[0:00] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia. It is our prayer that you'll be blessed by the preaching of God's Word. I'd like you to open your Bibles, if you would, to the book of Numbers in chapter number 21.
[0:13] Numbers, chapter number 21 in your Bible. I count it a great privilege to get to be here this evening. Pastor started off the service saying, how many of you all are tired? And there are way too many amens to make me comfortable tonight.
[0:24] But it reminded me of when we were in Argentina, there was a time for probably about two years that I was pastoring two churches at the same time. So we'd get up in the morning, we'd take off to the first church, and I'd preach Sunday school, and then I'd preach a morning service, and I would leave from there in the afternoon.
[0:40] I'd take my wife, and I would leave my wife and the kids at home, and I would drive about 45 minutes up to the other church, me and some of the other guys. And we'd go up there, we'd talk with the men before, and then we'd have our service, and then we'd turn around, and we'd come back, and I'd pick up my wife and my children, and then we'd go to the evening service where we had a teachers and workers meeting, and then we had our evening service.
[1:00] Many times I'd pick her up, and on our way to church, she'd say, Honey, what are you going to preach tonight? That was her favorite question. Honey, what are you going to preach tonight? And I'd say, well, dear, if you show up, you'll hear tonight with the rest of the people.
[1:11] And she always said, I'm serious. And I said, I am too. And so I never did tell her. And she'd always say, what are you going to preach? And I said, well, baby, why do you want to know? And she said, well, you know, I mean, it's kind of been a long day. I said, long for you.
[1:22] I've been out preaching while you were, you know, there at the house. And she said, well, you know, it's kind of been a long day. Maybe we can maybe cut it a little bit short tonight. I said, well, I appreciate that, Holy Spirit.
[1:32] I'll take that, and, you know, I'll take that in consideration. So I did. So tonight I will go very quickly. If you listen quickly, we'll run through this passage very quickly. Numbers chapter number 21, beautiful story here.
[1:43] Numbers chapter 21, and let's read verse number 1 all the way to verse number 7. Now, you remember that since the time that they've come out of Egypt, they've crossed the Red Sea. And just remembering they've went, now they're spending 40 years in the wilderness because of their lack of faith, because of their disobedience, right?
[2:01] And they're going to give over and over, and all the way from Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, all the way through these four books, all five of them really, historical books by Moses. But these last four specifically are talking about these 40 years, that they're in the wilderness because of their unbelief.
[2:16] Look what happens here. Numbers chapter 21, verse number 1. And when King Arad, the Canaanite, which dwelt in the south, heard tell that Israel came by the way of the spies, then he fought against Israel.
[2:27] He took some of them prisoners. And Israel, verse number 2, they vowed a vow unto the Lord and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities.
[2:39] And the Lord hearkened to the voice of Israel and delivered up the Canaanites. And they utterly destroyed them and their cities. And he called the name of the place Hormah, verse number 4. And they journeyed from the mount, Hor, by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom.
[2:54] And the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way. And the people spake against God, verse number 5, and against Moses. Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?
[3:06] For there is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, and much people of Israel died.
[3:17] Verse number 7. Therefore, the people came to Moses, and they said, We have sinned. For it has spoken against the Lord and against thee. Pray unto the Lord that he take away the serpents from us.
[3:28] And Moses prayed for the people. Well, this is a very interesting story, and it goes all the way through here. It kind of starts in one, you know, they're on this journey here. It kind of starts at one end.
[3:38] It goes all full circle here until they stop. Moses prays for them. And then they, if you look on down there, they continue on their journey. So we're going to take this story here. We're going to maybe kind of dissect it if we can, and we're going to study through it very quickly.
[3:52] But I want you to focus on verse number 5. Would you look back one more time at that? Verse number 4, excuse me. The Bible says this. Would you underline that there?
[4:09] It was much discouraged. The soul of people was much discouraged. It was much discouraged. Would you underline that right there? The soul of people was much discouraged.
[4:20] You know, I believe with all my heart that, I mean, sometimes it's awful easy to look at these guys, and boy, just to really criticize them, give it to them. Boy, the Israelites, they're going in the wilderness, and they go just round and round, and they complain, and they criticize, and they whine.
[4:34] And it's sometimes easy to look back and say, those bunch of whiners. I mean, good night. Where is their faith? It's easy to talk like that. But we can say all these lessons that they went through.
