The New Normal

What is the root of discouragement?

At one time in my life I would have answered this question with, “Satan is the root of discouragement.” I still believe that is true, but how he does it has changed in my mind.

I spent some time white-boarding the conflict of faith and discouragement this morning with a couple of colleagues..here is what we came up with:

From this you can see that I believe faith is something on the Christ side of the equation and discouragement comes from the great Deceiver.

We all have been given “God-sized assignments.” These are engagements, ministry opportunities, relationships and the like where it is evident that we do not have the strength, perseverance, influence, resources, etc to get the job done. We must be totally reliant and completely dependent on God to provide the necessary mental, physical and/or emotional resources needed. Simply put, we must have faith in God to accomplish His will.

Do you have that kind of confidence in God?

We all have some mustard seed-sized faith in ourselves. We know we can do certain things. But in order to be successful in accomplishing these God-sized assignments we will need much more than just faith in ourselves..we will need a God-sized faith, a complete confidence in what He can do. That confidence is built continually with time in the Word. When we read accounts of Moses, Abraham, Joshua, and the disciples in the New Testament, we see over and over how God provided BIG TIME when these folks had faith. Not faith in themselves but complete confidence that God would be true to His word.

So how do we get discouraged?

I believe that discouragement actually is rooted in the Devil’s encouragement of our self-perspective. What I mean is, when I focus on myself I take my focus off of God. Whether I am puffing up my ego by patting myself on the back, or by playing the pity game and noticing all the things I’m too dumb, too weak, or too incapable of doing..the outcome is still the same..self-focus and not God-focus.

When Satan reminds me of how great I am and how much I can accomplish with my own power (faith in myself) then I am distracted from how great God is and how much MORE can be accomplished if I had faith in Him. This ultimately keeps me from fulfilling my God-sized assignment.

What is your God-sized assignment that has be entrusted to you? You know, the things that are impossible to you, that only can be accomplished with a God-sized faith…..

• parenting in the 21st century
• keeping your marriage from becoming a statistic
• leading your family in prayer (for some just praying out loud in general)
• discipling/mentoring another person
• participating in a ministry opportunity that you don’t think you are capable of
• sharing about how Jesus has changed your life to a co-worker
• making ends meet financially and/or overcoming debt
• reconciling an estranged relationship with a parent/child
• starting a business centered on christian principles
• financially contributing or even sacrificially giving to the church
• moving to a foreign country to share the gospel
• just believing that God exists and loves you

Let’s face it..we can all get discouraged. Discouragement is a silent disease. If it is allowed to take root it can wreak havoc in your life and keep you from truly experiencing God’s miracles. And it all steams from our focus on self and not God. Don’t let the enemy deceive you: God is great..let’s have confidence that He will do soooooo much more if we focus on Him and let Him work through us.