Sermon for Sunday February 5th, 2006

How to Encourage Yourself in God by Brian Atwood

1 Samuel 30:4-30:8

 Don’t you love those times in life when you are really enjoying God’s blessings and experiencing God’s joy? Don’t you just love it when you love the life you live?

Then there are those other times, times when life is challenging, when it’s drudgery and hard work. When you have to search for happiness.

It is commonly reported that depression affects 16-18 million Americans each year! We’re not talking about a rainy day feeling; we’re talking about a serious condition.

It ought to concern all of us that so many people have a difficult time enjoying life. And we don’t need to judge depressed people. Any number of things can weigh a person down to the point that they lose hope. And even those of us who aren’t depressed have to admit that there are times when we struggle with maintaining happiness.

The good news is that God’s Word gives you insights into your human condition and offers you tremendous help to deal with your battle to stay encouraged!

The Scriptures teach that God intends for you to enjoy life! You don’t have to let life’s challenges overwhelm you. God wants to help you face life with confidence and enthusiasm! He wants you to be encouraged and He wants you to experience a happy life!

I’m not preaching that you won’t experience any trouble if you follow Christ. I’m saying God wants to help you stay encouraged in spite of your trouble.

There are many verses of Scripture that teach that God wants you to have joy and enjoy life. Let me remind you of a couple. We could read many others.

1 Timothy 6:17b (NLT) God…richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment.

You don’t have to feel guilty about enjoying God’s blessings. That’s what He gives them to you for!

And in John 10:10 (NLT), Jesus said, "I came to give life -- life in all its fullness."

If we’re going to experience God’s joy and fullness we’re going to have to overthrow the things that compete for our love for life, things like doubt, fear and guilt.

So we’re going to open this new series today on Loving the Life You Live by first of all learning what the Bible says about How to Encourage Yourself.

I want to talk to you over the next several weeks on issues like believing in yourself and forgiving yourself and loving yourself but we’re going to begin by learning how you can encourage yourself in God.

Today we’re just going to lay some foundational principles, some general principles on Loving Life. It starts with being able to handle the rough spots. What do you do when dark days confront you? How do you stay encouraged?

Perhaps no one in the entire Bible is a greater example of being able to encourage himself in God than David. When you read some of his Psalms you are amazed that he starts writing a song while he’s discouraged and ends the same song encouraged! He learned how to see the light in dark days.

We’re going to check out a few pages of David’s biography from a time when it was hard for him to love life. We’re going to consider one particular incident when mega-stress confronted David, one day when problems piled up even before solutions to his previous problems presented themselves.

Let me set the stage for you. David is running from his own King, Saul, who is envious of him, hunting him down to kill him. Saul is so eaten up with envy and paranoia that he mistakenly thinks David is trying to steal his throne. So he tries to take David’s life on several occasions.

David has to flee to the nation of the Philistines, enemies of Israel, where he and his soldiers fight for the Philistines as mercenaries. But one day the Philistines go to fight the Israelites and David and his army are sent home. When they arrived at their temporary home in Ziklag they find that the Amalekites, a band of marauders, have raided their town, burnt their homes to the ground and taken their wives and children hostage.

David and his men were already tired and hungry. They thought they were coming home to the welcome and warmth of their families, to rest and food, but instead, they come home to a shocking scene of emptiness, desolation and loss. These strong warriors, these grown men, were so overwhelmed by their sorrow that the Bible says,

1 Samuel 30:4 (Amp) Then David and the men with him lifted up their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep.

Man was that ever a sad day. It was a bad day. It was hard to love life on that day. They cried until they couldn’t cry any more.

Perhaps you’ve had days like that, days when the sun refused to shine, days when your heart ached so violently that you wished you could imagine yourself to be someone else and somewhere else.

But wait; though it doesn’t seem possible, things get even worse for David! Pick up the story in 1 Samuel 30:6a (Amp): David was greatly distressed, for the men spoke of stoning him because the souls of them all were bitterly grieved, each man for his sons and daughters.

These men look around at what’s left of their homes smoldering on the ground and as the smoke rises from the ashes so does their hurt and anger. They need an outlet for their emotions and they choose to take things out on their leader.

This was one of the most difficult situations imaginable. Away from his real home, chased by a mentally ill king, living like a vagabond, forced to side with the enemy, and now his own men speak of mutiny by making him a scapegoat for their misery and threaten to kill him.