[4:46] At least this one, we know we have something very much in common. The people, their soul was much discouraged. Have you ever come to a place in your life where you were very discouraged?
[4:57] Where you were distraught? Where you were tired? Where you thought, you know what? I don't even care. And to be honest, truth is, probably all of us have. Now, we might not all admit it, but we all come to points in our life where we're not as encouraged as other moments.
[5:10] And many people, I believe with all my heart, and the brother said this right before, but many times I believe that we are living in the last days, simply meaning that at any moment the Lord Jesus Christ can come back.
[5:23] The imminent return of our Lord Jesus Christ, meaning that there is no law, there is nothing, there is no prophecy that must be fulfilled, something that must be done before our Lord comes back. He can come any moment that he wishes.
[5:35] And knowing that he can come any moment that he wishes, many times the devil is almost working overtime. And listen to this. Because when a Christian gets discouraged, they almost become ineffective, if I may say even a little bit more, they almost become useless in life.
[5:51] Because we get discouraged, and then because we're getting discouraged, we don't want to do anything, we don't want to go to church, and we don't want to read our Bible, and we don't want to tell other people about Jesus, we don't want to share with other people. And because we get discouraged, it's almost like the devil can't take our soul to hell, but he can discourage us so much that we become ineffective in our Christian lives.
[6:12] So how can we get over this? How can we get through this? What happens here? And we pick this story up right from the very beginning, goes all the way around. And so we're going to dissect this a little bit. We're going to find about why they were discouraged and what was happening in their lives.
[6:25] Maybe something that can even help us. Now, many times when we were in Argentina, my wife and I, someone would say, you know, and please understand, it's not, you know, some people are going to say, you're talking about me. I have no idea.
[6:36] But many times people would say, you know what? My wife's not be able to, she can't come tonight. I said, what's the matter? She's got a bad headache. A.K.A. for my wife's discouraged, she doesn't want to come to church.
[6:48] And Argentina, so many people get discouraged. And when they would get discouraged, they want nothing. It's just like they ran from God instead of running to God. And so when we're discouraged, so let's pull this out. Let's grab it.
[6:59] Let's drop kick it and send it through the goalpost of life. You know what I'm saying? I mean, let's get rid of this baby. So how can we go through this time? So very quickly, let's study here. As we go through and we see these people, jump down if you would one more time.
[7:11] Verse number four. It says that the soul of the people, it was much discouraged. Look at that next part there, would you? Because of the way. Because of the way. In other words, starting off very general, very simple.
[7:25] Discouragement always comes along the route of life. It's almost something like that you just can't really avoid. Everybody has bad days, right? Everybody has bad times. Discouragement is something that will just creep in, whether however it is, by a family member, by a friend, because of financial situation, whatever it is.
[7:42] Discouragement just creeps in right along the way of life. You know, everybody would be a great Christian if life was just like this, right? I mean, everybody would be perfect if everything went well every day of your life, but it doesn't.
[7:56] And discouragement comes along the way. Remember what the Hebrew writer said in chapter number 12, in verse number 1? He said on the race, he said, be patient and continue. And he says life is just a race.
[8:07] It's a marathon. You just keep going and going and going. There's curves. There's ups. There's downs. There's mountains. All along the way, every day, you and I will confront problems or stresses or whatever it may be.
[8:19] Listen, we must understand very basically, discouragement is something that comes along the way, on the road of life, something that we cannot necessarily avoid.
[8:30] But look down in verse number, you remember verse number 1, that they said that these people fought against Israel. Jump down to verse number 2. Israel, they vowed to vow unto the Lord. This is interesting. They said, God, please help us.
[8:42] They said, if thou wilt deliver this people into my hand, I'll utterly destroy the city. So here's what happens. These guys come against them. And so here comes Israel. They all get together and they said, Lord, we promise you, if you give them into our hands, if you help us take care of the problem, if you get us out of this situation, God, we promise you, God, you got our word on this.
[9:03] Look at verse number 3. The Bible says, The Lord, he hearkened to the voice of Israel. And he delivered up the Canaanites, and they utterly destroyed them and their cities.
[9:13] And he called the name of the place Hormah. So simply, this is what happened here. They go out. Boy, the enemies come against them. They start fighting. And they look and they say, God, please help us.
