Counseling Yourself Through Discouragement

Counseling Yourself Through Discouragement Psalm 42 Rev. Min Chung (Large Group, April 22, 2016) Introduction The title of today s sermon is Counseling Yourself Through Discouragement; It is about that time of the year that people can be discouraged. We will learn how to counsel ourselves through discouragement, and you can use these steps practically to counsel yourself and others. We will be looking at Psalm 42: Why Are You Cast Down, O My Soul? To the choirmaster. A Maskil of the Sons of Korah. 1 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?" 4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. 5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation 6 and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. 7 Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. 8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. 9 I say to God, my rock: "Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?" 10 As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?" 11 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. [We are shown a picture of a runner in a marathon who pooed in his pants during his run.] I don t know if you can tell, but he had a bad stomach on the day of the race, and released with his shorts on in the middle of a half-marathon. Many agree that this is one of the most embarrassing photos, and people cannot move past the grimace on Ekvall's face, and liquefied poop running down his legs. Dubbed poop man, he finished the race in 21 st place, in this condition! Afterwards a reporter asked him, Did you ever consider stopping to clean off? His response was No, I d lose time. He explained, If you quit once, it s easy to do it again and again, and it becomes a habit. What a quote from Poop-man. "Despite the enormous problems with stomach cramps that lasted between two and 12 kilometers, Mikael completed his goal. This is despite the misery! Imagine what he would have accomplished without a bad stomach!" He placed ninth in the same race the following year, and went on to set a Swedish national record at the Copenhagen half-marathon in 2014, and represented Sweden in the European Athletic

Championships. Why? He simply did not quit. There are times that we all fail, and we want to quit; we feel like we are in a puddle of tears, but we have to keep on running. When you look at these verses from the passage carefully, we can see that this man was on the verge of quitting, in discouragement; perhaps even depressed. Look at these verses: 3 My tears have been my food day and night, 5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? 6 My soul is cast down within me. 9 "Why have you forgotten me? The Psalmist was in utter discouragement. Perhaps some of you are going through this now, and if not, there will be a period of time in your life when you do go through this, or others who are going through this or will go through this. We will learn how to counsel ourselves through discouragement. We will talk about 7 steps, with two things in each point, one being the question, like What am I living for, and the other being the answer and what to do with that knowledge, for example Prepare to overcome. I. What am I living for? Prepare to overcome - Psalm 42:5 We need to prepare to overcome. A discouraged person needs to examine and evaluate the purpose of their life. This is something that we should all do so that we can act better in times of discouragement. If you are prepared for an exam, you will do better. If you are prepared for war, you will do better. There is a world of difference between those who are committed to something knowing the purpose and aim of something and ones who are not committed and don t know it. A. Remember to prepare - During ordinary moments For those of you, who are discouraged at this moment, remember to prepare. For those of you who not discouraged at this moment, remember to prepare because there will be times in this life when you will be. Remember to prepare during the ordinary moments, because you need to prepare yourself for the thought; prepare yourself with the purpose. For those who are discouraged now, recommit to fight because you have a purpose. You cannot sit there; you have to finish the race, no matter what s bothering you. Recommit to the fight before you start to fight again, and even if you are discouraged, you have to overcome. B. Recommit to fight - Before we start to fight again If you know the purpose of your life, then you will immediately know what to do. If it is something related to God, in times of need, you will seek God, seek the Word and prayer and worship, receive his grace, and persevere, even if you want to give up. But, if you are fuzzy about the purpose of your life, you are lost in your aim, especially when you are discouraged. When you feel like quitting, check the purpose of your life, check often, and check every sphere of your life. Start by asking small questions, like, Why am I feeling this way? What is it that I want that I m

