Steve Brown related the story of a British soldier in the First World War who lost heart for the battle and deserted. Trying to reach the coast for a boat to England that night, he ended up wandering in the pitch black night, hopelessly lost. In the darkness he came across what he thought was a signpost. It was so dark that he began to climb the post so that he could read it. As he reached the top of the pole, he struck a match to see and found himself looking squarely into the face of Jesus Christ. He realized that, rather than running into a signpost, he had climbed a roadside crucifix. Brown explained, "Then he remembered the One who had died for him -- who had endured -- who had never turned back. The next morning the soldier was back in the trenches. "
   As a runner, when you are tired, afraid and discouraged, the best way I know to get your second wind is to strike a match in the darkness and to look on the face of Jesus Christ.

   -- "To Illustrate", Preaching Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 1989.

See:  2 Tim 2:3-5; Heb 12:1-3; Rev 2:3

   Ted Engstrom insightfully writes:

   Cripple him, and you have a Sir Walter Scott. Lock him in a prison cell, and you have a John Bunyan. Bury him in the snows of Valley Forge, and you have a George Washington. Raise him in abject poverty and you have an Abraham Lincoln. Strike him down with infantile paralysis, and he becomes Franklin Roosevelt. Burn him so severely that the doctors say he'll never walk again, and you have a Glenn Cunningham -- who set the world's one mile record in 1934. Deafen him and you have a Ludwig van Beethoven. Have him or her born black in a society filled with racial discrimination, and you have a Booker T. Washington, a Marian Anderson, a George Washington Carver. Call him a slow learner, "retarded," and write him off as uneducable, and you have an Albert Einstein.
   As one man summed it up: Life is about 20% in what happens to us and 80% in the way we respond to the events.

See:  Rom 12:21; Phil 1:12-14

   The people who consistently manifest the greatest joy in life are those who will simply not be discouraged by their circumstances. As author Zig Zigler says, "If life hands you a lemon, take the lemon and make lemonade." Let me close with several examples: Charles Goodyear's lemon was a prison sentence, resulting from a contempt of court citation. While in prison, Goodyear didn't complain. Instead, he became an assistant in the kitchen. While there, he continued to work on an idea. In the process he discovered a method for vulcanizing rubber. His lemon, a prison sentence, became our lemonade. We have better tires, which means better travel and a better way of life.

See:  Phil 1:12-14; Phil 4:11; 1 Thess 5:18

   In 1835 a man visited a doctor in Florence, Italy. He was filled with anxiety and exhausted from lack of sleep. He couldn't eat, and he avoided his friends. The doctor examined him and found that he was in prime physical condition. Concluding that his patient needed to have a good time, the physician told him about a circus in town and its star performer, a clown named Grimaldi. Night after night he had the people rolling in the aisles. "You must go and see him," the doctor advised. "Grimaldi is the world's funniest clown. He'll make you laugh and cure your sadness." "No," replied the despairing man, "he can't help me. You see, I am Grimaldi!"

See:  Job 4:3-5

Title:  Charles Spurgeon

   Spurgeon: called to a church at 23, addressing crowds of 5000 at 30. He wrote this:
   Before any great achievement in my life, some measure of depression is very usual. Such was my experience when I first became a pastor in London; my success appalled me and the thought of that career which seemed to be opening up, so far from elating me, cast me into the lowest depths out of which I uttered my misery. I found no room for a Gloria in Excelsis.
   Who was I that I should continue to lead so great a multitude? I would slip away to my village obscurity or prefer to emigrate to American and find a solitary nest in the backwoods.
   It was just then that the curtain was rising on my greatest life's work and I dreaded what it might reveal to me. I hope I was not faithless! But I was timorous and filled with a sense of my own unfitness. This depression sweeps over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my life and ministry.
   Some of you are right at the door.

See:  Isa 41:10; 2 Cor 12:9-10

   Charles Spurgeon looked back upon dark hours in his own life and said:
   I bear willing witness that I owe more to the fire, and the hammer, and the file, than to anything else in my Lord's workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my schoolroom is darkened, I see most.

