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‘Then they journeyed from Mount Hor by the Way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the soul of the people became very discouraged on the way.’ Numbers 21:4
When you look at this verse closely you see that discouragement happens in the soul; the mind, will, and emotions. Here the children of Israel were on their way to where God told them to go and while they were in the perfect will of God, Satan sent discouragers to try to stop them. So why did they become discouraged? Because ‘The king of Arad, the Canaanite, who dwelt in the South, heard that Israel was coming on the road to Atharim. Then he fought against Israel…’ (Numbers 21:1,2) They became discouraged because they had to fight. Over time, their souls were tired of fighting; which is exactly what the devil is counting on in order to win – by default.
So what are the signs of discouragement? ‘And the people spoke against God and against Moses.’ Discouragement speaks and when it does it complains. ‘Why have you [Moses] brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?’ Discouragement blames and it questions. ‘For there is no food and no water, and our soul loathes this worthless bread(Numbers 21:5).’ Discouragement is unthankful for what it has.
Here lately, I’ve been presented with an unusual amount of opportunities to be discouraged. What about you? In those times, let’s commit to do what the children of Israel did not do and that’s;
Be quiet.
Don’t complain.
Don’t blame somebody else, your discouragers, or the devil.
Don’t question if God is working and last but certainly not least…
Be thankful.
Is it going to be easy? Absolutely not! It’s actually going to require us to fight. 1 Timothy 6:12 says, ‘Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.’
We’ve got to fight discouragement and lay hold. Lay hold means ‘to take’; it’s like literally snatching something out of someone’s hands. When I was a child, I had no problem snatching my toys and shouting ‘Mine!’ As adult children of God, it’s time to do the same! It's time to start verbally assassinating our enemies by way of our good confessions in order to snatch our godly toys out of their possession! And when they try to fight and discourage us, we must allow the Holy Spirit to remind us of the 5 things above and immediately pull the trigger on our good confessions.Point blank. Right in the devil’s face.
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