[9:24] And the Lord says, Not a problem. I'll take care of this one. And boy, God comes through. And man, the people get destroyed. And all of a sudden, the next verse, we don't know if it's the next day or within that time, but right after that, they continue on their journey, and they get discouraged.
[9:39] So first of all, we see very generally speaking, according to verse number 4, that the discouragement comes along the way. It's just something kind of natural, something that will happen in life. But number 2, we see the discouragement always comes around victorious times.
[9:52] They just saw the mighty hand of God. And now they're discouraged. I mean, did you not just remember what just happened to you? But listen, dear friends, what happens to us? I remember many times we had the greatest day in the world.
[10:05] Man, we invited all these people, and it seemed like things were going well in Argentina. Everything was wonderful. We had a big day. Hundreds of people came, and then all of a sudden, somebody right after service said, Pastor, we need to talk to you.
[10:16] And they told me something. I thought, You've got to be kidding me. And all that wonderful feeling I was having was just right down in the floor. Man, I was discouraged. And you know what happens? Well, I mean, we can go through the Bible.
[10:28] You remember Jonah? Boy, he goes out there. He doesn't want to. He runs from God. He's going on his way to Tarsus. And the Lord said, Jonah, come on. You know better than that. Here comes a big fish, swallows him, spits him out. And Jonah says, Okay, God, I'll do whatever you want me to do.
[10:41] He goes over to Nineveh, and here he goes over to Nineveh, and he goes, 40 days. God's going to destroy this place if you don't repent. And all the people begin to repent. And then once again, this whiner goes out there, and he says, I can't believe that.
[10:54] I mean, 120,000 people at least were saved. And then he's going, Man, I would have, Man, I'd be dancing like a wild man if 123, 120,000 people. Billy Graham didn't see that one, you know?
[11:05] I mean, good night. I mean, what in the world? Well, this guy saw the greatest thing in the world, and then he wishes he could die. How about Elijah in 1 Kings chapter number 18? Remember what happens there?
[11:16] He says, Boy, they get all the prophets of Baal, and Elijah looks and he says, Everybody choose your God. Who's the real God here? The real God will be the God who consumes all the offering by fire.
[11:30] And so sure enough, the prophets of Baal get their altar, and Elijah gets his altar, and they begin to dance around, and boy, they're jumping around, and they're cutting themselves, and they're screaming, and all Elijah's sitting over there saying, Hey guys, I think he's asleep.
[11:43] You might want to cut yourselves a little bit deeper. Man, he's having the heyday over here. And the guys are screaming, and nothing happens. Day goes on, hours and hours, and Elijah says, Y'all done yet?
[11:55] Bring over some water. Buddy pours the water all around. He says, Dig a little bit deeper in the trenches. Pour some more water. Bring some more water. And then he says, God, if your God consume this, and all of a sudden, fire comes from him.
[12:07] Boom! And it consumes it all. Boy, Elijah's the man. They take the prophets of Baal, and they destroy them all. They kill them all. They said, Baal is a false prophet.
[12:18] God is the real God. And all of a sudden, Elijah says, I'm the man. And then all of a sudden, here comes old Jezebel. I'm going to cut your head off. And instead of saying, Really?
[12:29] God, send fire on the ugly lady. You know, I mean, whatever. I mean, go or do something here. All of a sudden, he says, You've got to be kidding. She's going to kill me. I mean, I know God just did a miracle here. She's going to, she said bad, bad things about me.
[12:42] Wah! And takes off running. And all of a sudden, he finds himself in chapter number 19, the place, and he said, God, it would be better that I die. Are you serious, Jonah? Are you serious, Elijah?
[12:54] Jonah, you saw miracles. Elijah, you saw miracles. And you want to die? I mean, go over and over and over. Even our Lord, he didn't get discouraged, but even our Lord, 40 days of fasting, and all of a sudden, here comes the devil to tempt him.
[13:06] And over and over, listen, dear friends, you know what happens? Many times we quit, right before or after a big victory in our lives. Discouragement comes along the way. We see the blessings. God's doing something.
[13:18] And then all of a sudden, we get discouraged, and we say, I can't do this. Well, let's go a little bit further here in the story. So discouragement's on the journey. Discouragement comes around the big victory. But look at verse number five very quickly.
[13:28] The Bible says, the people, they spake against God. Look at it. They spake against God. And against who? Whoa. Who was God?