not getting? Having negative feelings means that you re not getting what you want, or that you worry that you won t get what you want in the future. What is it that you re afraid to face? It always has to do with your pleasure, that you want or might not get, or your pain, what you don t want and might get. It always has to do with your purpose and plan of your life. It always has to do with whose praise and glory you are living for. That s why Psalm 42:5 says I shall again praise him, my salvation. Now that is a purpose statement, a reason to get out of bed. If this is clear, no matter if you go through discouragement or don t get what you want, He can still be glorified. You are commissioned by the King, given a purpose for living, created to discover his worth, and declare his praise. Though you might not get what you want, when you are doing well, you are encouraged. Prepare yourself and memorize these verses because you ll need them later in life. - Philippians 1:21 For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. My happiness, by blessing, is Jesus Christ. I have found something to live for, and to die is gain. Now, I have found something to die for. That is a purpose statement. - 1 Corinthians 10:31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. No matter what you do, how big or small, do it all for the glory of God. We need to reiterate, remember in the small aspects of our lives, redeeming what we re doing, and saying I m doing this for the glory of God. Take a private step of faith in obedience; even though you don t feel like it, live to praise Him. If you do anything because of what Jesus has done for you, you will show his worth to others, and if you believe that He is worthy, it will bring pleasure to God, and your heart becomes powerful to shine, and others cannot help but see his love through you. II. What is inside of me? Listen to discover Listen to yourself, listen to see what is in you, and listen to learn about yourself. Learn to listen to yourself, your feelings, your thoughts, your words, the content of your mind and heart. Since we are always listening to something, sometimes we need to turn everything off to listen to what is inside you. There is passive listening and active listening. Passive listening is listening to music in the background. Active listening is listening for instruction, listening to something that s important to you. Passive listening is letting other voices around you influence you, without letting you think or discern; it changes your thinking process. We need to be active listeners to help us solidify the purpose of our lives, to form who we are. When you listen to your own thoughts, you will discover many sinful and negative thoughts and painful memories. You are often afraid that you may discover the ugliness inside you that you hear about, so you turn something else on instead. There are two main reasons that lead to discouragement: A. Listening to the wrong thoughts that you have - Psalm 42:9 Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

This Psalm writer is honest. Regardless of his position as a believer and spiritual leader, he had these thoughts. There will be times when we go through these doubts and wrong thoughts about God s presence, or existence, or love, or his power, etc. We need to listen in the midst of difficult times to see what we are made of. Sometimes we can listen to wrong thoughts that we may have, but we can also listen to the wrong thoughts of other people. B. Listening to the wrong thoughts of other people - Psalm 42:10 As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, Where is your God? Media, TV shows, movies, we ve been passively listening to these things all our lives without discernment. These things have formed our train of thoughts. Trains of thoughts are habits or patterns in your mind, and you can talk about them for hours and hours on end. Some people have money or lust; whenever you have an addiction, it has a train of thought in your mind. That is why it leads to the memory of pleasure, which leads to the behavior in your lives. There are so many ungodly trains that we have, and once you start to get on, it is hard to stop that train and it goes without us knowing. If we are not careful about where these trains go and we get on passively, we will arrive at a destination that we don t want. Our present thoughts are a product of what we ve been listening to all our lives. If what we have been listening forms our train of thought, we can have purposeful listening to help solidify the purpose of our lives. For this reason, we need to have a godly train of thought. Some people memorize Bible verses, other people need a train of thought that gets them out of discouragement or addiction. Without a track, we can t go anywhere, and we revert back to the bad train of thought. We need to build a godly train of thought. Learn how to think this way and build this train of thought with Bible verses, so that instead of going on the wrong train of thought, you get on the right track and build it. You need to overcome your automatic thinking, whether it is high pride or low pride, sin or addiction; you need to have purposeful thinking that will lead to praise and glory to God. III. What is the deeper problem? Ask to understand - Psalm 42:5 5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? The Psalm writer is examining the deeper part and essence of his being. As you get on the right track, continue to ask questions, sometimes even audibly. Ask questions like Why? What do I want? Why am I so discouraged? What station am I stopping at? What kind track am I on? Where does this thinking lead me to? Will this lead to my own praise or to the praise of my Jesus? Ask questions until you relate your feelings and situation to the purpose of your life and your relationship to God. One of the best things that you can learn before you leave CFC is Heart Motives. You need to know the essence of your motive, connecting whatever you are doing to your heart motive. If you can do that, you are beginning to understand yourself. Even the smallest habit is related to your heart. Understanding yourself is just the beginning; now you have to understand what you are doing, what you might be doing, how you relate to others, and there are so many factors that relate to the heart. Get to the bottom of your heart, but don t stay there. Keep going until you see the cross of Jesus he forgives you and strengthens you until you see the throne of God to be forgiven and changed so you can redeem your heart, glorify God, and love Him. Live the right way and get on the right path. These principles are simple, but not

