Discouragement of Satan

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ's teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting scripture, but scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today's focused discussion will be discouragement of Satan. Let's talk about the area of discouragement. Let me illustrate it by having you look in 1 Kings chapter 19. 1 Kings chapter 19, great story of Elijah. Elijah is kind of the Peter of the Old Testament. He's up and down a lot. But Elijah at this point has just had a great victory. I mean a victory like no other prophet of God ever had. He just took out a sword and slaughtered four hundred and fifty priests of Baal. Now I'd say that he was really a winner that day. And you remember God sent fire down from heaven, burned up the sacrifice, burned up the altar, even licked up the water that they had poured around it. And Elijah was ruling, boy, I mean he was on top. The Lord is God, the Lord is God. Baal is not. Baal lost, a man he's got victory. Or chapter 19. He doesn't allow much time to go on. Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had slain all the prophets with the sword. And Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them, by tomorrow at this time. She says, Elijah, for doing that, and by the way, she was a Baal worshipper, for you doing that I will kill you by tomorrow, or die trying. Now, you know if it were me I would say, Look, Lord, I mean, I just did. You a big favor, four hundred and fifty priests of Baal eliminated. Give me a day off, will you? I mean you send Jezebel after me the next day, how about a little rest? No time for sitting around to be honored by the Jewish Honor Society. No time to sit around and getting laurels and medals. He's on the road again. Now, if he can handle four hundred and fifty priests of Baal, you really shouldn't be too shook by one woman. But then history doesn't really hold up that argument, because there have been a lot of people shook by one woman who could handle a lot of men. But anyway, Elijah decided there was only one thing to do, and that was run. And Elijah's got to be pushing eighty, and God never meant eighty year old prophets to be running to Beersheba. But he took off, and I mean he lickety split down the road, churning up a cloud of dust, ran for his life, verse three says, Came to Beersheba, left his servant there. From there he went a day's journey into the wilderness. Now, he actually ran, Beersheba's a town, and from there he just took off one more day out in the desert. One day from Beersheba into the desert, he sits under a juniper tree and requests for himself that he might die. He says, It is enough. Now, O Lord, take my life, I've had it. Now, that's what I call discouragement. He wants to die. Lord, just get me out of here, will you? Just take me out. That's enough. And he lay and slept under a juniper tree, and an angel touched him and said, Get up and eat. The angel wouldn't even let him sleep. He woke him up and fed him, and he looked and there was a cake on the coals, and a cruise of water at his head, and he'd eat and drink and lay down again, and the angel came and touched him a second time, woke him up again, and said, Arise and eat, your journey is too great for you. You've got to eat. Now, I don't know what angel food is, but whatever it is, it works. In verse 8, he arose and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights. So as I say, it works, unto Horeb, the mount of God. Do you know why? God said, Elijah, you have no business being discouraged. Now, you get yourself up here in Mount Horeb, I have a little conversation for you. And so he went up there, and the Lord spoke to him in a still small voice. And Elijah gave him some song and dance about, I'm the only one left, Lord. Oh, it's so distressing and so discouraging. I'm the only one left. I'm the only faithful person you have. And the Lord says in chapter 19, verse 18, Yet I have seven thousand others beside you. It's not just one, it's seven thousand and one, Elijah. Now get back there and get busy. It's so easy to become discouraged, and you know I can vouch for that. Even at the moment of some of your greatest triumphs, you go back to reality. And it's stark and sort of it's shocking, you know. I can relate to that. It's easy to be discouraged. Over in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 3, or verse 13 rather, Paul says, Wherefore I desire that you faint not at my tribulation. You know some of those people could even get discouraged about somebody else's trouble, not necessarily their own. Galatians 6 9 says, Let us not be weary in well doing, for we reap if we faint not. You know it's so easy to get tired and weary, and O Lord, I have to preach another Sunday, I have to preach another sermon, study another