Banishing Discouragement

Lift our Bibles up and wave them around.

Make Jesus glad, the devil mad.

Let's frustrate and aggravate the devil, amen.

Intimidate him.

And let's say this together say heavenly Father.

I've tuned into live stream tonight because I know the Word of God and the Holy Spirit have something for me.

I have a divine appointment with revelation, knowledge that will cause me to be victorious over every contrary circumstance in my life.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Let's turn in our Bibles tonight to Isaiah, the 42nd chapter, and the prophet Isaiah says in verse one, and he's talking about Jesus behold my servant, whom I uphold, mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth.

I have put my spirit upon him.

He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.

He shall not cry nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.

A bruised reed shall he not break and the smoking flax shall he not quench.

In my margin it says the dimly burning flax shall he not put out.

He shall bring forth judgment unto truth.

He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment in the earth and the aisles shall wait for his law.

Amen.

And so tonight I wanted to share a message entitled banishing discouragement, banishing discouragement.

You know, here we have King Jesus and his church and the prophet is prophesying over the church and saying that Jesus and his church are establishing true justice.

Remember I preached a message on that.

By faith we have established true justice.

We don't want the fake justice like the fake news.

We want true justice, justice based on the word of God and the Holy Spirit, not this environmental justice and all these fake words that people, social justice, all of this kind of.

What we need is true justice and that is what Jesus came to bring and to this world system, to the Gentiles, to the world system.

But in the process of that, he has regard for those who are bruised.

You know it says a bruised reed shall he not break.

You know, in the process of establishing the kingdom of God, sometimes we are on the front lines and we get wounded in battle.

We get bruised and the Bible says he won't break, bruise or crush people on the front lines that suffer wounds.

I mean God.

You know Jesus doesn't give up on people just because they get discouraged.

He won't snuff them out as they're light dims.

Have you ever had your light dim?

Listen to that and discouragement comes to everyone sooner or later.

It's whether you stay discouraged.

That's the thing I mean.

You have to recognize when your strength is waning, when your light is going out.

You've got to recognize that and take steps.

And that's what we want to talk about banishing discouragement.

I tell you, as pastor, I don't want anybody to be discouraged, but if you are, I don't want you to stay that way.

I want to give you a way out.

I believe the Word of God gives us a way out of discouragement, and so he won't snuff them out as they're light dims.

No, jesus is a source of their strength.

He is the way out of discouragement.

And you know this world, and right now we feel that as the church I talk to people there are a lot of people that are discouraged out there.

A lot of people are fearful out there.

They're fearful for a number of reasons.

They're fearful for a change in the government toward communism and if that were to happen, they're fearful about where this country is going.

They're fearful of the pandemic.

They're fearful of all kinds of things, and so this world presents to us a contrary tide.

You know, I remember growing up my dad was a fisherman and he loved flounder.

What do we flounder?

What is that?

Well, that means you're walking in knee deep salt water like the surf, and you've got a gig in one hand and a lantern a Coleman lantern in the other hand and you're looking for a flounder that have bedded down on the bottom and you can see their outline.

You know, at first you can't see anything because you first start out you don't know one from another.

But my dad taught me how to find a flounder and then you gig the flounder and then, of course, then the battle starts as a flounder starts going like this and then you've got to reach under.

Don't pick the gig up now, he'll leave.

So you've got to reach down and you've got to scoop him up with one hand and hold him on the gig and bring him up and hold him and put him on the stringer and go to the next one.

But when you're waiting out there, a lot of times you're waiting against the tide, you're waiting against a current and I mean, after a couple of hours you're ready to.

You're ready to maybe rest, but there's no place to rest.

You just have to keep going until it's over.

Well, we're going to keep going till it's over.

We're going against a tide and at our greatest victories the devil will come to try and steal our courage.

Discouragement is just the theft of your courage.

You know your courage is under fire.

He's trying to take it from you.

He's trying to steal it from you.

He comes to accuse, assault and rob our strength.

And of course, the joy of the Lord is our strength.

So how does he do that?

He attacks our joy.

He gets us down.