I want you to sense the desperation of this dark chapter in David’s life. One reason I want you to sense it is to know that you are not alone when you face feelings of desperation. This was rock bottom for David. This was the end of the rope. This was heartbreak hotel. David had nobody. His family wasn’t there to console him and his associates lost their grip to the point they want to kill him.

Most people would have been totally overwhelmed by this turn of events. Most would have thrown in the towel. But in one of the most dramatic 180-degree-turns in history the Bible says this in 1 Samuel 30:6b (Amp): But David encouraged and strengthened himself in the Lord his God.

This is one of the many reasons you’ve got to love the Word of God! This is why you’ve got to love being a child of God – and if you’re not a child of God why you ought to become one!

Even in life’s darkest days there is hope! There is a source of encouragement! You don’t have to believe the circumstances and what they look like when you can believe instead that God is going to work things out somehow!

David became so encouraged and so strengthened in the Lord that he rallied his troops and went after the Amalekites, whipped them soundly, and recovered every family member safe and sound that had been taken captive!

It’s one of the most dramatic instances of a personal turnaround anywhere – and the Word of God gives us the key insight into how it was achieved.

David encouraged and strengthened himself in the Lord his God.

Just exactly how did he do that? How can you do it? When you’re handed a startling scenario of alarming proportions – how do you not only maintain your equilibrium, but also become so strong, so courageous, that you take off after the enemy, even though you’re weak and hungry and tired, and whip that enemy soundly? How do you encourage yourself in God to be a winner when everyone and everything around you sounds out the message that you’re a loser?

When even your family and friends aren’t willing or able to encourage you – which is the precise situation David was in – how do you encourage yourself in God?

I’m a fairly optimistic person by temperament but I want to tell you it’s tough staying optimistic sometimes! Perhaps you can identify with David like I can.

And God wants you to identify with David, not only in his sorrow but also in his breakthrough!

Here are some practical pointers from this story on how to encourage your self in God.

1. Put worship before warfare.

David is well known as a mighty man of warfare. His legendary entry into armed combat takes place against a giant named Goliath. With a sling, and the experience of protecting his father’s flocks against predators like lions and bears, David defeats the monster of a man in front of him.

It’s an astounding victory. The soldiers in both the Philistine army and the Israelite army view the spectacle in disbelief. A little shepherd boy with a sling and one small stone from the bed of a brook fells the blasphemous emissary of the enemy.

And when David knocks the hulk of a hero down with his projectile he then confiscates the giant’s sword and cuts the his head off with his own weapon. The Israelites soldiers cheer and rout the Philistines as they flee in fear for their lives.

After that David joins Saul’s army and becomes so well known as a warrior that they sing songs about him.

But don’t miss the point of David’s entire life. Before anything else – David was a first rate worshipper. Here, in our text today, David didn’t just get angry and stomp off to battle against the Amalekites to reclaim is family and property. He paused to spend time with God.

You will find this is the most important principle in all of your life! You will find that spending time with God is your first priority if you are to stay encouraged in the midst of the demands of life.

It’s your first priority for more reasons than that. You need to spend time with God every day because He made you. He created you to worship Him. He deserves your worship. He is worthy of your time and attention. Your struggles are not the center of your life. And even though we’re talking in this series about enjoying life – your joy is not to be the center of your life – God is to be the center of your life!

You’re going to have to fight for your place in life sometimes. But before you fight, you need to find time for God.

Can you imagine a soldier marching off to war without proper training, without having proper weaponry and ammunition, without being part of a master battle plan? A soldier without those things is bound to fail. But a prepared soldier is a victorious soldier. And your preparation for spiritual warfare is time spent with God!

The second practical pointer for encouraging your self in God is:

2. Ask God for direction.

After David spent time with God listen to what he did next that brought encouragement into his life.

1 Samuel 30:7 (NCV) David said to Abiathar the priest, "Bring me the holy vest." 8 Then David asked the Lord, "Should I chase the people who took our families? Will I catch them?" The Lord answered, "Chase them. You will catch them, and you will succeed in saving your families."

The priest wore the "holy vest" to symbolize the presence of God. David was symbolically going into the presence of God, and, in some way we no longer understand, the vest might even have been used to determine God’s will.

But the point is, David was asking God what to do. Talk about getting good advice! David wasn’t about to go off half-cocked, not having consulted with God. Instead he was going to leave for battle confidently, knowing the will of God.

First he regained his composure by worshipping God. Now he makes his plans by consulting God.

