Encouraging yourself in the Lord Pt 8

Wow!  It’s hard to believe that there are so many things that you can do to encourage yourself in the Lord in a difficult situation.  We’ve looked at six of them so far.  And there are more yet to come.
The one that we want to talk about today is an important one.  That’s because it not only encourages you, thus keeping you hopeful and in the game, but it does more.  It actually invites God to make a change in the circumstances that are discouraging you.  The thing that I’m talking about is prayer.
First, praying is the act of asking for God’s help with your problem.  He can change the situation like He did with David in Ziklag.  Imagine . . . David’s men had been trekking.  They were tired.  They’d just faced the reality that everything they owned and everyone they loved was gone, perhaps permanently.  They needed God to intervene.  They needed hope.  They needed strength.  They also needed direction.  That’s what God does when we pray.  That’s what God did when David prayed.  God answered and David got the direction that He needed.  They recovered it all, and then some, as we pointed out before.
It’s not hard to see how that encourages you when you pray.  You’re encouraged because you’ve handed over the impossibility of the situation to God.  You still have to act, but the hard part is in His hands now.  Their focus was now on God’s ability, not their inability.  They had to get up and chase the Amalekites, but God had told them that they would catch them and recover their stuff.  It might not have made them ‘not-tired’.  They were still tired.  As a matter of a fact, some were so tired that they couldn’t cross the river in pursuit.  Yet, God took care of those, too.  In doing so, He enabled the smaller group that was left to still complete their mission.  They were encouraged to move ahead.  In spite of it all, they were victorious.  They were able to stay in the game long enough to see victory because David prayed, handed it over to God and received God’s encouragement.
I say it again, “Wow”!  This worked for David. It will work for you, too.  All these tools will work for you: singing, thanking, His Word, a head full of good thoughts, remembering His faithfulness and now prayer.  Start to use them today.  We’ll talk again next week.