Overcoming Discouragement of Satan

He works like mad at it. I read this week about a little life toward the end of his life, though he didn’t know it at the time. He wanted to write a systematic theology encompassing the whole Bible. He spent twelve solid years doing it. When he was done, it was twenty-six volumes. He was an obscure little man. There are no copies that I know of, of his theology. When he got all done, he couldn’t find anybody to set the type, so he said it himself. This is two hundred years ago, and then he printed forty copies of the remaining twenty-six volumes, fourteen copies of his twelve years’ work.

He died in poverty and obscurity. But you know what? I’ll bet you he died with the knowledge of God. One little man wrote a twenty-six-volume theology that probably nobody ever heard of or ever read, but he pursued the knowledge of God and the knowledge of God’s Word. He stuck with it. There was a little girl in London. She was standing on a sidewalk when the coal truck came by, and the coal truck dumped a tonne of coal in front of the little girl’s house. And she picked up a little shovel in the cellar, opened the cellar door.

She was only five. She walked out and she stuck her little shovel in the coal, and walked across the sidewalk and down the cellar stairs and turned it over in the basement, and the man next door stood and watched her. After the third little shovel full, he said to her, My dear, you’ll never get it all in. To which she brightly replied, Oh, I will, sir, if I work long enough. If I work long enough, I guess the test of anybody’s character is what it takes to stop them, right? Lots of people hit the first line of defence and bail out.

Lots of people go AWOL the first time they hear a shot. But then there are those who make a difference in the world, because they go right through line after line after line of opposition. Hey, you can do it if you work long enough. Don’t be discouraged. Listen, remember the Lord Jesus? You have not yet suffered unto blood. Nobody crucified you yet. Hang in there, hang in there. The problem is not to faint, but to stay at it. Satan will discourage you every way he can, tell you how you’re not getting any results for all your labours.

Or nobody listens to you. Look, you’ve been doing this faithfully. Nobody gives you any laurels. Nobody says anything. It’s so behind the scenes. Who will know if you fall to sin? Oh, don’t worry about the battle. Give in a little bit. Relax. The helmet of salvation protects me from fainting, from giving up, from growing weary. Why? Because I have a hope, and my hope is that there’s a light at the end of that tunnel, and someday I’m going to burst into that glorious light in the presence of Jesus Christ. And like that guy who wrote me a letter, I don’t want to stand in front of my commanding officer with shame on my face because I quit in the middle of the battle, right? I want to be there and say, hey, Lord, I mean, I may be bruised and bleeding, but I’m here, and I fought it all the way to the end.

Revelation 2 and 3 says, to him that overcomes, to him that overcomes, to him that overcomes, to him that overcomes, will I give, will I give, will I give? In other words, God reserves special things for the overcomer. Great things. Remember Timothy? Timothy hit the skids in his life, got discouraged. What discouraged Timothy? Well, a lot of things. One, he was young, and he was tempted by youthful lusts, and he got tired of it. Another thing, he was young, and people were saying, oh, you’re too young to know anything, Timothy. They were despising his youth.

Another thing, he was getting upset in his stomach, and Paul said, you got to take a little wine for your stomach’s sake. He was shook. And then he was embarrassed about Paul, because Paul was forever in jail, and he was upset about the fact that people say, yeah, yeah, you’re one of the disciples of that jailbird. He was ashamed of me, says Paul. And not only that, there were some false teachers who came into Ephesus there, teaching error that was really sophisticated, and Timothy didn’t know if he could handle it. And then there was philosophy, and janglings, and vain deceit, and genealogies, and Timothy was drowning in a sea of stuff to discourage him.

And the Apostle Paul writes to him in 2 Timothy, and he says, Timothy, stir up the gift of God that is in you. God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and a sound mind. Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Come on, Timothy. Get with it again. Crank it up. Timothy was discouraged. Peter says the same thing to those saints to whom he wrote who were in persecution. He says, oh, listen, hang in there with that well-doing. And if you suffer for well-doing, blessed and happy are you.

Oh, if you suffer for well-doing, commit your souls to a faithful creator. Be faithful. You say, but sometimes you get weary. That’s right. Sometimes your legs get rubber like the last lap. When that happens to me, I very often will think of a scripture that you’ve thought of a lot of times, I’m sure. It’s Isaiah chapter 40, and I’ll draw our thoughts to a conclusion with it. Listen to this. Isaiah 40, 29. He giveth power to the faint. And to those who have no might, he increaseth strength. Oh, isn’t that great? Just when you get to the place where you’re about to faint, he gives you power.

Just when you say, Lord, I don’t have any strength left, that’s when he infuses you with his strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. What a great statement. The eagle that soars so high above most other birds is an illustration of what happens to a believer in his weakness when he’s infused with the strength of God.

He soars above the rest. Listen. There’s no reason to be discouraged, beloved. The helmet of salvation says there’s coming a great day, a great victory day. If you’re faithful all the way through, there’ll be a marvelous reward there. There’s coming a glory day. Salvation is past, yes. It’s present, yes. But oh, it’s future. And don’t let Satan discourage you, and don’t let him rob you of the anticipation of that thrill. Don’t let him take away the hope that makes you committed. Listen, John says in 1 John 3, he that hath this hope purifies himself.

When you know Jesus is coming, when you know that great day is ahead, salvation will be ultimately fulfilled. It has a way of purging and purifying your life, because you know you’re going to see him face to face. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of overcoming the discouragement of Satan. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to godisgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].