simplistic. If these principles seem superficial, you are numb to the secrets of spiritual joy and freedom. They are the foundation of your life and spiritual life themselves as we are talking about these things. IV. How can I regain control? Confess to return - Psalm 42:11 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God. How can I regain control? Hope in God, because our hope is in something else. When we are discouraged, even though God says I am present with you, we are still discouraged because our hope is in something else, and we want something else other than God. So, confess in order to return to regain control. According to the Bible, there are only two paths in life: the narrow path and the wide path. The path for the Christian is the way of the cross, or the way of everything else; the narrow path or the wide path. When you are not fighting your heart, you lose control of your heart, and your heart goes off the path of the cross. So, you need to confess your sins to regain redemptive control of your heart so that you may stay on the narrow path following Jesus Christ, denying yourself and carrying your own cross. Repentance means regaining control of your life. Sin makes us lose control, but confession leads to us be in control. A part of God s love is to show you your sin so that you are not weighed down and condemned by it. You cannot see your sin unless He shows you your sin, with that being a grace of God. As soon as you see that sin, you should feel joy in that you are receiving God s grace, thanking Him immediately as soon as you sin. Confessing your sin should be as much a part of your life as prayer, as it is in the Lord s Prayer, Forgive our sins, just as we forgive our debtors. Just as we need to pray to depend on God daily, we need to pray to God for the confession of our sins as a part of our daily routine. It does not jeopardize you relationship with God, but enhances it by removing the one and only thing that can get in the way of it: sin. When you confess your sin, God swipes it away, and we are restored to the throne of grace, in the presence of the Father, who will comfort you and use you to comfort other people. Confessing your sin is important because on the track of the cross and of the love of the Father, there is a stop of seeing your depravity and the confession of your sins that leads to comfort and empowerment. V. How can I overcome? Speak to change - Psalm 42:11 11 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God. A. Listen to God He is speaking to himself, but it is assumed that he listened to God and is convinced by what God says. So he can speak to himself with what he heard from God. - Psalm 42:8 By day, the Lord commands his steadfast love, This became his testimony because he heard God first. In his presence, we can see love that takes all eternity to comprehend.

- James 1:22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. You can listen passively, but it needs to be listening with the heart, actively with faith. We need to learn to listen with purpose. Jesus is always teaching us and speaking to us with the Word, with the Holy Spirit; we must listen because there is a purpose. Turn things off and listen to the right things because we need to have spiritually purposeful listening. It will cleanse your soul, heart, and mind. There is a bigger and greater purpose of God s glory. For your benefit and eternal joy, start to listen to God. When you can listen, then you can speak to yourself. That is why the psalmist is getting off the track of discouragement and on the track of hope. B. Learn to speak to yourself - Psalm 42:8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. - Psalm 42:11 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God. If you think of memories, there are two types of memories that come to mind: unintentional memories and intentional memories. You remember unintentional memories because they were important to your heart, that s why you remember them. Intentional memories are memories that you force yourself to remember. Most of these trains of thoughts are unintentional memories. They are related to your sinful heart, pleasure, sin or something that gives you pleasure in your unintentional memories. In order to overcome your sinful memories, you need unintentional memorization of some things, even if it doesn t feed you, like Bible verses, logic through the Scripture, theology; these things that will help you. These intentional thoughts and trains of thought can build godly tracks and build a smoother track. Without it, you ll go back to your old train of thought. If we remember intentional memories for spiritual purposes, you can overcome the unintentional train of thought that leads to discouragement or addiction because these trains stimulate your sinful heart. Remember that as you speak to yourself, your natural thoughts may be, Where are you, God, but you are building the tracks of your heart. VI. How can I receive strength? Linger to receive - Psalm 42:8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. The Psalmist is stating that he may not feel His steadfast love, even though all the feelings he may feel are a part of his testimony. He may not be feeling it now, but he is not leaving God s presence. Don t leave the presence of God until you experience God s grace. - Psalm 42:1-3 He is not experiencing the taste of the Living Water in this moment. What this passage is teaching us is that we should not leave the presence of God until we receive His grace. Only as you go to the Cross can you receive the crown, only through the empty tomb.

