How To Deal With Discouragement

Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. We feel like we have to do something for God, and everybody who feels they have to do something for God will at some point reach the limitations. We will hit the spiritual brick wall where we can't go forward. Then suddenly God comes to us with tenderness, and then He says, now you've done a lot of things for me, but now I'm going to start doing some things through you. That's a preview of today's message from A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. Today, Carter reminds us there will be a day coming in your life where you don't think you can go on anymore. It will happen to all of us.

So this leads to a very important question. How does God respond to us in our times of discouragement? Let's join Carter now as he takes us to 1 Kings chapter 19 where the prophet Elijah learns in his deepest moment of discouragement, God responds with loving tenderness. Here is Carter. I want to talk to you about how to deal with discouragement.

Anybody here ever been discouraged? 1 Kings chapter 19 and verse 4, I'm just going to start with one verse. It says, but He Himself, this is about Elijah, went a day's journey into the wilderness, a day's journey into an empty, dry place. And he came and sat down under a broom tree, and he prayed that he might die. And he said, it is enough. Now, Lord, take my life.

I am no better for I am no better than my father's. This is Elijah. This is the guy who could call down fire from heaven. This is the guy that could confront the spiritual darkness and its influencers of an entire generation. This is a guy who when they sent soldiers and captains to captivate him, he was just sitting alone on top of a mountain, and they said, man of God, come down. And he said, if I am a man of God, let fire come down and devour you and your 50. And so armies were burnt in front of him. I mean, this is a guy who knew the power of God, walked in the power of God, and knew what the calling on his life was.

But all of a sudden, now we see this same man going into the wilderness sitting under a broom tree of all trees is probably a tree that's probably given that name because they use the bristles of it to sweep things away. He's in a place most likely where the devil wants to sweep him off the map and get rid of him out of the kingdom of God and the threat against the powers of darkness. And here's the same man that knew the power of God that had confronted the prophets of Baal that had brought the people just a few days prior back to the worship, at least for a season of the one true and the living God. And here he is now, sitting in this wilderness place saying, God, it's enough, take away my life, let me die.

I am no better than my father's. And if anybody here thinks you can't go there, you've not walked with God for very long. There are seasons in every life when discouragement comes. Now if some of you are facing discouragement today, I know this is going to be a word that can give you strength for the future.

And for those who think you could never be discouraged, some people are just kind of happy, happy by nature, or maybe things are going right. But I'm telling you, there are days coming. I was a young pastor, I'm pastoring a church, the church is alive, we're sitting people outside to hear the gospel, we're buying buildings for a dollar, we're getting others for tax receipts, we start a food bank, we've got a massive missions program for a small church.

The fame of the church is getting to be known through the country that we're in at that time. And a senior pastor came to me one day and he said, Carter, there's a day coming in your life as comes to everybody that you won't think you can go on anymore. And you're going to say these words, and God's going to speak to you and say, Carter, can you go on for one more day?

That's all he's going to ask of you is one more day. And you say, Yes, Lord, I can do it for one more day. The next day, the Lord will say, Can you do it for one more day? And you say, Yes, Lord, I can do it for one more day.

And he said that season comes into everyone's life. And I remember listening to his words thinking, Oh, that's never coming into my life. I mean, I've got the world by the tail, I know who God is, I feel strong in the spirit. But let me tell you, the day came more than one time in my life. When I remember and I thank God, he had spoken those words to my heart, because the day came when I didn't feel that I could go on for one more day.

And I remembered his words, and that became one day after another day after another day, in my walk with God, you know, every one of us, we have visions, we have dreams, we have plans of what our lives are going to accomplish, you know, especially as followers of Christ, and the things that God can and will do through us or with us or we can do for the kingdom of God. I've never met a child, I suppose there might be one or two out there. But I've never met a child. If you say to the child, what do you think your life's gonna be? I've never met a child that says I'm going to be a failure, I'm going to be a loser, I'm going to amount to nothing.

You know, that's really reserved for adults. We're the ones that get to feel that way one day. But everybody, when we start out, we have a vision. Did you have a vision when you started out with God, of what your life was going to be?

We all do. You know, if the Lord says you're going to be used greatly, immediately go to crowds, immediately go to great influence in society. And, you know, we don't necessarily think that being a servant might be the greatest of all. And that's what God has for our lives. And so we have this vision inside of our own heart.

So the question is what happens when things don't work out that way? What happens when we find out that our strength is less than we became convinced it was in us? What happens when everything seems to fall through our fingers and we were planning on doing so much for the kingdom of God or being a different person than we feel that we have actually become? And this is exactly what happened to Elijah after years of knowing the power, the presence, the fire, the justice, the judgment of God. He's sitting in this dry place and he says, take my life.