See:  Deut 31:8; Isa 43:2; Heb 12:3-6

   In Remember All the Way, William C. Townsend related the story of an evangelist who was facing discouragement and criticism. One day he said to a colleague, "'Don Guillermo, I'm going to quit.' Guillermo replied, 'Why do you give your resignation to me? When you began your service, you said the Lord Jesus Christ was calling you to tell others about Him. I think you'd better present your resignation to the One who called you. Let's get down on our knees here, and you tell Him that you are going to quit. Let Him hear what you've just told me -- that it's too hard, that too many people criticize you. Tell the Lord -- He's the One who sent you.' 'Well, I hesitate to do that,' he replied. 'I'm afraid He'll tell me to stay with the job.' 'If that's what He wants, don't you think you'd better stay?' 'Yes, I think I should!'" Taking new courage and refusing to look back, the evangelist went on to 'plow a straight furrow for God.'

See:  Josh 1:9; 1 Chr 28:20; Job 4:3-5

   Perhaps you have been there. Maybe you have lived for a while behind closed doors. Many good people have. I was reading recently about a young lawyer who descended into the valley of despond. Things were going so poorly for him that his friends thought it best to keep all knives and razors away from him for fear of a suicide attempt. In fact, during this time he wrote in his memoirs, "I am now the most miserable man living. Whether I shall ever be better, I cannot tell. I fear I shall not." The young lawyer who unleashed these desperate feelings of utter hopelessness? His name was Abraham Lincoln.

   Monday is a hard way to spend one-seventh of your life.

Title:  A Bad Year

   You know it's going to be a bad year when:

 * The Government notifies you that your Social Security number has been revoked.
 * Your personal computer threatens to tell all.
 * As the moving van starts to unload next door, the first four items down the ramp are dirt bikes.
 * Your 14-year-old daughter insists Jesus never preached against pierced noses.
 * Your ailing station wagon fails to qualify for the demolition derby.
 * Upon arriving home from a week in the Bahamas, you can't find your Bible with six months of Sunday school plans tucked inside.
 * Your new boss asks if they've filled your old position yet.
 * Your pacemaker is recalled by the manufacturer.
 * Your church treasurer says, "The IRS called me the other day about some of your donation totals."

   -- From The Christian Herald January 1988.

Title:  It's a Bad Day When....

   You know it's going to be a bad day when:
 * You turn on the morning news and they're displaying emergency routes out of your city.
 * When the sun comes up in the west.
 * Or when your boss tells you not to bother taking off your coat.
 * Or when you jump out of bed in the morning and you miss the floor.
 * You know it's a bad day when the bird singing outside your bedroom window is a buzzard.
 * Or when you wake up in the morning and your dentures are locked together.
 * It's a bad day when your horn accidentally gets stuck and you're following a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.
 * You know it's a bad day when you put both contact lens in the same eye.
 * When you walk to work on a summer morning and find the bottom of your dress is stuck in your panty hose.
 * When you call your answering service and they tell you it's none of your business.
 * When your income tax check bounces.
 * When you step on your scale and it reads tilt.
 * When suicide prevention puts you on hold.

Title:  Satan's Discouragement

   There's an old fable that says the Devil once held a sale and offered all the tools of his trade to anyone who would pay their price. They were spread out on the table and each one labeled. Hatred, malice, envy, despair, sickness, sensuality -- all the weapons that everyone knows so well. But off to one side lay a harmless looking wood-shaped instrument marked "discouragement." It was old and worn looking but it was priced far above all the rest. When asked the reason why, the Devil replied, "Because I can use this one so much more easily than the others. No one knows that it belongs to me, so with it I can open doors that are tightly bolted against the others. Once I get inside I can use any tool that suits me best."

See:  Eph 6:11; 1 Pet 5:8

   Arago ascribes his success to words found on the paper cover of his book when greatly discouraged. They were, "Go on, sir; go on! The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn and shine with increased clearness on your path," written by D'Alembert. "That maxim," says Arago, "was my greatest master in mathematics." Following out these simple words, "Go on, sir: go on!" made him the first astronomical mathematician of his age. What Christians it would make of us! What heroes of faith, what sages in holy wisdom, should we become, by acting out that maxim, "Go on, sir; go on!"