Don t leave until you experience the faith of your heart arise. When you experience the faith of your heart, grace comes. His grace overflows when our hearts are willing to listen and accept it. Confession might be the next stop on the train of thought, but faith is just after that; keep on going. - Romans 7:15, 24-25 Paul is so discouraged in this chapter, thinking about his sinful heart. In Romans 8, he is thinking about his spiritual heart, and how the Holy Spirit is encouraging him. There is a drastic difference between the confession station and the faith station. Romans 7 is about Paul speaking to his own soul, and in Romans 8 Paul waits until he receives His grace. In verses 15 and 24, Paul is so discouraged, but in 25, Paul says, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Paul not only confessed, but he stayed there and received something good. - Romans 8:1, 28, 32, 35, 37-39 Paul is receiving and experiencing grace as he discovers the grace of God and declares the grace of God through these verses. While other people are asking, Where is your God, we ll point to the cross and say, There is my God! He died in my place. 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us, how will he not also with him graciously give us everything else? 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? Your pool of discouragement is simply a puddle in comparison to God s ocean of grace and love. We will not only go through these difficulties in v. 35, but we will conquer over them. Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the arms of God, the embracing bosom, the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord (37-39). VII. How can I be faithful until the end? Stay to last Never give up; never quit. This Psalmist illustrates this to us. - Psalm 42:7-8, 11 Regardless of hardship and difficulties, the Psalmist still holding on. Notice that the title of the sermon is not Counseling In Discouragement, but it is Counseling Through Discouragement, because God is with us, and everything that we face, we will go through it. - Psalm 23:4 Notice it said As I walk through the valleys and not in the valleys. While it isn t necessarily the destination that matters, it is the path. This world, no matter the suffering that

you go through, it is only a path. We will get to the Promised Land. All of our misery and suffering will be gone, our tears wiped away. We will be sinless in the presence of God, and we will go through this, by the grace of God. Our purpose, as we walk through it, is to give him glory. God s purpose is to lead us to our glory, meaning the glory of God, with Christ s likeness in us and through us. We will experience His glory, so never give up. - Philippians 1:6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. We are becoming more like Jesus, something inside of us that we know is alive spiritually. He began a good work in you, and He will carry it on to completion, until sin will be gone, and we see Him face-to-face. - 2 Corinthians 1:4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. He will use us as we overcome to show His worth and His grace to others through us. We must fight paralyzing feelings so that you can love and comfort other people. Why? Because you are commissioned by the King. If you have never experienced the joy of serving, you have not experienced true and eternal joy of life. You are but a spiritual child that only wants to serve themselves. The child is grown up when they do something voluntarily for somebody else. This incredible joy of loving God and serving other people, especially those who don t deserve it, to the proportion that you give and don t gain is your Christ-likeness, your adult-ness. And you will experience joy that cannot be compared. You have a purpose and a reason to live. Many need your help, so get off the wrong track and go onto the right track. [We are shown a video of ducklings attempting to climb a set of stairs to reach their mother. After much struggling, all the ducklings make it] [We are shown a video from Britain s Got Talent, where a gospel choir energizes the room, bringing smiles to everyone s face and dancing throughout the room] We re following Jesus and at times we need to take that step of faith. Sometimes it is so hard to get up, but just cry out in your heart, I need you Lord, and even though He seems distant, He is empowering you to keep going; to finish the race for His Glory. Don t give up, because grace is on the way, and God is on the move.