no light, trust in the name of the Lord, and say yourself upon your God, and you'll be all right. See, that's true of me, and of you, and of this church.

Do you believe it? So let us come up this morning with cheerfulness, with reverence, humility, but with meek self-assurance as well. Knowing that the devil shall forget us and leave us somewhere along the way, or rust on the highway, but that the Lord, looking after every one of us, knows our names, all about us, and we're safe in his keeping those storms around us are sweeping.

He's the pilot of Jealousy. Now we'll have the communion service to follow, and it is for every child of God. You don't have to be a member of this. We recognize that this church is an organization, whereas the church of God is an organism.

It is composed of members of his body by the new birth. So from wherever you come, wherever you are, everything's right between you and God. You join us this morning as we go on into the service.