day. O Lord, I have to go call on another person, have to meet with that same person for discipleship. Lord, can't I have a few days off from reading my Bible? Lord, I just can't hack that Sunday school class another Sunday. Lord, do you really think I ought to go back and talk to that neighbor another time? Lord, you know I've been fighting this same old temptation for so long, I'm getting tired. And you know we get discouraged, so easy. Arthur Clough expressed it in these words. Say not the struggle not availeth, the labor and the words are vain, the enemy faints not nor faileth, and as things have been, they remain. In other words, I just keep fighting, and nothing ever happens. I get tired, the enemy doesn't, have you noticed? You get real weary, and Satan never stops. Matthew Arnold wrote, For now in blood and battle was my youth, and full of blood and battle is my age, and I shall end this life in battle. Does it ever stop? Well, we fight the foe all our lives. The Apostle Paul came to the end of his life, 2 Timothy 4 7, and said, I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith, I have finished the course. In Acts chapter 20, they said to him, Paul, if you go to Jerusalem, you're going to be imprisoned and put in chains. He said, That's all right, none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, that I might finish the ministry Christ has given me. He never would faint, he never would quit. In Revelation chapter 2, the Lord extolled the Ephesian church by saying, You have borne, and you have been patient, and you have endured, and you have not fainted. That's a commendation. In Leviticus chapter 26, God, and he did it again in Deuteronomy 11, God laid out Israel, and he said, Alright, Israel, if you hang in there and keep my statutes, and obey my ordinances, and do what I say, I will bless your lives, I will bless your land, I will prosper the seed of your loins, I will give you every blessing. And he goes on through the twenty sixth chapter of Leviticus, listing one after another. Finally, in verse 14 he says, But if you turn from my statutes and turn from my commandments, then I will bring corruption on you, and I will bring pain on you, and I will bring sorrow on you. See? So the ultimate end of it is this. Hang in there, be obedient, be responsive. Maybe you get discouraged because you have an unsaved husband, and it never seems to change. Nothing ever happens, and you just get so discouraged. Or maybe you have a child that seems so resistant to all of your efforts, or maybe you have a friend you've tried to witness to, or maybe you seem to be doing a ministry and you don't get the thanks you ought to get. Or maybe you even have a physical infirmity, a physical ailment, a handicap of some kind physically, and you get so tired of struggling with that thing, and it seems to bind you, and you lose sight of the fact that salvation has a third dimension, that it's coming. And I love what it says in Romans thirteen eleven, remember that our salvation is nearer than when we believed. We're getting close to the finish line. Don't quit now. You know there were those in the book of Hebrews to whom the writer addresses himself who had come all the way up to believing in Christ. They'd come all the way up to acknowledging that it was true, and now they were going to go back, and the writer says, No, don't do that. Don't be of those who turn around and fall back into perdition. He says, Let us go on to perfection. Don't quit. I think about Jeremiah. The Lord says to Jeremiah, You're my prophet Jeremiah. I want you to spend your life preaching for me, and here's your message, Jeremiah. Preach it with all you've got, and preach it till you have no breath, and P.S. no one will ever listen. No one will hear a word you say. And old Jeremiah preached it all alone, listened to it all alone. All alone he said, Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and they were the joy and rejoicing of my heart. And then there was Job, and the Lord stripped Job as naked as any man has ever been stripped. He took away everything he possessed, everything he owned, everything he loved, and yet he said, Though he slay me, yet will I trust him. And he hung in there, and when it was all said and done he said, O God, he said, I had heard of thee with the hearing of mine ear, but I now see thee with mine eye, and I abhor myself in dust and ashes. In other words, I heard what you were like, but in adversity, as I was faithful, I saw you. Hang in there, don't let Satan hit you with discouragement. Jesus our Lord said in Luke 18 1, men ought always to pray and not to what? Faint. When you see yourself fainting, start praying. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the discouragement of Satan. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.