Models for Combating Discouragement

Solid Joys Daily Devotional

Desiring God

Joy, Unknown, Devotional, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Daily Devotional, 163859, Religion & Spirituality, Solid Joys, Jesus, John Piper

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2023

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Bible is replete with saints struggling with sunken spirits. But God includes such testimonies so that we might use them to fight the unbelief of despondency.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	July 21. Models for combating discouragement. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the
0:11.6	strength of my heart and my portion forever, Psalm 73.26. Literally, the verb is simply fail.
0:24.4	Not may fail. This God besotted Psalmist Asaph says,
0:31.4	My flesh and my heart fail. I am despondent. I am discouraged.
0:41.2	But then, immediately, he fires a broadside against his despondency, but God is the strength of my
0:49.5	heart and my portion forever. The Psalmist does not yield to discouragement. He battles unbelief
1:01.0	with counterattack. In essence, he says, In myself, I feel very weak and helpless and unable to cope.
1:13.6	My body is shot, and my heart is almost dead. But whatever the reason for this despondency,
1:21.6	I will not yield. I will trust God and not myself. He is my strength and my portion.
1:32.3	The Bible is replete with instances of saints struggling with sunken spirits.
1:40.1	Psalm 19.7 says, The Law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.
1:49.6	This is a clear admission that the soul of the saint sometimes needs to be revived.
1:56.7	And if it needs to be revived, in a sense, it was dead. That's the way it felt.
2:10.4	David says the same thing in Psalm 23, 2 and 3. He leads me beside still waters. He
2:18.5	restores my soul. The soul of the man after God's own heart for Samuel 13, 14 needs to be restored.
2:31.5	It was dying of thirst and ready to fall exhausted, but God led the soul to water and gave it life
2:38.2	again. God has put these testimonies in the Bible so that we might use them to fight the
2:47.5	unbelief of despondency. And we fight with the blast of faith in God's promises. God is the
2:56.9	strength of my heart and my portion forever. We preach that to ourselves and we thrust it into
3:05.9	Satan's face and we believe it.

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -620 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Desiring God, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Desiring God and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.