I'm no better than my father's. And so the question that comes into my mind is what was he thinking about when he made that statement? And I believe in great measure, he's thinking about the 10 spies who under the leadership of Moses went into the promised land, but then ran from the giants. He's thinking of the hundreds of thousands of people that chose not to go into their inheritance, not to go in and believe that God is a God of power.

And he's able to do what he says he can do. And instead they died in the wilderness. I feel in his heart, he said, I'm not going to be like them. I'm going all the way with God. I'm not going to back up. I'm not going to cave in. I'm not going to run in fear. I'm going to be different.

And we all do. You know, sometimes it's a mistake in a sense to base our own sense of faithfulness or ability to accomplish something on the failure of others. You can't build a ministry and a life on that to say, I will not be like somebody else.

That's actually what he did. He had to have that thought in his heart that I'm going to be better than those that have gone before me. So when he fails, when he runs in fear, when the giants arise in his particular moment of physical and spiritual burnout, he runs and he ends up in a wilderness and he says, God, I thought I was better than this.

I thought others would run. Remember Peter said that to Jesus. He said, they may abandon you, but I never will. I'll go with you to Jerusalem and I'll die with you only to curse with an oath and say, I don't even know this man.

I don't even know who he is. Now first Kings chapter 19 verses five to eight. It shows you how deep discouragement can get into a person's heart and life. It says he lay and slept under a broom tree and an angel touched him and said, arise and eat. Then he looked and there was by his head a cake baked on coals in the jar of water. So he ate and drank and laid down again. And the angel of the Lord came back the second time and touched him and said, arise and eat because the journey is too great for you.

So he arose and ate and drank and went in the strength of that food 40 days and 40 nights as far as Horeb the mountain of God. You know, for a season when discouragement gets a hold of a person's heart, sometimes it's all we can do just to get up and eat and to go back and lay down again. And you know, the interesting thing is God was not offended by that moment, that season in his life. And so don't think that because you might be in a place where all you can do is get up and eat and go back and lay down, that God somehow has written you off and he's offended by you and he doesn't see you as viable for the future. There are seasons when we do need rest. There are seasons when all we can do is just get up and eat, maybe eat a little bit of food and read a little bit of scripture and then go back and lay down again. But the Bible does say God does give his beloved rest. He doesn't drive us like a slave driver.

He's not looking at the clock wondering how many hours we have worked for him today or yesterday or are willing to work tomorrow. There are seasons in every life where discouragement takes a hold and God himself knows that we need rest. Now, if it's left unchecked, because God will not leave us in a place of discouragement, if it's left unchecked, it will lead to wrong conclusions.

That's the danger of discouragement. Remember when finally the Lord comes to Elijah and says, what are you doing here? In verse 10, he says, I've been zealous for the Lord of hosts, the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars and killed your prophets. I alone am left and they seek to take my life.

Now those are both wrong conclusions. He feels like he's the only one that is left that is was willing to stand up and be counted and, and fight this fight. And when the scripture tells us there were 7000 others that God had reserved, but somehow somewhere, he was not able to see them, you know, and when we get discouraged, sometimes we can get to feel like we're the only ones that are really actively pursuing God, the only ones that are standing for truth, the only ones that are genuine worshipers. And then he says, and they seek to take my life. Well, who are they? There was no they involved in this.

It was just one woman called Jezebel that was after him that that issued a threat. So there's really no they. So there's, there's two wrong conclusions. And we have to be careful when we get discouraged.

We come to wrong conclusions. We are not the only ones left. There are 7000 others that are serving God as fervently as we have been. And nobody is against you, but the devil himself, okay.

And maybe somebody's heart he gets, he gets a hold of. I mean, she was an ambassador for the devil, this woman Jezebel. And so the question is, how does God respond to us in our times of discouragement? Let me just tell you one story about a time of discouragement in my own life. I was zealous for the things of God in my youth, I was a workaholic before I got saved. And so I brought a workaholic sense of accomplishment into the kingdom of God. And I was going to do more for God than anybody who'd ever come before me.

Trust me, I was reading all the books on fervent prayer, I was fasting, I was establishing two churches, a food bank, a Christian school, a missions program, which the budget of missions in that early church outstripped our actual operating budget in the church one particular year. We're sending containers with motorcycles and bicycles off to South America. We're sending teams with them. We're just doing everything. We're sending people outside to hear the gospel.

I am fasting, I am praying, I'm exercising like a fiend. I am doing everything around the church, painting the dome, cutting the grass, straightening tombstones. When we got our first church, we not only were given the church, we were also given our forefathers that went with it. So we had to maintain the cemetery as well.

