I Will Never Give Up!: Overcoming the Valleys of Discouragement, Part 2

Look at the next two lines. He said, “The Lord performs righteous deeds and judgements, for,” who? “all who are oppressed.” And I think he’s thinking not only for all who are oppressed out there, but for himself. You know, he’s going to say, you know, God has come through for me in the past, He came through for the nation of Israel. And he says, “He made known His ways to Moses, and His acts to the sons of Israel.” The whole nation is sort of the paradigm if you will of God having His heart broken for people in slavery, and how He then delivers them.

And after He delivers them, He takes them through a journey. And then He makes them the people of His own. And He did all these miraculous things to reveal who He was and with Moses, He brought him up very personally and He showed him His ways and so much intimacy that when he left his face would just glow and he had to put a little veil over it so he didn’t kind of blow everybody else’s mind. And David is remembering that that is who God is. After he remembers, then he has a focus on God’s character and God’s heart.

And this is where you really come out of the valley of discouragement and you get your focus off of yourself and your self-pity, off of your circumstances and what makes you upset, off of the people that you think should have treated you better, off of what is wrong with the whole world and how terrible it is. And you get your focus on: what is the God who loves me and who has made all that there is, what is He really like? Even when I’m not very lovable. Verse 8, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness.”

Could I ask you to kind of lean back and get out of the study mode just for a second and get into the receiving mode, and think about - the word is Yahweh. The Creator, the Shaper, the Sovereign Maker of the universe. The word compassion is He feels what you feel. He understands what you’re going through. And He doesn’t just understand, then He’s gracious, He’s merciful, He wants to help, He is kind, He’s slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. Are you ready? He’s not down on you.

Maybe you have really blown it, maybe you feel far from God and you’re discouraged because you have sinned or you have betrayed someone or you have done something wrong or you fell back into an addiction one more time or you feel far from God or this is the first time in, like, an eon you have been listening to God’s Word or anything and you can feel like, “Oh, you know, I’m unworthy, I’m unworthy!” Yes, you are!

And so are all of us. But the God that you come to is compassionate. He’s gracious. He is slow to get mad. And I love this, abounding, the word is hesed. This is a strong word. This is God saying: My covenant, immovable love for you that will never change no matter what, it abounds. You were made by Him, Jesus died for you, you’re the focus of His affection. And David is moving from trying to get himself to praise God and get off himself to: Wow, I am related to a God who is like this.

And then it’s like he just has to keep going, “He will not always strive with us. He won’t keep His anger forever.” God so wants us to be holy and He so wants to help us, but He is not down on us. In fact, he goes on to say, “He has not dealt with us according to our sins, or rewarded us according to our iniquities.” In other words, when you come to God, are you ready? You don’t get what you deserve.

David says His heart, His love, His mercy, His desire to draw us to Himself is so overwhelming that he says, “Even as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His,” there’s our word again, “steadfast, loyal love,” or, “lovingkindness toward those who, who fear Him.” It's just a picture of those who are related to Him. He doesn’t leave when I’m in the valley, He doesn’t leave when I’m discouraged, He doesn’t leave when I’m depressed, He doesn’t leave when I told myself I would never do that again and then I do it again.

In fact, He’s my Father. “Not only has He taken my sins as far as the east is from the west, but just as a Father has compassion on His children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.” I don’t know how many dads I’m speaking to right now, but most of us have had a dad and I know that different dads have struggled with different things. But I can tell you, as a very imperfect father, I have messed up and I had a dad who struggled who was an alcoholic.

But even through that, my dad’s heart, when I ever came and said, “Dad, I know you told me not to do that, I have so messed up. I am so sorry.” You know, there’s just something, even in a human father’s heart. And I understand there are some ones that were really not good at all. And that’s a struggle and a conversation for another time. But by and large, what David is saying is: I don’t know what your view of this transcendent, all-powerful Creator who spoke universes and billions of stars into existence and, yes, you should be reverentially in awe and fear in the very right sense of that.

But if you think He’s just way out there and you don’t get that He’s as intimate as the next breath, that He understands your struggles, your emotions, your fears, your insecurities, and just as a human father in those moments has compassion on his children, God is infinitely more like that with you and with me. And then he tells us why. Remember I said we are empowered, we are children of God, we are forgiven, you know, we have a mission, there’s an agenda. But I said and we are human. We get physically tired, we get emotionally exhausted, we get spiritually distracted and discouraged.

