When life is unfair and you're overwhelmed by discouragement, you're not alone. King David was once in that same place. How did he handle it? Today, on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah turns to the Psalms for the answer and explains why discouragement is Satan's most destructive tool.
From the series "The Battle for Your Soul," here's David to introduce his message: "The War Zone of Discouragement." And you know, I've told our people at Shadow Mountain that discouragement is one of the things Satan can use to get to me. I think because we have so much going on all the time, so many things happening, so many programs and so many missions and strategies, there's always going to be one or two of them that isn't going the way it should, and sometimes they pile up and they get to you. You have to. Be careful! You don't get discouraged.
The story that we're going to tell you to illustrate how to deal with this is from the life of David, and what happened to him when his son rebelled against him and took the kingdom from him. And David finds himself on the outside of the kingdom that he personally built, looking in. Why are you cast down, O my soul? He cried out.
Sometimes our souls get cast down, and we get discouraged. We're going to talk about it today in just a moment. First, let me remind you: all the material on the battle for the soul is now available. That includes the book you can get for a gift of any size to Turning Point in asking for your copy, and it also includes the study guide. You can get that from our website and the.
Audio and video things that go with it are all available from DavidJeremiah.org, and get going on your study of the battle for your soul. I hope you will do that, and we'll talk about this some more in a moment. But right now, let's get started with our discussion of the war zone of discouragement. I have a Jewish friend who built a successful business from the ground up. He's an excellent leader and a true people person, but it still took him decades to lay the groundwork and achieve stability in the marketplace.
As soon as the business was established, he began thinking about succession plans. Who was the right person to lead this venture going into the future? My friend's first choice was his oldest son. This young man is athletic, handsome, and charismatic—everything a father could want. Kind of person who seems to succeed at everything he tries.
Still, my friend had some concerns about his maturity. Would his son take things seriously as the stakes demanded? Was he truly ready to lead? These questions were answered in dramatic fashion. At the start of a company board meeting, incredibly, my friend was informed that he was no longer the CEO of his own company.
The board had removed him through a secret vote and replaced him with his son. Turns out, the son had spent the better part of the year arranging meetings with various board members to raise concerns about missed opportunities. Without naming names, he subtly suggested that the company's leadership lacked a killer instinct, and the son even started eating lunch in the company cafeteria to make connections with the key employees and department heads. When all the right seeds had been planted and all the right palms had been greased, the son made his move and took charge. And my friend.
Was left holding a cardboard box with little else after decades of sacrifice. If you're familiar with the Old Testament, you may have already guessed the name of my friend. It was King David, and the name of his son is Absalom. And I changed a few minor details. But the overall arc of David's story matches what I have described.
It is a sad story indeed. After decades of serving as the king of Israel, David was forced to flee Jerusalem in a single day because of Absalom's rebellion. He left the region entirely, traveling with his trusted advisors until they crossed the Jordan River. Once there, Scripture suggests David looked back across the waters, and wrote what we know today as Psalm 42 and Psalm 43. I need to tell you that these two psalms go together.
In fact, it may look like there's a chapter division between the two of them. There really is not. Originally, this was one psalm. I'm sure you know that the Bible is totally inspired, but chapter divisions are man-made. If you look down at your Bible, you will notice in Psalm 42 and 43 a verse that is repeated three times.
Three times this verse is repeated and joins these psalms together. Psalm 42, verse 5: Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance. Psalm forty two, eleven: Why are you cast down, O my soul?
And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God. And Psalm forty three, verse five: Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, the help of my countenance and my God.
The inscription over these two psalms says they are addressed to the choir master, and these psalms are called a Maskeel of the Sons of Korah. The word Maskeel in Hebrew means a teaching psalm.
So Psalms 42 and 43 are teaching psalms from David to help us learn how to handle. Our discouragements and our blue moods. Martin Seligman says that we tell ourselves three lies when we're discouraged. We say that our circumstances are personal, which means God's picking on us, and we're the only ones going through this stuff. Secondly, we say our circumstances are pervasive, which means they affect everything and they corrupt everything in our lives.