He gets us to where we're gloom and we're not joyful, we're not praising God.

We're not, you know, we're not thankful, you know.

And then we start down that road.

But Jesus the Word will help you to banish discouragement.

Come on, let's just lift our hands.

Thank God that Jesus the Word is the way out of discouragement.

We don't have to stay discouraged.

So you know one thing that the devil does is he tries to cut you off and make you feel alone.

You know I was watching one of those discovery channel.

You know I like to watch the animal programs.

You know the lions and the different ones, how they find their prey, and you know lions can kill an animal much bigger than them and one of the ways they do it is they get that animal separated from the herd.

As long as that.

You know even a cape buffalo which a cape buffalo is a tough customer.

Much outweighs the biggest lion, three or four times bigger than the lion, and yet they can cut that.

They have a way to maneuver that animal out away from the rest of the herd, cause in the herd there's a certain amount of safety.

Plus, you got all those horns on the cape buffalo.

Their horns turn up.

It showed one picture the other night of a cape buffalo, a whole group of them, a whole herd of them.

They got a horn, a lion.

A lion made a mistake and before he knew it he was surrounded and they killed that lion with their horns.

But anyway, their strategy is to separate their prey from the herd so they can get them alone and then they can attack.

And that's exactly what the devil does.

And so the Bible is filled with examples of people that have been discouraged.

One of the most famous ones is John the Baptist and Matthew 11.

Here he was locked up in prison.

He was thrown in there because he told Herod he couldn't have his brother's wife, and Herod just put him in jail, get rid of him, and he didn't really want to kill him, but everybody wanted Herod's wife, wanted him dead.

She was insulted.

And so, before he died, he got real discouraged and he called his disciples and he said go to Jesus and tell him are you the one that should come, or look we for another?

And so he was so discouraged that he lost faith in the Messiah.

He began to doubt whether Jesus was the Messiah.

And so John's disciples came to Jesus and he said go tell John what you see in here, the dead are raised, the blind see, the lepers are cleansed and blessed.

Is he who has not offended in me?

And then he didn't fire John.

He didn't say tell John he's fired.

No, he didn't.

He tell John, I'm highly disappointed in himself.

No, he began to brag on John the Baptist and he began to talk about him and he said this man is the greatest man that was ever born.

He that is born of women, he's the greatest one that's ever been born.

I mean, that takes in a lot of territory.

And yet then he said but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.

And so he bragged on him.

Isn't that awesome.

I mean, see, your Jesus is never gonna give up on you just because you are suffering or just because you're wounded or just because you're bruised.

I tell you he's bragging on you, he loves you.

And then, in first Kings 19, Elijah got real discouraged.

And it was kind of an odd time to get discouraged.

But in chapter 18, he had one of the greatest victories he ever had.

He killed the 400 prophets of Baal.

He went up on the mountain side, he broke the curse of drought over Israel and he saw a cloud.

He said get down, the rain's gonna catch us.

And it started raining for the first time in three and a half years, because he prayed.

And then, in chapter 19, though, jezebel threatened his life, said I'm gonna kill you.

And he got really discouraged and he started running for his life and he got to thinking ah, lea, what good does it do to be a prophet?

What good does it do to do anything?

Look at me, I'm the only one in Israel that's doing anything for God.

And now my life is threatened.

He got so down and so, and did God fire him?

No, god gave him three more jobs, he gave him three more assignments and then, after the third assignment, he said oh, by the way, I've still got 7,000 in Israel that have not yet bowed their knee.

You're not the only one.

You're not alone.

I believe there's a whole lot more than that in America that have not yet bowed their knee to communism, haven't bowed their knee to the Antichrist spirit.

I think that I believe the church is rising up, amen 7.

And then another one was David.

I'm giving you more examples and you all you need is two examples I'm going to give you, for here's David in 1 Samuel 30, very familiar verse.

You know they came back from.

You know he was fighting with the Philistines because he was.

You know he had to deceive them and let them think that he was on their side.

So they were battling and having war, and him and his men, and they were very tired.

