Encouraging yourself in the Lord Pt.2

Last week I introduced the new topic that we’re going to talk about, Encouraging Yourself in the Lord.  If you’ve ever been down or under attack, it’s impossible not to see the value of this.  It’s related to active waiting.  We want the Lord to move and to answer our prayers or meet a need that we cannot meet for ourselves.  We aren’t supposed to manipulate an answer for ourselves like Abraham and Sarah did.  Neither are we supposed to sit like a bump on a log and wait for it to happen.  Let’s not be lazy.  Let’s not be presumptuous.  First, we continue to actively wait on God about it.  We keep praying.  We don’t waste away in self-pity.  We can encourage ourselves in the Lord while we wait for His intervention.  These are a part of active waiting.
The tool that I’m going to introduce you to today is found in Ephesians 5:18-21.  “And be not drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God.”
We’re going to pull more than one tool out of this passage, but the one that I want to focus on today is the singing of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  Apparently, He wants us to use all of those forms of music.  First it says to be filled with the Spirit.  That may be considered to be a tool all by itself.  It is a powerful one.  Yet we have to do something with the tool.  I’m not going to try to tell you how to be filled with the Spirit.  I can’t tell you, but we’re commanded.  That may end up being the subject of another series or even a book.
We’re told to be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.  We can and should do that to one another for mutual encouragement, but we can also do it for ourselves.  No one in Ziklag wanted to hear David’s songs of encouragement that day.  He needed to encourage himself and he need it quickly.
As I mentioned, He wants us to not limit ourselves to just one form of godly music.  Some folks will only sing Psalms, some only hymns, some only Adult Contemporary Christian Music.  All of these limited approaches are a mistake.  Granted, there are within some collections of songs, some things which turned out to be less than perfect for one reason or another.  Ok, so don’t sing those, but diversify yourself across the ones that tend to uplift your soul.
Then just do it.  Yes, you should actually sing the songs.  I have a Spotify account and have hundreds of hours of Christian music there that I can listen to in order to encourage myself . . . and I do.  It encourages me.  However, no music encourages you more than that which you actually sing yourself.  Ok, that can pose a problem for me.  I’m not noted for my good singing.  When I do, the only ones who are edified are me and the Lord.  I haven’t quite solved that problem yet.  I think that I should have put better insulation in my man-cave.  Yeah, that’s it.
So now you have your first tool to use in order to encourage yourself in the Lord.  Be filled with the Spirit and sing.  My advice is even if you don’t feel filled with the Spirit, sing out those songs anyway.  Your Daddy will be edified and you, too, will be encouraged with Him in whatever situation that He is in with you.  Go do it.