See:  Phil 3:12-14; Heb 6:1

   How many people stop because so few say "Go"!
   In his fine little book Fully Human, Fully Alive, author John Powell relates a true story. It didn't happen to him but to a friend of his while he was vacationing in the Bahamas.
   What attracted the friend's attention was a large and restless crowd that had gathered toward the end of a pier. Unable to restrain his curiosity, the man began to walk down the pier and investigate the cause of all the noise and commotion.
   Powell continues:
   Upon investigation he discovered that the object of all the attention was a young man making the last-minute preparations for a solo journey around the world in a homemade boat. Without exception everyone on the pier was pessimistic. All were actively volunteering to tell the ambitious sailor all the things that could possibly go wrong. "The sun will broil you!" "You won't have enough food." "That boat of yours won't withstand the waves in a storm." (And of course, those familiar words) "You'll never make it."
   When my friend heard all these discouraging warnings to the adventurous young man, he felt an irresistible desire to offer some optimism and encouragement. As the little craft began drifting away from the pier towards the horizon, my friend went to the end of the pier, waving both arms wildly like semaphores spelling confidence. He kept shouting: "Bon Voyage! You're really something! We're with you. We're proud of you!" (p. 17-18)
   Had you been there as the afternoon sun was setting and the homemade boat was leaving, to which group on the pier would you have joined yourself?

See:  Acts 13:15; Acts 20:2

Title:  One More Time!

   In a manufacturing town in Scotland, a young lady began teaching a Sunday school class of poverty-stricken boys. The most unpromising youngster was a boy named Bob. After the first two or three Sundays, he did not return. So the teacher went to look for him. Although the superintendent had given Bob some new clothes, they were already worn and dirty when the teacher found him. He was given another new suit, and he came back to Sunday school. But soon he quit again, and the teacher went out once more to find him. When she did, she discovered that the second set of clothes had gone the way of the first. "I am completely discouraged about Bob," she told the superintendent. "I guess we must give up on him." "Please don't do that," he pleaded. "I believe there is still hope. Try him one more time." They gave Bob a third suit of clothes, and this time he began to attend faithfully. It wasn't long until he became a Christian and eventually even taught in that same Sunday school. Who was that obstinate, ragged boy who for a time seemed so unreachable? None other than Robert Morrison, who later became the first Protestant missionary to China. He translated the Bible into Chinese and brought the Word of God to teeming millions.
   So discouraged pastor, Sunday school teacher, youth worker, give that disappointing person one more chance.

See:  Neh 6:9; Heb 12:3

Title:  Be Persistent

   Perhaps you recall the story of a man who distributed tracts for many years on a street corner. Finally, seeing no visible results, he gave up. When he returned to the same spot two years later, he saw another individual handing out Gospel leaflets as he had done. Striking up a conversation, he discovered that the man had become a Christian through a salvation tract given him on that corner about two years before. The convert added, "Many times I've come back here to find that earnest worker and thank him, but he never returned. I decided he must have died, and so I've taken his place!" The first man suddenly realized that his work had not been in vain. Much encouraged he went back to giving out tracts the very next day.
   It takes many blows to crack a hard boulder; and if one stops too soon, all his previous efforts go to waste, for the work of the sledge is cumulative. It is the constant pounding on the same spot that weakens the stone. This is also true of the flinty hearts of men. The Word of God, "Like a hammer," may have to be applied often before it breaks "the rock in pieces" (Jer. 23:29). So don't stop witnessing to that needy soul -- BE PERSISTENT! The next word of Scripture he hears may be the final stroke that will open his heart to the Gospel!

See:  1 Cor 15:58; Gal 6:9; 1 Tim 4:14; Heb 12:3

   Fits of depression come over most of us.  Usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down.  The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy.  There may be here and there men of iron, but surely the rust frets even these.

   -- C. H. Spurgeon, Lectures To My Students (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1962), p. 7-8.

See: Josh 7:7; Job 10:1; Psa 31:10; Psa 42; Lam 3:1-26

   Sometimes it's important to be very upfront with your husband when changes need to be made.  Early in their marriage, Martin Luther's wife watched him battle bouts of depression, even question God's willingness or ability to help him through a difficult trial.  Without saying a word, she donned a black dress and veil, reserved for times of mourning.  When Luther asked why she was dressed that way, she commented, "Because God is dead.  It's obvious by the way you're acting."

   -- Unpublished class notes from Dr. John Hannah, Church History 201, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1976.

See: Psa 42; Psa 81:13-14; Prov 26:5