If you start off worshipping God that’s great, but don’t forget to follow God’s instructions if you want to stay encouraged.

Sometimes we get the worship part right but stress gets us so disoriented that we forget to ask God for direction. Big mistake. We need to know what God wants us to do, not what our human nature dictates, not what others say, but what God says. Look at where the Bible says our joy comes from in times of stress.

Psalm 119:143 (NLT) As pressure and stress bear down on me, I find joy in your commands.

You’re joy in times of trouble is not going to come from the conclusions you draw on your own – its going to come from the commands God has given you. You need to find out what God tells you to do and then do it!

Just two chapters of Scripture previous from this story of David’s trial and success is different story of someone trying to find out what to do in a tough spot.

King Saul was getting ready to go to war and the prophet Samuel who had guided him so many times before was recently deceased. So do you know what Saul did? He received advice by consulting with a psychic.

1 Samuel 28:7 (NCV): Saul said to his servants, "Find me a woman who is a medium so I may go and ask her what will happen." His servants answered, "There is a medium in Endor."

So King Saul, against his own laws for the rest of the nation, disguises himself and goes to Endor to ask a psychic for direction. How sad. Saul was so far from God that the only way he had heard from God in the past was through the prophet Samuel. In desperation he goes to the wrong place for advice. The channel conjures up the spirit of the deceased prophet Samuel in order to give Saul advice. Or was it really Samuel?

Now there are two possibilities. One, she was able by demonic power to bring Samuel’s spirit to the séance with Saul. I personally doubt that but there are others who think this is what actually happened. I think God is the only one who has power over the whereabouts of our spirits. Although I do believe demonic spirits are often involved in the work of psychics.

The second possibility is that the spirit was not Samuel’s. Either a demon was masquerading as Samuel or the woman was a good ventriloquist and faked the appearance of Samuel.

The Hebrew word for medium literally means "a water bottle." That’s right, a water bottle, because of the sound made when one blows over the opening to a water bottle. It’s a hollow sound; some people believe a ghostly sound, whatever a ghost is supposed to sound like.

A lot of people parading around giving advice are only using smoke and mirrors. They’re tricking and deceiving people by deceptive magic like Elymas the wizard/magician in Acts 13 who tried to keep a government official from coming to Christ on the island of Cyprus on Paul’s first missionary journey.

Acts 13:10 (Amp) "You master in every form of deception and recklessness, unscrupulousness, and wickedness, you son of the devil, you enemy of everything that is upright and good, will you never stop perverting and making crooked the straight paths of the Lord and plotting against His saving purposes?"

Elymas was then struck with blindness and the government official he was hindering came to God.

Satan’s purpose in offering other forms of counsel is to keep you from coming to God for direction.

There are only two types of advice: godly advice and ungodly advice. Psalm 1:1a: Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly. You must opt for godly advice if you want to stay encouraged. Ungodly advice will only mess up your thinking and eventually lead to more misery.

If you want to encourage yourself in God ask God for direction.

Another practical pointer for encouraging yourself in God…

3. Treat others fairly.

What does that have to do with encouraging your self in God?

A lot of times when your life gets hairy you’re tempted to do what David’s troops did. You’re tempted to take it out on someone else. Misery loves company. You’re in the pit of despair and instead of spending time with God and asking Him what to do you do the stupid thing. You’re hurting so you hurt someone else. Hurt people hurt people.

Now what happens after the crisis passes and you have time to reflect on having behaved badly toward someone else because you were in pain?

Now you have another problem. You have to mend the fences you took down in your anger and your pain. So do yourself a favor, when troubles come be aware of your self and behave yourself.

David was aware of this principle when he left to hunt down the Amalekites that had taken his family. Two hundred men in his army of 600 were so tired they couldn’t go on. So he let them rest. He didn’t browbeat them into riding on. He told them to stay with the stuff. And when he returned with the spoils of battle he gave them an even portion with the 400 who fought the battle.

This even became a rule in Israel after that point. If you went off to battle and someone else kept the stuff you had to share the spoils of the battle with the ones who stayed with the supplies even if they didn’t fight.

David, encouraged in God, behaved like God.

Dark days can be real tests of your behavior. And if you want to encourage yourself in God you need to act like God would act. Express kindness toward others. Love them in spite of their failures. Don’t take your anger and frustration out on them.

David would face more challenges in life after this incident. But the key to staying encouraged in life is to walk with God and live according to God’s instructions. When you deviate from that you will lose your joy.