That was part of the deal of getting this particular church. So I'm just doing everything. On top of this, traveling all over the country, preaching the gospel to Eskimo people who used to call them back then, First Nations now, I believe up in the Arctic, to Indian people on their reserves.

I'm going east, I'm going west, I'm going south, I'm going north. I'm going to win the absolute whole country to God. And I'm just full of zeal, full of excitement, full of vision and seeing great results. I mean, I saw some services where the whole church came forward and knelt before God. And I remember thinking, God, surely this must be the revival that's coming that you once spoke to my heart about. I was in Saskatchewan. And in Saskatchewan, I was preaching and I was running every day. I was fasting. I was preaching like a house on fire at night. And I remember I went to bed one night and I felt strange. It just felt strange. It was like I felt like a white flash. When I closed my eyes, I'd see these white flashes.

And I knew it wasn't the Holy Spirit because it felt strange. I got back on a plane, I flew home. And at this time, I played on a church community hockey team.

And so I remember going out one or two days later and getting into a hockey game. And I went out and I skated my first shift and came back to the bench and I couldn't catch my breath. I couldn't breathe.

And then I thought, well, that's odd. So I got up and I went out for a second shift and came back onto the bench and I still couldn't catch my breath. It never dawned on me that I could physically burn out.

It wasn't even in my thinking. And when I would preach on Sunday, if I would raise my voice, I would get such a headache. Pastor Teresa remembers that I'd have to go home and take a fistful of Tylenol just to get rid of the headache and lay down. And this lasted for six months, my life. And I became very discouraged and very angry with God. And one day I just was so fed up with what I saw as God's failure towards me that I went out on a country road and I literally screamed at God. And I said, is this how you deal with your friends?

Is there some kind of a crooked side to your nature that I have... These are my words that I have failed to see. I've given you my job. I gave you my career, which I had. I gave you my house, which had burned down. I gave you my family. I gave you my future. I put everything into your hands. You gave me a vision that one day I would live to see a great turning to you.

I set out to be a partaker in a sense of this vision and to help make it happen. May I put it that way? And you respond to my dedication to you by taking away my strength. And I yelled out at God.

I said, is there some kind of a crooked side to you that I've not seen? Is this how you deal with your friends? I was so angry with God at this point in my life that if he had said to me, I'm going to turn you to dust right now, I would have said, go ahead and turn me to dust. I was that upset. And so I got my whole rant out at God. I can understand Elijah when he says, take my life and not better than my father's. If this is the way it's going to be, then take me home now.

I'm not interested in staying here any longer. And then suddenly, after I got it all out, and I expected a response in kind. I expected God to speak to me the way I had just spoken to him. And instead, very tenderly, very softly, he said, I love you. That's all he said.

He just said, I love you. There was no asterisk on the end of it. There were no terms.

There were no conditions. And I knew it was the voice of God because I wasn't expecting that to come my way. I was expecting a response in kind. And yet I heard this tender voice say to me, I love you. And when I heard it, it melted my heart.

And that's when the tears began to come. And I said, what do you want me to do? And he said to me, Carter, you've done many things in my name that I've never asked you to do. And he said, I have to tell you, there will be no reward for any of them when you stand before my throne one day.

All I'm asking you to do is what I've asked you to do. No more, no less. He said, I gave you 150.

It was 158. I remember members of that particular church on the membership role at the church you're pastoring right now. That is all you will answer for the day you stand before me. You will not answer for the crusades up north.

You will not answer for the Eskimo people or the Indian people or the south, the north, the east, the west. But there will be a list of names presented and I will ask you for their whereabouts. What happened to these people? I want you to dedicate their babies. I want you to marry their young. I want you to bury their old. I want you to counsel them. I want you to get a word from me for them on Sunday.

That's all I want you to do. And when the Lord spoke that to my heart, it's like a burden was lifted off of me. And my strength began to return from that day forward. And I began to enter into something of God that I had never really understood or known before. And this is of course what happened to Elijah.

I'll talk to this, what happened to me in just a moment. But in 1 Kings 19, beginning at verse 11, you know, or just before verse 11, he says, go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord. And behold, the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind tore into the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, a small, still voice. You see, God responds to the moment of despair or discouragement in Elijah's life by giving him a new revelation of his character.

Isn't it amazing? Like Elijah had only ever known God as a God who splits the rocks, a God who shakes the earth, a God who sends down fire. He'd just actually come from an experience like that on the top of Mount Carmel. That's the only way he'd ever known God. God is a God of thunder. God is a God of power. God is a God of fire. God is a God of action. God is a God of challenging the false. God is a God of integrity. He's known all these things about God. So when he's in the wilderness, he had to have the feeling like, God, I'm finished. Your shaking is going to come upon me.