They came back, they got through with the last battle, rode into Ziklag, which was their home base, and they found that it had been burned and all the women, the children and the stuff was gone.

The Amalekites had come through while they were gone and had stolen everything.

And the Bible says that everybody lifted up their voice and they wept until there was no power to weep anymore.

And then his men, his mighty men, began to blame David and say, david, it's all David's fault, we hadn't been out there fighting, we would have been here to protect our young, our wives and kids.

And they thought about stoning him.

And the Bible says David encouraged himself.

And the Lord is God, I mean, you know, sometimes you just got to stir yourself up and he said bring me hither the ephod.

And he which?

The ephod was the equipment whereby they could ask God about what his will was.

And so he consulted the umum and the thumum Don't make me talk about that, that'd take too long.

But anyway, that was his method of finding out what was God's will.

And he asked the Lord, do I pursue, do I pursue them?

And the answer came back.

The answer came back pursue and you shall surely overtake and recover all.

And so he got the army together, but only 400 of the 600 could go, because there were 200 of them that were too weak and they couldn't move.

They couldn't even ride off to go recover their own women and children.

But David rode off and it happened just like that, and they brought everybody's stuff back and they all parted alike and they finished the 200 that didn't leave.

And so you see, the discouragement turned into power, turned into victory, and then, finally, probably the greatest example, is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in Luke 22.

And he was so discouraged he began to sweat great drops of blood.

Pretty sure you've never sweat blood.

You might have sweated, but not blood.

And he said, oh God, let this cup pass for me Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done.

I mean, he got so tempted right before the crucifixion, the night before he died.

You know the word.

Gethsemane means olive press.

The devil came to press him, to press his flesh and to squeeze all the oil out.

That's what an olive press does it squeezes all the oil out of the olive.

And what are you after?

Are you after the olive meat?

No, you're after the olive oil and throw the rest of it away.

Or maybe you've turned it into food or feed, or I don't know.

But that's what the devil was trying to do.

He was trying to push hard against Jesus, to get him to give up.

And the Bible says that angels came to strengthen him.

And of course you know the end of the story.

He went all the way to the cross and he did not let discouragement stop him and really that was redemptive suffering.

Jesus suffered the extremes of discouragement so that, no matter what you and I face, he's been there and he's been the worst and he has redeemed us.

We have no reason to hang around discouragement.

We should rise up and rebuke it.

We should rise up and resist it.

Jesus took it all on the cross, amen, and so banished discouragement.

And one of the main ways is to stop listening to the voice of discouragement.

Discouragement has a voice, and I want to talk about these three voices.

Next, let's look in our Bibles to 2 Corinthians, chapter 10.

2 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

And it gives us a hint.

Second Corinthians, chapter 10.

2 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

I mean again, here in America, across the country.

I mean we were in a meeting earlier luncheon meeting with Houston area pastor council.

I was in a room with about 40 or 50 pastors from across the city and you know there's a lot of concern out there.

We talked about how each one of them had knowledge of leaders of churches that are not speaking out.

Can you imagine not speaking out against what we're seeing?

Just have no opinion.

Do not give guidance to your flock.

Well, it's happening here.

You're going to get guidance.

Second Corinthians, chapter 10, verse three.

2 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

Paul is writing and he says but though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're not of the flesh, in other words, they're not natural weapons like swords and guns, but our weapons, the weapons of our warfare, are mighty through God.

And then notice what these weapons do they pull down strongholds In verse five.

They cast down imaginations in every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.

And bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, bring every thought in captivity.

So here you see a reverse order.

It starts with a thought and moves into an imagination and finally it gets to a stronghold.

But no matter what stage your thought life is, whether it's just the thought or whether it's the imagination or whether it's a full scale cinema, you know, then.

You know we have supernatural weapons to annihilate that from our minds.

Again, the voice of discouragement.

So the first voice that we have power over is the voice of demons.

That's right, the voice of demons.

You know I'm not talking about something fire breathing dragon.

I'm talking about little Harry Imp.

That's a half inch big, sitting on your shoulder, and what they do is they throw thoughts to see if it'll stick in your mind.

Why don't you just give up?

