Disgusted With Discouragement!

Disgusted With Discouragement!

I. OPENING ILLUSTRATION:

Fannie Lou Hamer was a leader of the Freedom Democratic party during the Jim Crow era. She and her family had endured the horrors and difficulties of living in the South while black in that time.

Mrs. Hamer was born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, the twentieth child in a family of six girls and fourteen boys. When she was 2 her family moved to Sunflower County, 60 miles to the west. She said:

"The family would pick fifty-sixty bales of cotton a year, so my father decided to rent some land. He bought some mules and a cultivator. We were doin’ pretty well. He even started to fix up the house real nice and had bought a car. Then our stock got poisoned. We knowed this white man had done it. He stirred up a gallon of Paris green with the feed. When we got out there, one mule was already dead. The other two mules and the cow had their stomachs all swelled up. It was too late to save ’em. That poison knocked us right back down flat. We never did get back up again. That white man did it just because we, were gettin’ somewhere. White people never like to see Negroes get a little success. All of this stuff is no secret in the state of Mississippi."

She went on to experience on hardship after another. She witnessed a lynching as a child. Later, when she tried to register to vote she was rejected again and again on various technicalities. When she went into the hospital for once procedure she woke up having had a hysterectomy. She was arrested and beaten, persecuted. Eventually when she did get into politics the Democrat party wasn't living up to her ideals and so she was instrumental in forming the Freedom Democratic party.

When she was running for office she said she was doing it to prove that she could as a black woman, knowing that the discriminatory practices of Mississippi would keep her from winning. Her deep, powerful voice shook the air as she sat on the porch or inside, talking to friends, relatives and neighbors who dropped by on the one day each week when she was not out campaigning. Whatever she was talking about soon became an impassioned plea for a change in the system that exploited the Delta blacks. “All my life I’ve been sick and tired,” she would shake her head. “Now I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.”

(from https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/fannie-lou-hamer-tired-being-sick-and-tired/)

She was disgusted with discouragement and decided to do something about it. In 1 Samuel 30 there is a story of another person who became disgusted with discouragement and did something about it, David.

1 Samuel 30:1-8 (KJV)

And it came to pass, when David and his men were come to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south, and Ziklag, and smitten Ziklag, and burned it with fire;

2 And had taken the women captives, that were therein: they slew not any, either great or small, but carried them away, and went on their way.

3 So David and his men came to the city, and, behold, it was burned with fire; and their wives, and their sons, and their daughters, were taken captives.

4 Then David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep.

5 And David's two wives were taken captives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess, and Abigail the wife of Nabal the Carmelite.

6 And David was greatly distressed; for the people spake of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved, every man for his sons and for his daughters: but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.

7 And David said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech's son, I pray thee, bring me hither the ephod. And Abiathar brought thither the ephod to David.

8 And David enquired at the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And he answered him, Pursue: for thou shalt surely overtake them, and without fail recover all.

Verse 6 says, "David encouraged himself in the LORD his God."

He was disgusted with discouragement!

I. INTRODUCTION

Our text opens in a moment in David's life where everything was not going as he probably hoped. He had been anointed king over all Israel, something he had not asked for or sought out. God found him (1 Sam 13:13; Acts 13:22).

This is years after he had slain Goliath and Saul had promised him his daughters hand in marriage, only to go back on it. This was after David realized that Saul wanted to kill him.

This was after David had run like a hunted animal hiding in caves and dens. This was after David had pretended insanity before the king of the Philistines and ultimately found himself living in the enemy's territory and almost working for them.