I love this, verse 14, God has great desires for us, but He is very aware of our humanness. Look at this, “For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.” God is not shocked when you sin. God is not shocked when you get tired, God is not shocked when you get irritable, God is not shocked when you act in ways that, you know, you – ninety days out of a hundred you’d never act that way, but those ten days over the next year or two, yep! A person shows up that you’re not proud of, God is not proud of, I’m not proud of myself. But God is not shocked. You’re human. Does He excuse it? Does He gloss over it? Does it not matter? No. But He is mindful.

In fact, he goes on, “As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field so he flourishes; and when the wind passes over it, it’s no more, and its place acknowledges it no more.” And for David, this was a real-life experience. There’s a portion of Israel that the hot winds come over and it can be green in the morning in a certain season, they have a special word for it. The hot winds come over and green in the morning and you go out in the afternoon and it’s brown. James put it this way, “Life,” your life, my life, “is like a vapor.” And God understands that in His greatness, in His infiniteness, in His power, but in His compassion and His tenderness that we are human, and we are frail, and we are weak.

I love the apostle Paul when he was talking about his discipleship journey. And, you know, Paul is pretty focused, pretty driven guy, at least I can tell. Thirteen books in the New Testament, you know, I mean this guy gets beat up, he gets left in the water, he gets left for dead. I mean, he’s a pretty focused, hard-headed guy. But when he describes his discipleship relationship, he says, “I was with you like a mother nurturing her children and I was like a father who was encouraging and comforting and imploring you to walk faithfully with the Lord.” I don’t know what you’re discouraged about, I don’t know where you’re tempted to give up, but I can tell you God is eternal and timeless and He never changes. And He knows that we are pretty fickle and that we are pretty weak and it’s a very big challenge and He’s understanding.

In fact, he closes this psalm, my go-to psalm, he says, “But the steadfast love,” or, “the lovingkindness,” that loyal commitment “of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting,” but there’s a condition, “on those who fear Him,” and those that walk with Him and those who have received Him as their Savior and are walking, he says He’s got your back. “And His righteousness,” I love this, “is to their children’s children, to those who keep His covenant and remember His precepts to do them.”

I have a habit, and if you have listened to me very long you’re thinking, man, this guy is into coffee. Okay, I don’t drink that much, but I start my day with a great cup of some dark roast, usually a French roast. And so, my kids, as you get older, what in the world do you buy for your dad for Christmas or what do you get him? You know, I don’t want ties. I don’t wear ties hardly ever, or... I mean, there’s just almost nothing you can get for a dad. They are really hard to buy for. And, you know, maybe I’ll get some golf balls or, you know, I’ll get a certificate to go to dinner or something.

But they want to do something personal, so it started a number of years ago. And it was so cool, I got a mug, and it was a picture, of me and my three boys. And then literally, I have a, like, one or two other mugs where picture of my boys, you know, like, five years later, ten years later. And then the other kids were sort of getting into it. And so, I have a picture from one of my other kids, with all of their kids, all over the mug. And so, every morning when I get up you know, I see my family. And then I got one that is really interesting. It was from my daughter. It’s a picture of her and the kids, her husband, and on the bottom of it, it has this verse. And every time I pick up that cup, it says this. It says, “The Lord’s lovingkindness is [from] everlasting to everlasting to those who fear Him and His righteousness - His righteousness - is to the children’s children.” And so, I pray for them and I remember how blessed I am.

And I want you to know that I declare in my weakest moments, “I will not give up.” I will not quit. And if you’re going to be bold and courageous, if you’re going to be that empowered, forgiven, loved, greatly gifted child of God who fulfills an agenda where you’re His eyes and you’re His feet and you’re His hands and you do what He wants you to do and there will be great reward and great joy, there’s going to be valleys. And when there are valleys then you need to:
• talk to yourself and
• you need to praise God when you don’t feel like it.
• And you need to thank Him.
• And you can do that by remembering what He has done
• that will lead you to remembering what He’s like,
• and that will lead you to a new perspective.

And sometimes, God will take – are you ready for this? Your greatest moments of discouragement and your weakness and He will flip them in a way that brings about the most powerful experiences you may ever have in your life. And so, I want to close with a story that happened just a few years ago it was in the pandemic, right? So, a lot of us were struggling, a lot of us got discouraged. I happened to be, it was going to be on my way to China, we had been doing a lot of ministry, I was excited. It was like my seventh trip in about three years. And the Lord had opened so many doors.

