When?

Josh.8:1 “Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid or discouraged. Take all your fighting men and attack Ai, for I have given you the king of Ai, his people, his town, and his land.”

Yesterday, we learnt that the first thing to do with discouragement is to learn from it. If we do not learn from discouragement, it gets deeper, darker, then it comes more often, and it leads to defeat. Today we will be looking at four questions that can help us learn from discouragement.

Take a sport like Tennis, for instance, one of the things that I do (and I do this in all the other sports I play also) when I make a mistake is, I am not kicking myself. Instead, I rehearse the right thing, I rehearse what I should be doing. That kind of infuses me with strength and I am able to put away the error. I identify what I did wrong and what I should be doing. I practice the motion again. This puts me in a place where I am just waiting for the next opportunity and I do it right.
We have to learn from discouragement; four questions that will help us learn. The first is, when am I usually discouraged? This is a powerful question because it will reveal patterns in your life. Once you can see the pattern, you can break it. When are you usually discouraged? I want you to think about it deeply. I will share an event with you. For me, I discovered that I am usually discouraged when I let people down. I am usually discouraged when I let people dear to me down. For instance, they ask me to do something and I commit to doing it, not a problem, easy-peasy, right? In my mind, I check it off as done!

Then, I see the person and the expectation on the person’s face tells me everything, they do not need to ask me anything. I have let him or her down, and I get discouraged. I do not want to let people dear to me down. Even as a father, as a Pastor I do not want to show up unprepared. I do not want to show up without praying up and not fired up, it will never happen by the grace of God. I do not want to let people down and it can be a big burden for someone like me. When it happens, and it will happen time and again because I am human, I get really discouraged. So, I noticed that was my pattern. For some people, they do not get discouraged when they let people down. In fact, it is like second nature to them, so it is not an issue with them. Or perhaps not as big for them as it is with me. So, you need to ask yourself, when am I usually discouraged?’

Prayer: Holy Spirit, please help me identify the pattern and root of my disappointment and give me a Word to transform it, in Jesus Name. Amen!