And thirdly, we tell ourselves that these circumstances are permanent and they can never change. All of these are lies, because they are deep wounds to our souls. They keep us shackled to discouragement and despair. You know, there's an old story about the devil putting his tools up for sale. He spread out before the buyers.
The things like hatred and envy and pride and deceit and lying, each marked with a price on it. But off to the side lay one worn, overused tool, priced higher than all the rest put together. What is that one?
Someone said, and the answer was that is discouragement. Why is it so expensive? And the devil said, because it works better than all the others. With it, I can get inside a person's soul when nothing else will, and it is so worn out because I use it on almost everybody. You can sense that David is dealing with this as you read these psalms.
He feels overwhelmed and hopeless and helpless. And what I would like to do today, because of what he wrote. Is to take these two psalms written during Absalom's defection and David's temporary loss of his kingdom, and find out what we can learn about discouragement. I told you before; it's the number one thing the enemy uses in my life. He is good at getting people discouraged, and because whatever your situation is, like mine.
I remember that it's not permanent, it's not pervasive, and it's not personal. God wants you to have hope, and David's Psalms offer three helpful principles that guide us and support us whenever we're discouraged. They are built around powerful paradox. A paradox is two principles that seem to be in Opposite directions, and yet they combine to express a truth. The first paradox goes like this: Hope is most alive when everything seems hopeless.
You say, Pastor Jeremiah, that doesn't make sense. How could hope be alive when everything is hopeless? We all deal with discouraging situations on a regular basis.
However, sometimes the accumulation of discouragement can push us into despair. And when we lose a job, or we have to worry about finances and housing, ways our children might be affected, or the first year after losing a spouse is hard, and the second is harder, and the third seems impossible. In these types of situations, if we're not careful, we start to feel as if nothing will ever get better. We may begin to believe there's no escape from feeling miserable, which only makes us feel miserable. But the Bible paints a different picture.
Honestly, it's kind of surprising, and until you get your mind wrapped around it, you can't really comprehend it at all. Scripture tells us that true hope springs from despair. Here's the way Paul put it when he wrote to the Romans in the eighth chapter of his letter. He said, "For we were saved in this hope." But hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.
Paul's logic in these verses is ironclad. If we already have everything we desire, then we don't have anything to hope for. We no longer have need of hope, but on the other side of the coin, hope exists precisely, exactly where we feel uncertainty. It is born from discouragement and dejection and despair. That's exactly where David was living after all these terrible things that happened in his life.
He was full of despair. Listen to the cry of his soul. If you read this psalm carefully, you will get inside of David's skin and you will feel what he felt. Here are just a few verses that tell you what he was going through. Psalm forty two three, my tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, "Where is your God?" Psalm forty two seven, deep calls unto deep, but the noise of your waterfalls, all your waves and billows have gone over me.
Psalm forty two nine. Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of my enemy? And Psalm forty two ten. As with the breaking of my bones, my enemies reproach me.
They say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" These are the words of a broken man who felt abandoned, ridiculed, and overwhelmed. And yet, these psalms are about hope. Don't miss the important implication of this paradox. It is possible to love God deeply and still feel despair. If you are discouraged or weighed down, that does not automatically mean that God is displeased with you, and it does not always mean that there is some hidden sin you have not dealt with.
Sometimes it simply means you are human, living in a broken world and learning to hold on to hope. If you go back through the Bible, you will see that. Remember how discouraged Moses felt in the wilderness; the weight of leading a complaining and restless people became so overwhelming that he told God he couldn't do it any longer, and he would rather die than continue to be the leader of the Israelites. Likewise, Hannah was crushed in spirit because she couldn't have children, and she was continually mocked by her rival. The Bible says she was miserable and would weep and not eat when she went to the house of the Lord.
And Elijah, after a great victory over the prophets of Baal, fled into the wilderness in fear of Jezebel. He sat down under a broom tree and he asked God to take his life. He said, "Lord, I have had enough." I love that phrase. I have said that before. Have you ever said that, Lord?
I have had enough. Even Jesus, in his darkest moment, cried out. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? One of my old, old friends, who is now in heaven, is a man by the name of Warren Wiersbe. He was a marvelous pastor, wonderful writer.
