DISCOURAGEMENT – according to MR. Webster it is: 1 : to deprive of courage or confidence : DISHEARTEN 2 a : to hinder by disfavoring b : to dissuade or attempt to dissuade from doing something .
As I'm reading my devotion this morning God spoke with me through this word…DISCOURAGEMENT
Do you find yourself discouraged with your life’s circumstances? Do your situations seem too hard to handle? Honestly yes I do...all of us do. We have our own discouragement. In some point or another we experienced to be discouraged. It maybe through some people who keeps on pinning us down, it maybe our circumstances or because our prayers are left unanswered until now. We sometimes decided not to go on with our life anymore, we feel defeated and we lose hope because of all the things that are happening right now.
We feel discourage, we feel down, we feel that God is too far to hear our prayers and to perform miracles in our life. We often hear people testifying how God answers their prayer in just a snap of their finger and yet we are wondering why are prayers are still kept as prayers for such a long time.
If we are discouraged because God is delaying too much in answering our prayers, or He is too busy to rescue us from our situation we are in right now, let us reminded that delay is NOT a denial. Isaiah 55:8 says that "My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts," says the LORD. "And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. (NLT). Just because the answers have not come – yet – is doesn’t mean God isn't going to answer us or he has forgotten us or worse He doesn’t care for us. It simply means "not yet".
Delay is just a test of our patience. And patience is one of the fruits of Holy Spirit. God may test our patience once, twice, thrice or over and over and over again. Why? Because He wants us to see suffer? No, because He just want to see how our patient we are. So He will know what is inside of us and know our level of commitment. God tests us so that we can know He is faithful, even if the answers we seek are delayed.
I remember the story of Abraham and Sarah's faithfulness to God and how they cling on to His promise that despite of being childless up to their old age they remain steadfast in God's promise that a nation will rise from them. And God fulfill His promise….
Let us turn around our discouragement by remembering God's faithfulness since the beginning of time. Let us ask Him to transformed our discouragement into patience. And us we wait for God's miracles let us focus our mind and heart in worshiping His holy name.
We may be going through difficult times right now and feel like dropping off the planet. We are discouraged because things seems unfair and unbearable and we are crying out to God because we cant take it anymore.
But we can…
We can stay with it longer because God is with us . He’ll enable us to press on. Remember, we are never a failure until you quit.
Don’t quit. Resist discouragement and finish the race God has set before us.
Let us hold fast the confession of our faith without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23).
