Psalm 142 - When You Are Discouraged Series

PSALM 142 – WHEN YOU ARE DISCOURAGED

Years ago, there was an article in USA Today about a guy named John Burns. The article described him as an alcoholic and homeless. He was living in New York City. There was a fire in a building and there were some people trapped inside. John Burns ran into the building without thinking of his own safety and saved a woman named Sonja and her baby from this fire. It hit national media. When he was interviewed, he was asked if he felt like a hero. He said “I’m not a hero, I’m just a drunken bum.” Can you imagine the mom and the daughter that were saved, do you think they would describe him that way? No, to them he was a hero. He did something that changed their lives. But this guy had been discouraged for so long that even after doing something great he could not see his own worth in the eyes of God. All he saw of himself was a discouraged drunken bum.

Today we are continuing in our series looking at the Psalms.

Psalms 142:1-7 I cry aloud to the LORD; I lift up my voice to the LORD for mercy. 2 I pour out my complaint before him; before him I tell my trouble. 3 When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who know my way. In the path where I walk men have hidden a snare for me. 4 Look to my right and see; no one is concerned for me. I have no refuge; no one cares for my life. 5 I cry to you, O LORD; I say, "You are my refuge, my portion in the land of the living." 6 Listen to my cry, for I am in desperate need; rescue me from those who pursue me, for they are too strong for me. 7 Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name. Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me.

This psalm is a prayer that David prayed when he was in a cave hiding for his life. This had to be one of the lowest points in David’s life. He must have been discouraged. We will all face times of discouragement from time to time. You cannot dismiss it and think it will never happen to you. The only difference between your discouragement and the person next to you is how severe it’s going to hit and how often it’s going to hit. Everybody faces it from time to time. The question is, what do you do when it hits you? I want to share with you 4 things about discouragement today;

1. Realize how discouragement affects you

Discouragement sidetracks us from living the life that God intended us to live. Like the story we started with today, discouragement keeps us from recognizing who we are in Christ. It holds us down. It chokes our joy and satisfaction.

I grew up in Sarnia. One of the things my friends and I loved to do was to go swimming under Blue Water bridge in the mouth of the St. Clair River. Just down from the bridge was an old warehouse building (now the casino). You could climb up on to the roof of it and then jump off from about 40 ft into the water. The water there did not have a strong current, but it did have lots of weeds. If you landed in the water and went down too far you could get tangled up in them. If the weeds wrapped around your legs, the only thing you could do was to gently brush them off and push free. What most often happened was that people would panic and try to come straight up. That just made the weeds tighter. They would hold you under until you drowned. Several kids died there because of that, which only seemed to make us want to do it more.

Discouragement can be like those weeds. They can grab you and hold you under. Maybe your discouragement has not led to you become an alcoholic or left you on the streets. Let me ask, has it robbed you of being the person that God wants you to be? Has it effected your mood to the point where you do not want to have people around you? Has it impacted your relationships? Has it left you cynical, negative and pessimistic? Is it keeping you from celebrating life? Has it sidetracked you from the life God intended you to have?

I worked for a summer at the Yonge St. Mission. I would meet people all the time who were living on the street because of discouragement. They had just given up on life. I met this one guy who lived in an old dumpster. His name was Ray. He used to live in Newfoundland. He was married and had a son. One day they went to the beach. A rip current grabbed his son and swept him out to sea. He could not swim, so he stood there on the beach and watched him drown. He could not handle that loss and the sense of guilt. He turned to alcohol to cope. His wife left him, he lost his home and wound up on the streets of Toronto.