COVID comes, it gets canceled, because of where I live in California, if you walked outside alone without a mask it was like you’re going to get called into the police or something. I mean, it was crazy. And some people are rule-keepers and some people are rule-breakers. My personality type is I’m a rule breaker. And, I mean, I got frustrated.

And so, I can’t go. And then pretty soon, you cannot see your kids, you cannot see your grandkids. And so, I’m getting ticked. And if you get really, really, really mad and you have done any work in psychology, you know that anger turned inward turns to depression. And I went from being discouraged by the first six months, I got depressed. And when you get really, really angry, the Bible is real clear too, that if it’s unresolved, you give a foothold to the enemy.

I found myself in one of the darkest times about six months in. And then I remembered this passage and the principles of this passage. And I did something that I didn’t want to do. And out of it I have developed a, sort of, overcoming discouragement steps one, two, three.

Step One: I feel terrible, I am angry, it’s really dark, I don’t even want to get out of the chair, I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to read, I don’t want to pray. I want to whine. When you get depressed it’s like darkness comes over you – it’s really scary. And some of you understand, I mean, it gets really, these are such dark thoughts and you think, Where might this go? And you try and fight. And somehow, I pulled myself up and I went out and I got on the elliptical until I was just sweating profusely because I’m thinking, Step one: get your endorphins working and see if you can get your body to give you some encouragement.

Step Two: okay Psalm 103, here we go. So, I walk outside, I’m walking around the block. You know, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me,” I mean, loud around no one. And I didn’t want to. And you can tell why I don’t do a lot of music. But I did to God. And then the third was after a good workout where I get really sweaty, and praising God, the third thing was find someone who needs help more than you.

And so, I came in after all of that and the TV was on and the news. And you know how terrible everything was. And they showed pictures of Egypt and all that was happening in Egypt at the time with the pandemic. And I have a very close friend who is in charge of all the Protestant churches. And I thought, Oh man, Dr. Zaki, I wonder how he’s doing. I didn’t want to call him, I didn’t want to encourage him, but, okay, okay. Work out, praise God when you don’t feel like it, go help someone who is in worse shape than you. Got a Zoom call with him the next day, “Dr. Zaki, how are you doing?”

He goes, “Well, my family and I are okay, I think the government is doing the best they can, the churches are barely surviving. Chip, it’s horrendous. Markets are closed, they can’t get food, the people can’t come,” And as he said that, because I had been thinking, You know, God, You’ve got something to say in this pandemic. And I said in passing, “Well, you know, I’m thinking about a series called The A.R.T. of Survival.

And he jumped in, “Send it to me!” Because I had done pastor training and some stuff there. I said, “No, no, Dr. Zaki, you don’t understand. I’m thinking about a series called The A.R.T. of Survival,” and it was from James where there’s an attitude, “Consider it all joy,” there’s a resource: supernatural wisdom to get through whatever. At this point, I’m thinking it and studying it better than I’m living it. And then there’s a theology, of all things, about discouragement. And something happened. Got off that Zoom call, had the head of our international on it, I just wanted to introduce them, and all of a sudden, all the self-pity, all the anger, all the me, all the down, I mean, it was like, God, I don’t have room for this. Those people are dying. Those pastors are in desperate, desperate need.

And I made a couple phone calls and had a friend come and put PVC pipe up and we stretched some fabric over it so it looked like a brick wall and got two cameras and Thursday I started studying. By Monday I filmed it, three, little three-part series. By Friday they had it in Egypt. By the next Friday they had it dubbed and translated and then I had a meeting with all the pastors. I’ll never forget, you know, one of those Zoom calls, you know, they have the pages? It was just page after page after page after page. And I gave sort of my three-part series in one message and then they asked questions for an hour and a half.

And we got done and my friend said, “This is not just for Egypt.” And all I can tell you is out of brokenness, out of weakness, out of discouragement, out of depression, when you take the counsel, “I will never give up,” and in your weakness just do what you can. All I can tell you is that message went all around the world. I don’t even know how many countries. Twenty-six, twenty-seven languages. And pastors all around the globe and their testimony was, going through this, “I won’t quit.” What is it that God wants to do to take your discouragement, your self-focus, your current valley, lift you up, and maybe even use it in such a way that His power would be revealed in your weakness?