Your fire is going to touch my life, in the sense of judgment. But suddenly when all of this happens, a small still voice comes. And he'd never known this side of the character of God, the tenderness of God, the mercy of God, the caring of God, the compassion of God for him in his weakness, because he had not been overly compassionate for others in their times of weakness in his lifetime. And when he heard it, it says in verse 13, he wrapped his face in a mantle.

He was so unfamiliar that he felt almost like he had to hide himself from this voice. And then God says to him, what are you doing here, Elijah? And again, he says, I've been very jealous for the Lord of hosts because the children of Israel have forsaken your covenant, torn down your altars, killed your prophets with the sword.

I alone am left and they seek to take my life. And the Lord said to him, go. In verse 15, God responds to his discouragement by giving him a new vision of what God was about to do through him, not what he could do for God in the future.

And my brother, my sister, hear me in this. Discouragement can be a good thing in this sense, because up to a point, we feel like we have to do something for God. And everybody who feels they have to do something for God will at some point reach the limitations of our patience, our endurance, our love, our zeal. We will hit, literally, spiritually speaking, the spiritual brick wall, we'll hit it where we can't go forward. Then suddenly God comes to us with tenderness. And then he says, now you've done a lot of things for me, but now I'm going to start doing some things through you.

And I've said this for years and it's come from experience. It's that the end of ourselves is the beginning of God. God had to bring the early church to the upper room. He had to bring them to the garden. He had to bring them to the cross.

He had to bring them to places where all their boasting and their natural zeal had to come to an end. And when they went into the upper room, they all knew, I can't do this without the power of God. I can't be virtuous. I can't care about the loss.

I can't go forward. They all knew that without him, they were not going to amount to anything. So there is a transference point in every life. And quite often it only comes through discouragement. It came to Peter after he'd walked away and wept bitterly.

When we just say, God, I can't do this anymore. And then he says, but I can, and I'm willing to be tender with you. And the beauty of this whole story, as I finish it out, is that he gave him a friend. You know, I think of in the Garden of Eden, when God saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone and gave him a wife, but he saw that Elijah had been alone all his life. You look at Elijah all the way up to this point, and he's always the man alone on the mountain, the man alone walking through town, the man alone confronting the prophets of Baal. And God knew that there was a need in his life that was going to need to be fulfilled. So he gives him a revelation of the tenderness of his nature in a small, still voice. He gives him a vision of what he's going to do through his life in the future.

And I love the practicality of God. He gives him a friend called Elijah to walk with him. Don't try to walk this walk alone.

Nobody here. Don't try to do it alone. You can't do it alone. You need a friend. You need somebody that can encourage you along the way.

You need somebody that you can pour into and encourage them and they can pour back and encourage you. It's a mistake to try to walk this walk in your own strength. And the end of the whole story here of this particular chapter, Elijah goes to Elisha and he says he throws his mantle upon him. In a sense, he throws a cloak upon him indicating you're going to be my successor. Now, he had been up to this point an intolerant man in a sense. There was not a lot of give in this guy. In Elisha, the young man says, can we just wait till I have a chance to gather my family and say goodbye? I'll go, but can you just wait? Now, you can see Elijah five years or six years before saying, no man who puts his hand to the plow and turns back his fit for the kingdom of God.

Just carrying on down the road. But he says to Elijah, okay. And Elijah is not a social man.

He's far from it. And this whole deal had to take probably five days or more. They had to gather family. They had to kill the cow and burn the plow as it is, offer up a sacrifice, gather the family, have a feast. And Elijah is not a social man. And so, you can just see him sitting there on a tree stump or wherever he found it. He's learned something in his discouragement of the tenderness of God that was not in him before.

And you see, so there's certain things about God we don't learn until we've had to learn it. And I just love, I love the picture of Elisha, the young man going through all this rigmarole saying goodbye. And Elisha is just sitting there. And Elijah, he's not given the small talk. He's not given to people.

He's not a people person in the least. He's been alone all his life. And all of a sudden he finds out that maybe as he's sitting there watching this gathering, maybe he's thinking maybe family is not so bad after all. Maybe needing other people is not a bad thing in my life. Maybe, just maybe I can't do this all by myself. Maybe I need the body of Christ. Maybe I'm not the only one doing this. Maybe there's others that I need to pour into.

And for the rest of his days, he's got a friend. Don't be afraid if you're discouraged. It's not the end of anything. It's the beginning of something new.

It's the beginning of something that God himself is going to do. Thank you for joining us this week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. You can count on a powerful message each week on A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.