[13:39] Who was Moses? God was the one who took him out of Egypt. God used Moses to take him out of Egypt. I mean, remember? I mean, they were slaves in Egypt. They were working hard for the hard taskmasters.
[13:53] They were doing all this bad stuff, and all of a sudden, Moses says, God says, let's go. And they said, well, we can't. Okay, let's go. Man, they get going, and all of a sudden, Moses says, raises up the rod, and God divides the Red Sea.
[14:04] They all run through there, and all of a sudden, they get scared, and Moses said, come on, guys. Boy, the waters move apart, and he gets on the other side. Everybody goes, yeah, yeah, this is awesome. They look the other side, and all of a sudden, here comes the Egyptians running across.
[14:18] They get nervous once again. They said, no, it can't be. And Moses said, seriously, guys, we're crying again. Puts up the rod, and boom, it all comes down, and God destroys all the Egyptians. They sing a big song.
[14:29] Wonderful things are happening. It was Moses when they said, there's no water. Moses said, you guys are knuckleheads. Hits the rod against the rock, and the waters come running out. It was Moses that when God, when the people said, we don't have any meat, Moses said, God, they're a bunch of whiners and complainers.
[14:46] They need some more meat. God said, all right, I got a bunch of quail up here. I didn't know what to do with anyway. Boom, and he throws all the quail down. And they said, we don't have any food. And he says, all right, I'll give them, you know, just little bitty pieces of bread.
[14:58] It's called manna. They can have some of that too. Every time. Now, they're discouraged. And listen, when they're discouraged, that comes along the journey. When they're discouraged, that comes around the victorious times. Now, all of a sudden, they're saying really dumb things.
[15:12] Listen to your friends. Discouragement comes along the journey. Discouragement comes right before or after a big victory when God is blessing. But discouragement number three, makes us say really dumb things.
[15:23] Things that many times we'll regret. Things that many times, these guys look and they say, I can't believe it. We can even go with David. The example of David in 1 Samuel chapter number 30. Remember, I mean, he gets all these men that, boy, they were distraught.
[15:36] They were in debt. They were, man, they were just a bunch of outcasts. They come and David said, come on, follow me boys. And I'll make you real men. They become the valiant, the mighty men of David.
[15:46] And all of a sudden, David brings them back from Ziklag. And these guys look at them and boy, there's bad things are happening. They look at David and they said, let's stone them. And David's saying, seriously, me, you want to stone?
[15:58] When you get discouraged, the best thing is not to open your mouth. When you get discouraged, don't talk to other people. Talk to God. Amen. I remember when I was in college, in every dorm, there was probably, I don't know, 35 guys in a dorm.
[16:12] There's several different rooms. There's 35, 40 guys to every dorm. And I remember when every dorm had one pay phone. For those of y'all that do not know, the generation of pay phones, it's pretty much like a cell phone that's got a wire on it, stuck to a wall, and you got to put a quarter in it to talk to somebody.
[16:28] I mean, we've come a long way now. Amen. But you know what? I mean, we had these pay phones that I remember, I remember getting in college and one of the men, I don't remember who said, they said this, when you are mad or you get discouraged, promise yourself that you will not touch the phone.
[16:44] Because every time somebody got mad at a professor, every time somebody got discouraged, you know what they did? Mommy. Mama said, my little boy needs my help. You know, and comes running, you know, slapping a professor up.
[16:56] That's my little boy. You know what I mean? Everybody, and they said, don't touch the phone. Listen, and it would be a good advice for us. When we get discouraged, all of a sudden we lash out and we say something. We jump on Facebook and say, you wouldn't believe what would happen to me.
[17:08] No, nobody really cares what happened to you, but you know, I mean, we go at it, you know? I mean, we get on Twitter and say, worst church ever, you know, you know what I mean? Hashtag vision, you know what I mean? Really? I mean, we say that, God gives the blessings, and all of a sudden somebody says, really?
[17:22] You're wearing that shirt? And we're like, oh, you know, we get all offended, we run away, and we're like, I can't believe this church, you know? They don't like people, you know? And we say all these crazy things. Listen, dear friends, when we get discouraged, decide you're not going to open your mouth, close your mouth, because it will not help anybody.
[17:39] I know people up till today, who will not ask forgiveness to other people, who've got themselves into hot water, because when they were discouraged, they said something, maybe they didn't really mean it, but they spoke at the wrong time.