Nobody loves you.

Everybody's against you.

You know these little demons.

They know your issues, they know your tendencies, they know your personality, they know your flesh.

They don't know your spirit, but they know your flesh and they know how to tempt your flesh.

And so they'll throw a thought to see if you'll entertain it, to see if you'll resist it or not.

And you have to stop those things in the thought stage.

You have to resist the devil and his thoughts.

One of the best ways to resist those thoughts is just to simply laugh at the devil.

Turn it back on him.

You know, I was talking to a man one time who was so tormented with thoughts of suicide.

I said that's not you You're not thinking about.

He said I'm thinking about suicide.

No, no, you're not.

The devil's thinking about suicide.

And he's got you buffalos into thinking that those thoughts are your thoughts.

But they're not your thoughts.

Those thoughts are coming outside and they're throwing.

He's throwing those thoughts in your mind and you haven't done anything with them.

You should just start laughing.

Why don't you kill yourself, devil?

See, you've got to turn it around right then, and pretty soon he'll quit throwing those kind of thoughts at you when he realizes you're not going to take them seriously.

Not every thought, you know, this is for somebody.

I've been saying this for 30 years, but we have new people all the time.

Not every thought that you think, what you think is coming from you.

A lot of those thoughts are being thrown at you by demonic powers hanging around, lurking around, amen.

So don't accept them.

Stop them right there.

Stop them before you know.

You might not be able to keep a bird from flying over your head, but you can stop him from building a nest in your hair, right?

That's what we're talking about Really.

I mean, once you stop that thing before it builds a nest, then you're a lot better off.

Amen, the voice of demons.

And, of course, according to 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, 10 that we read, once you've let the thoughts sit there, well, then it becomes an imagination.

Now it's like on a, like a thread, it's like a, like a video, a short little, short little video.

And then, if you don't do anything with that, then it becomes a stronghold which is a feature linked movie.

I mean, you're going to get into a whole thing and you're going to probably have to have some agreement with someone to help you get out of that.

So don't let it go that far.

Deal with it in the thought stage.

All right.

So the voice of demons.

The second when is the voice of people?

You know people just look at David.

I mean they were discouraging their leader, they blamed him for the trouble.

Thank God he didn't listen to him, he encouraged himself.

And the Lord is God.

Sometimes those closest to us and it's not always malicious, it's not always that people just have it in for you and want to discourage you, it's just they don't know any better.

You know, I mean sometimes it can be a spouse, sometimes it's a sibling, sometimes it's parents, sometimes it's children, sometimes it's grandchildren.

I mean, you know there's all kinds of people that can speak and discourage you, and again, I'm not saying they're trying to, but their words stick with you and they cut your boss boy.

That's a common thing, man.

If you've ever been chewed out by your boss and depreciated and told you weren't doing a good job, you better shape up.

Blah, blah, blah, blah.

I hear it all the time.

And you just, you know that's a friend.

I remember one time I had somebody in the church happened to be a woman and she was having all kinds of trouble with different things.

You know, over a period of time.

You know we would deal with them at the altar or we would have a phone call.

And she just kept saying something.

Finally, it stuck with me.

She kept saying well, my prayer partner said this, my prayer partner.

I said hold on, prayer partner, who's your prayer partner?

Oh, it's a dear friend of mine.

We've known each other.

We used to go to church together.

Way back.

When I said what kind of church does your prayer partner go to?

Oh, it's just a denomination.

She named the denomination.

They don't believe anything like what I teach people in this church.

We're a spirit-filled church, we're a faith church, and if your prayer partner is about 100 steps below you in Revelation, I don't know what good somebody like that is in your life to be praying with them.

And so I said so.

I said sounds to me like you need another prayer partner.

Why don't you get somebody that comes to this church that's on the same level and is hearing the same preaching as you are?

Well, she didn't like that.

Say she wanted to have a friend that's praying.

Mostly, probably, what it was was a bunch of murmuring and complaining, calling it prayer.

Are you with me now?

So being a doormat is not a virtue.

We have something to say about the people in our lives.