I think he wrote about as many books as the years he lived, and he had lots of books. One of the books he wrote was called Walking with the Giants. And it contains short biographies of many people that you and I have heard about, famous Christians, what you might call giants of the faith. As he wrote the introduction, he said one surprising thing he discovered was a common thread running through their lives. Many of them faced early years of nearly debilitating discouragement, but they kept at it, and they faithfully sowed seeds despite the dark clouds that were over their heads.
One of the men he mentioned was Charles Haddon Spurgeon, one of the great preachers of history.
Some say the greatest. Spurgeon suffered from prolonged bouts of depression. As well as anxiety about common problems, here he was, this great preacher, but he worried about finances. I took encouragement from that. Spurgeon's psychological and physical ailments were so severe that he would often be confined to bed for weeks at a time.
However, he came to see these problems as part of God's work in his life. His sufferings enabled him to comfort and encourage others who were afflicted. He said he discovered that his periods of depression often came before a time when God blessed his ministry. And he made a statement I will never forget. Listen to this.
He said, "Depression became like a John the Baptist for me, just as John the Baptist came as the forerunner of Jesus." My depression came as a forerunner to God's blessing in my life. When I went through those times of discouragement and depression and worked through them, I knew that on the other side, God was going to do something great in my life. It's almost like the picture of the waves of the ocean. The depth of the trough determines the height of the wave. When you go through a low place, oftentimes after that, God takes you to the high place.
David's experience, as he wrote these psalms, show us that hopelessness is not the end. Instead, it is often the soil in which hope begins. Hope is not the absence of difficulty; it is the certainty that God is present in the middle of difficulty. Hope is most alive. When everything seems hopeless, therefore our souls can weather seasons of discouragement.
Here's the second paradox from David's pen: Hope for the future is built on the past.
Now that doesn't make a lot of sense in many respects, and sometimes that's the way paradoxes are. We typically think of hope as forward-facing. We hope for things that are yet to come. Specifically, we hope for things we desire that we don't yet have. But in these two psalms, David repeatedly looks back at experiences from the past.
For example, Psalm forty-two, four: When I remember these things. I pour out my soul within before. I used to go with the multitudes. I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, and with the multitude that kept a pilgrim feast. David said, "I am going through a really tough time right now, but when I think back, I remember the joy I had with my brothers and sisters when I went to the house of God and we sang praises and we worshipped the Lord." Here's a similar sentiment from verse six: "O my God, my soul is cast down within me; therefore, I will remember you from the land of the Jordan and from the height of Hermon, from the hill Mizar." You know, feeling discouraged in the present, David chose to remember the past.
He looked back at times of worship and joy in the presence of God. The more he remembered, the more his thoughts turned to the faithfulness of God. I think it's an important thing to remember that when we're discouraged, we tend to forget what God has done for us in the past. The old hymn that goes like this: "Count your blessings, name them one by one, and you will see what the Lord has done." We focus on the future when we get discouraged, and we lose sight of what He has done for us in the past. We forget His faithfulness.
It's a terrible condition for our souls because when we go through this, we're constantly thinking about what is uncertain and unknown. But the one thing we have that no one can take from us is what God has already done for us. We put that in the bank of our heart, and we remember it. That's reason why I recommend keeping a journal. I remember when I first got sick years ago.
Somebody told me I should journal, and I didn't do it because I thought journals were for women and mystics, and I wasn't either one.
So I didn't know if I could do a journal. But then I was reading a book by Gordon MacDonald, and in this book he talked about journaling in his computer, and that sounded very masculine to me.
So I decided I would do that. And during my time with cancer, I journaled every day.
Now journals are important because when you write things down and you get them out of your system, you put them on paper, you can tell God what's really in your heart. That's really true. But there's another reason why journals are important. When you're going through a hard time here, you can go back and read your journal and remember what God did for you in the past. Let me tell you something.
God is still at home. You're the one that walked away. He hasn't left. He hasn't changed. He's the same God who helped you before.
Who's willing to help you now?
So when you go through discouragement, one of the things you can do is go back and remember the blessings of God. Maybe it was the blessing of your children being born, or finding the right person to be married to, or getting your house, or whatever it is that God has done for you. Remember His blessings when you're going through difficulty. You will be surprised. What that does for you, and there's another thought here that we should address.