[17:51] And now they would have to swallow a whole lot, a bunch of stuff, just because of what they said. Well, discouragement, it comes along the way, and discouragement usually is around a big time of victory, and discouragement makes us say crazy things, but look there at the rest of verse number five.
[18:04] They speak against God, they speak against Moses, this is what they said. Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt, to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread.
[18:18] So discouragement, it's along the way, and discouragement, it's around right before, right after, a big victory and discouragement, makes us say some really dumb things, but fourth, and listen to this, discouragement is very egocentrical.
[18:30] Discouragement makes us focus all on me. They say, our soul loatheth, we don't have any water, and we don't have any meat, and you're not taking care of us.
[18:42] Wah, wah, wah. Somebody called the whambulance. I mean, look at these guys just going on, and on, and on, all about me. Now listen, when we get discouragement, when we get discouraged, I heard one man say this, you know what, discouragement is one of the biggest egocentrical things that we could have.
[19:00] You know why we get discouraged? They didn't treat me right. They didn't consider me. They don't remember me. They didn't recognize me. They didn't think of me. They didn't know that I didn't like this food.
[19:10] They didn't know it. It's all about us. And as Christians, we must remove our eyes and our heart from us. We're to help one another. We're to serve one another. We're to love one another.
[19:22] We're to exhort one another. All these one another verses, we're to get our eyes off of ourself. Because discouragement is very egocentrical. It makes us think about all that we deserve.
[19:33] All that, you know, all the propaganda on TV, all it says is, come on man, you deserve it. And we're like, you better believe I do. And you know, we go out and buy whatever because we deserve it.
[19:45] No, we don't. And we buy into it. We bite the bait. We swallow it all. Then we take off running. Well, very quickly, we know that discouragement, it's along the way of life.
[19:57] You're going to confront it, dear friend. Discouragement, it's probably around before or after a big victory that God has, or that God wants to do, or God has given you. Victory, boy, or excuse me, discouragement.
[20:09] It makes us say some really dumb things. It makes us focus really on ourself. So let's very quickly see the response of discouragement. Verse number seven, would you jump down there? So verse number seven, the Bible says this, therefore the people, they came to Moses and they said, we have sinned.
[20:27] If we were spoken against the Lord and against thee, pray unto the Lord that he may take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. So what's the response here? Well, the first step that they did, they came to Moses and they asked forgiveness.
[20:41] You know, the first thing we need to do as Christian is when we're discouraged, stop and ask forgiveness of God. And if anybody else that we've heard along the way, God, you know what?
[20:52] I was focused in the wrong area. Doesn't the Bible say, but seek ye, seek God first. Seek ye first the kingdom of God, his righteousness, and then all these other things will be happening.
[21:02] You know, when we get things out of balance and out of order, all of a sudden things just seem to, we just try to work on balancing everything. And the Lord says, just fight, just look for me. And I'll worry about balancing everything out in life.
[21:15] But you know what? We really focus on ourself and focus on everything else. So the first thing we need to do is ask forgiveness. Second thing we need to do is start focusing on the right things. The right things, start focusing on God.
[21:27] They said, you know what? Maybe we're not right talking like this. Maybe we're not right thinking about this. In fact, what Moses did, he said, you know what? I'm going to pray for y'all. I mean, you guys try to hurt me, but I'm going to pray for you.
[21:38] We need to get our eyes off of ourself. Quit thinking about ourself. As the Bible says, honoring one another, esteeming the other better than ourselves. We need to look at other people. And then not only that, as Moses did, he said, okay, I gotcha.
[21:51] And then he went and he prayed for them. Pray for them. Man, if I was Moses, let's be honest. If you were Moses, people were back talking you and saying all this junk. And all of a sudden you had your opportunity.
[22:02] Boy, it says right there in verse number six, that because of this, boy, all the snakes came and they started to bite him. If I was Moses, I would have stood up there and said, you're really sorry. What are you sorry for? Huh? Really?
[22:12] Another snake. Get him. You know, I mean like, but don't kill him this time. Just bite him on the earlobe. I want to make him suffer a little bit, you know? And then afterwards, okay, now I think I'll forgive you. You know, that's not what he does.
[22:24] So you know what? When we're discouraged, the response is, first of all, ask forgiveness from God, from others. Second of all, we need to start focusing on the right things. And third of all, we need to start getting involved in God's work.
