There are days when I am really discouraged. There are days when I feel like I can’t keep going, like the Christian life just isn’t worth it, like I’m never going to be loved for being exactly who I am, like I’m wasting my time and effort trying to put my voice out into the world.

There are days when I am so weary with the fight that I can barely lift my eyes to notice my life around me or the people who need to hear truth spoken to them in love.

There are days when I feel like everything I face is just so… hard. And it certainly feels like I’ve had a lot of these days lately. It feels like our lives, ministry, marriage, family, and friendships are all under attack constantly and it feels like we’ve taken so many hits lately that I’ve started to wonder if there’s anything left that the enemy could possibly try to sabotage.

Often these days, I find myself asking God: why have You brought me here? And what on earth am I doing this for? I ask Him what the point is and question why my life has to be the way it is.

Then, I find myself fighting off waves of guilt because I’ve heard it preached time and time again that we shouldn’t ask God why things are the way they are.

So, what do you do on days like this? I certainly remember a time in David’s life where he seemed to feel like this.

He had been on the run from King Saul for decades in the wilderness. If he returned to his home, David would have been murdered. He’d lost his wife Michal when he had to run, he was stranded from his family and his village, he constantly had to battle to survive, and he really didn’t know when God would fulfill the promise of his youth.

David and his men were forced into making a horrible choice: continue to fight with their enemy (the Philistines) against their brothers by race (the Hebrews of Israel) or face certain death. They prepared for the hardest battle of their lives.

But at the last minute, the Philistine lords decided to send David and his men home instead: the Philistines didn’t believe they could trust David and his mighty men. David and his men were free to go and would not (after all) have to face their tribesmen in battle. They traveled to their village and when they arrived… everything was gone.

All their possessions, all their wives, all their children, everything and everyone was just… gone. Anything that had been left behind by the invaders was burned. Can you imagine the agony of that moment? To have escaped a hard situation only to be thrown directly into a devastating situation?

Wasn’t their God their Protector? Wasn’t He supposed to help them? David was the anointed king of Israel, had given up everything just to live, and still more was stolen from him and his men.

The men around him wept until they could no longer weep. And then the cries came for David to be stoned to death. To have faced the battles, the wilderness, and the wrath of the king only to die here by the hands of those men he loved. And then we see in 1 Samuel 30:6,

David continued on to ask God if he should go pursuing what they had lost, asking God if they would find what they pursued. God led them to regain everything that David and his men had lost plus extra. This all sounds a little surreal — almost impossible — when you read the account. But God, we know, is fully capable of handling the impossible situations when we find ourselves stripped bare by the world and the sinful people around us.

I heard Lisa Terkeurst recently say that our hearts were made for the perfection of Eden, but we don’t live there anymore. Because we don’t live in a perfect world anymore, we are most certainly going to experiences trials, attacks, depression, debilitating disasters, sadness, and betrayal. So how do we keep going? How do we encourage ourselves in the modern day world in the Lord?

1. Preach the gospel to yourself. Romans 1:17 tells us, “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” The faith that saved us from our sins when we repented and accepted Christ as our Saviour is the same faith that will help us endure our everyday struggles. Any hard thing can become holy when I remember that Christ saved me from an eternity in Hell. Any hard thing can become holy when I remember that I live by His grace and not by my own works. Any hard thing can become holy when I look for what can be redeemed out of every hard situation, trying circumstance, or shocking betrayal. When we live our lives focused on the Gospel, it’s much easier to remember what God’s able to do with what we bring Him.
2. Think and speak positively. Have you ever noticed that when you complain it makes something bad you’re experiencing seem even worse? If you’ve got a headache, complaining about it or pitying yourself makes that headache seem like a migraine. If you’re experiencing a sad loss, complaining about what or who you’ve lost only make that spot seem even emptier. When a friend betrays you by breaking a promise or by gossiping about you behind your back, complaining about it to someone else makes that betrayal seem much bigger than it actually was. Proverbs 18:21 tells us, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.” When we’re going through the hard things of life, our speech will make all the difference: we can choose to speak life-giving positivity to ourselves or we can choose to speak death-giving negativity to ourselves. Whatever way we choose to speak and think will determine the level that we allow our hard things to impact us. What could have been a small blow in our life becomes so much bigger when we use our tongues to build it up.
3. Ask God for help. Did you know that God doesn’t expect you to be perfect? He didn’t save you to live your perfect life with your perfect significant others with your perfect job and your perfect family who all has perfect health. If we could be perfect, what need would we even have for Christ? God knows that we’re not always going to be okay and that we’re not always going to be able to handle the hard things He permits in our lives. Like I said earlier (and as I’m sure you’ve already figured out by now), we don’t live in a perfect world anymore. God has a great storehouse available to us if we’ll only ask Him for help. He has peace that passes understanding (Phl 4:7), love beyond measure (Romans 8:38-39), grace for every need (Ps 84:11), new mercies for every day (Lam 3:22-23), comfort from His Holy Spirit (John 14:16), and strength to endure (Ps 18:32).

I and my family have endured so many hard things this last year. What are you enduring now? Did you know that it is practically possible to encourage yourself when you’re feeling down? God’s waiting to help you turn your hard things into holy things through His gospel, His way of thinking and speaking, and through His resources. Sure, those hard things may have knocked you down: look how hard it hit David and his men! But the point is to pick yourself back up again. “The just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again […]” Rise up again, girl: encourage yourself in the Lord!