David wrote, "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" Which suggests that David had chosen to be discouraged, and he was asking his soul, "Why have you cast yourself down?" That's important because it means we have a choice in where we focus. We can dwell on despair. Or we can direct our thoughts to hope. There was a time when David was on the run. He was leading a group of renegade soldiers.
They were out fighting their battles, and they had left their wives and children behind in a city called Ziklag. After being gone for a time, they came back, and as they Walked over the hill and looked down. They saw that the city of Ziklag had been burned to the ground. It was gone, and all of the women and the children had been taken captive by the Amalekites.
Now David had a twofold problem. He not only was being pursued by the enemy, but now his own men were furious with him. They had followed him, and now their families were gone. Their homes were destroyed. Everything was gone, and the Bible says they were so distressed they talked about killing David.
And he had nowhere to go. If I had been in his place, I might have been tempted to run. But listen to what the Word of God says. David did. First Samuel thirty verse six.
David strengthened himself. In the Lord, His God. How many of you know the only person you have sometimes is yourself? Have you ever been sequestered in that place where nobody quite understands what you're experiencing? You try to help them understand that they don't understand, and all of a sudden you look up and you say, "Lord, it's just me and you." David strengthened him.
So I love what he did. I can almost picture it. David is overwhelmed. What am I going to do? My men are against me.
The enemy's against me. And instead of collapsing under the weight of it, he turns to the Lord. In my mind, I see him taking the scriptures and going off by himself, finding a quiet place and opening the Word of God. And as he reads, he begins to remember who God is. How many of you know?
If God is on your team, you're never alone. And you are always in the majority. You and God are greater than you and anyone else, and that's the lesson. When you get discouraged, when you feel overwhelmed, you don't just sit there and let it walk over you. You have to learn to encourage yourself in the Lord.
One of the ways you do that is by going back through the scriptures and remembering the greatness of God. I mentioned keeping a journal that can help. Go back and read what God has already done in your life, and look at the ways He's been faithful. And there's not one of us here who doesn't have a good list. We count our blessings, and we realize that we have so much to be thankful for.
We look at what is happening around the world, think about being a Christian in some of the war-torn places of the world. Here we are; we're not free of problems. Worshiping God and listening to His Word. We're blessed people.
Sometimes we just need somebody to poke us and remind us about that, because we get caught up in our troubles, we get caught up in our discouragements, and that's the enemy doing that. He's wounding our soul with all of that, so that we can't be successful and we can't be helpful and we can't be of use to the Lord. When you're all down on yourself, you're never going to help anybody, and the enemy knows that. And the psalmist tells us, "Don't let it happen." As you will see, as we go through this again tomorrow, there are three things we learn from these two psalms that help us deal with discouragement. Helpful to me, and I love these psalms very much.
I hope you will too, as you follow along.
So tomorrow is part two of the war zone of discouragement. On Friday, we're going to talk about temptation and how Satan uses that to infect our soul with his diseases. These are important messages for all of us who are in this battle. The Battle for the Soul book is available from Turning Point for a gift of any size to Turning Point. In asking for your copy, it's available in local bookstores where you can purchase the book, the study guide, and the audio.
And video things that go with it are all available from DavidJeremiah.org. I hope you'll go there and research it and take advantage of the opportunity to avail yourself of these resources during this month. Have a great day, and we'll see you right here tomorrow for part two of the War Zone of Discouragement. For more information on Dr. Jeremiah's series, "The Battle for Your Soul," please visit our website, where we also offer two free ways to help you stay connected: our monthly magazine, Turning Points, and our daily email devotional.
Sign up today at davidjeremiah.org/radio. That's davidjeremiah.org/radio, or call us at eight hundred nine four seven nineteen ninety three. Ask for your copy of David's helpful new book, *The Battle for Your Soul: Thirty-One Biblical Secrets of Spiritual Warfare*. It's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also purchase the Jeremiah Study Bible in the New International and New King James versions, complete with notes and articles from Dr.
Jeremiah's decades of study. Get all the details when you visit our website, DavidJeremiah.org/radio. This is David Michael Jeremiah. Join us tomorrow as we continue the battle for your soul on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.