[22:37] We need to say, God, I'm going to put my priorities right. God, I'm going to jump back in. And Moses said, I'll pray for you. Moses had better things to do, but he prayed for them. Do you know, when you start focusing on others, your friends, all of a sudden, you forget about your own problems.
[22:52] When you start helping other people, you forget about your own problems. Instead of whining all our way to church as we drive and, oh, what was me? Everything is horrible. If you stop by and pick somebody up, buddy, it would change all of your heart.
[23:05] If you came here and said, you know what? I'm going to get here to church early and I'm going to clean up or I'm going to help out or I'm going to do something. You know what? It would change everything about you. But while we're so egocentrical and thinking only about us, we'll continue in the rut of discouragement.
[23:19] So maybe we get involved. There were many times that I was in Argentina that I would leave the house and I would go over somewhere and I'd walk and they'd say, Pastor, good to see you. And man, they would talk all these things and how they were encouraged in the Lord and how things were happening.
[23:34] And I'm thinking, yeah, whatever, dude. I mean, I'm coming here to do the pastoral visit and better not take long. And I walk in there and said, can I use your restroom? And I walk in there. I mean, the bathroom's not even finished.
[23:46] Pretty ugly, you know, work that they have there. And you have a bucket right there to flush the toilet. And boy, just got, their house has absolutely nothing. They're using lawn chairs as furniture and there's nothing's really decorated, not because they don't want to, because they don't have the money.
[24:01] And you walk out and you say, you know what? I just want to pray with you. And it's almost like the spirit says, really? Mr. Spiritual? These guys are encouraged and they have absolutely nothing.
[24:12] That you have. Maybe we should take a lesson. It's not a material issue. It's a spiritual issue. And so many times we've got problems because you see, joy and happiness is not something that we have in our pocket.
[24:23] It's something that we have in our heart. Maybe we should look past it and say, God, you know what? You've been good to me. Maybe we should take all these different lessons and say, God, please help me start rejoicing in the Lord.
[24:34] Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say, rejoice, start singing. Do you know if you sing, it will totally change your mood. Start whistling something. I don't care if it's have a Merry Christmas. It'll change you. And the Bible says, when somebody's sick, call for the elder to the church, James chapter five.
[24:48] And he says, when someone said, sing, you know what? If you start singing, buddy, just changes everything about us. Start thanking God for what you do have and quit thinking about the things that you don't have.
[25:01] You see, these guys got to the point they were on the journey of life and all of a sudden, boom, discouragement hits. It was right after big blessings of God. And so they start speaking these dumb things.
[25:13] There was no social media, so they just said it all. They told friend to friend, from neighbor to neighbor, and from relative to relative until it all got around all the camp. They said these crazy things. And they started going their wild ways, and they started thinking about themselves.
[25:27] And all of a sudden, God says, really? And God brings some problems, and all of a sudden, here comes the response. And the response was, you know, God, help me stop thinking about me. Help me start thinking about you.
[25:39] When was the last time that you counted your blessings? When was the last time, you know what? Asking forgiveness does good to the soul. You know, when was the last time you just said, God, you're good.
[25:50] God, God, help me thank you. When was the last time you said, can I do something at church? Can I get involved? Do you know what? When you get involved, dear friend, it changes your heart. When you get involved, it becomes contagious.
[26:02] When you get involved, everybody gets excited. Do you know what? When you get involved, boy, things begin to happen, and discouragement runs away. My mom used to say, you know what? This idol not doing anything, it's like the devil's handiwork.
[26:16] Just sitting around, and while we sit in our room, and just say, oh, woe is me. Everything's bad. I'm discouraged. Really? I mean, we feel like jumping off a bridge after that one.
[26:30] But you know what? Maybe we need to stop one second and say, God, you really have been good to me. God, you really are good. Lord, thank you. And just as you've been good to me, I'm going to give that to somebody else, and I'm going to be a blessing to somebody else.
[26:43] Maybe we need to change all this discouragement and find the response, and the response is our God. You know where He is? There's plentiful, there's overabundance joy in the presence of our God.
[26:56] So maybe we need to stop fussing, focus on our God, and we can get rid of this thing called discouragement. And when we do, the work of God will advance, God will get the glory, and things will begin to happen.
[27:08] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia. For more information, log on to www.visionbaptist.com where you can find our service times, location, contact information, and more audio and video recordings.