I know you can't do much about your spouse, but I mean, if you've got five, I told one of my members one time.

I said you need to have good boundaries.

This person's one of their parents was real hard on them and she would hang up the phone, crying half the time.

I said quit calling them.

Every day call them and then, and when they go down that road and start dishonoring, say I'm going to hang up now and then hang up and don't call them back for a month.

Try that.

You know I had to teach them how to put boundaries up.

So I'm not saying dishonor them, I'm not saying cut them off forever.

I'm saying lessen your involvement with people that are speaking discouragement to you.

That's what I'm saying.

It reminds me of the little boy in church, and he was a wiggle.

He was a wiggle worm, you know, and he couldn't see over the people in front of him in the in the peace.

So he would stand up on the pew and his mama would pull him down.

Now, johnny, sit down, stop standing on the pew.

And Johnny, a little while later he'd get standing up on the pew and finally, after three times she pinched him real hard and pulled him down.

I told you not to stand up.

And he looked up at his mother and he says well, I'm sitting down on the outside, but I'm standing up on the inside.

So you might not be able to say anything to these people without offending them or without causing a round, but you can stand up for yourself on the inside and not accept the voices of discouragement coming through other people.

Amen, are you getting anything out of this?

I'm believing that you're saying amen back to me, all right.

And then the last one the voice of demons, the voice of people, and then, lastly, your own voice.

Your own voice, because if you begin to agree with the demons or you begin to agree with other people, at some point in time you're gonna start talking yourself down, you're gonna start talking bad about yourself and you're going to start talking against what the word says about you.

And so your confession is wrong.

And if your confession is wrong, you can't hope to overcome discouragement.

Discouragement is gonna be a spiral that's gonna get worse and worse.

And so you've got to rise up, you know, and don't beat yourself up, and when you fail, just confess it.

If you sin, confess your sin and then forget it and don't bring it back up ever again, because it's under the blood.

God doesn't remember it.

This is a common common thing.

I mean, when people do something they're ashamed of, they'll confess it and then they'll confess it again and then they'll confess it the next day.

No, that's not how you get free.

You confess it one time and you're free.

And if that thought comes back to you, oh no, that's under the blood.

Praise God.

They don't even entertain it.

When you start saying things like I'm weak, I'm not worthy, I'm not qualified, I don't deserve this.

I don't deserve.

It's not about deserve all these things.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, no, no, no, you know how to speak.

You know how to confess the word of God.

I'm strong in the Lord, in the power of his mind.

I can do all things through Christ, who's strengthened with me.

The Holy Ghost always gives me, god, always causes me to try and praise God.

He gives me the answers before I even ask.

I've known people in this church that got promoted into jobs.

They didn't quite know how to do and they were just praying tongues the whole day and the Holy Spirit would give them the answers and they would know how to answer their boss.

They would know what to put in the email I mean, it was supernatural until they kind of learned on the job, just by the Holy Spirit.

I tell you, the Holy Spirit loves you, he's on your side, he's your ally.

So stop agreeing with all those naysayers.

You are what the Word says.

You are, oh, hallelujah.

And so, in closing, get control over your thought life, get control over your associations.

Say you're the one that has everything to say about who you associate with.

You know I want to say this again some people have no godly purpose in our lives.

Those are the people I'm talking about.

If they don't have a godly purpose in your life, then you don't need to put them on the front burner.

You need to put them on the back burner and eventually let them just, you know, drift away.

I know people that just can't let loose.

Well, sometimes people need to be let loose.

So your thought life, get control over your associations.

Get control over your confession.

What you say out of your mouth banish discouragement.

Amen, father, we thank you for the Word of God.

I thank you, father, that people listening to this are being encouraged tonight in Jesus' mighty name.

I believe that our encouragement and our demeanor is a witness right now, because so many people are coming unglued.

There really is a lot.

I just saw a little bleep of a little blurb of a headline where a teenager committed suicide because of the lockdown COVID lockdown just hopeless.

These governors and officials that are doing this is just criminal.

What they're doing it's criminal.

So God sees it all, amen.

So let's be encouraged tonight, hallelujah.