Victory over Discouragement and Distress!

We are sometimes facing situations that are so inextricable, so complicated that the difficulty they represent for us tends to make us lose the taste of life!

This kind of situation where we feel cornered is so discouraging that we are ready to give up everything in our life even the simplest actions in everyday life.

Believers facing such trials, where discouragement becomes dominant, would even be willing to give up the struggle necessary to accomplish the work entrusted to us by our Creator.

Discouragement is the consequence of all the worries of life that assail us altogether at the same time and it tries to make us abandon all the objectives that we were planning to accomplish. For believers, such a defeat is a particularly bitter phenomenon because it is a kind of

A Spiritual Abortion!

This is absolutely true if we realize that we are allowing our rejection from The Heavenly Jerusalem, our spiritual mother-feeder.

Here is how Paul introduces us to this Celestial Mother in Galatians 4, verses 21 to 27:

" ²¹ Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not hear the law? ²² For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. ²³ But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, ²⁴ which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar— ²⁵ for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children—

²⁶ but the Jerusalem above is free,

which is the mother of us all.

²⁷ For it is written: “Rejoice, O barren, You who do not bear! Break forth and shout, You who are not in labor! For the desolate has many more children Than she who has a husband.”

The name of Jerusalem is closely associated with that of Zion. A prophecy very close to that which Paul makes concerning Jerusalem is pronounced by Yehoah in Psalm 87:

" ¹His foundation is in the holy mountains. ² Yehoah loves the gates of Zion

More than all the dwellings of Jacob. ³ Glorious things are spoken of you,

O city of Elohim! Selah ⁴ “I will make mention of Rahab and Babylon to those who know Me; Behold, O Philistia and Tyre, with Ethiopia: ‘This one was born there.’ ”

⁵ And of Zion it will be said,

“This one and that one were born in her;

And the Most High Himself shall establish her.” ⁶ Yehoah will record,

When He registers the peoples: “This one was born there.” Selah ⁷ Both the singers and the players on instruments say,

“All my springs are in you."

We are far from the baseless fables taught by the Catholic and many other churches that have followed and make believe the lie that the Church is our mother: nothing is wronger and I challenge anyone to find a biblical word about it. These fables were made by these satanic churches for the sole purpose of robbing Zion of her motherhood just as Satan, their father, tried in the past to sit on the Father's seat!

But Psalm 87 reveals since more than two thousand five hundred years that Zion is the spiritual mother of everyone who is born from the Father.

If a creature moves away from Jerusalem for one or another reason, including that of discouragement, it causes some sort of spiritual abortion. We are not here to judge him, but we must try to learn from such events so that we can try to react positively if one day we are struck by the discouragement of our carnal nature. The positive attitude that must be ours in this case can be based on many examples that our Creator leaves us in the Bible.

Elijah is alone in front of his own people

who treat him as an enemy!

With Elijah, we can note that people called by Yehoah are not an exception and they are also facing discouragement. Thus Elijah was the sole spokesman of Yehoah in the kingdom of Israel in the northern part of Israel. He is a spokesman who does not attract sympathy since his prophecy announces three years of drought and famine during the reign of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Elijah finds himself completely alone against the 450 popular priests in the country, priests of Baal. Elijah proceeds to the execution of these priests after being confirmed in his task by Yehoah. But let's read how the king and the queen want to treat him after this dramatic event in I Kings 19, verses 1 to 7:

" ¹And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, also how he had executed all the prophets with the sword. ² Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time.” ³ And when he saw that, he arose and ran for his life, and went to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.

⁴ But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he prayed that he might die, and said, “It is enough! Now, Yehoah, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!”

⁵ Then as he lay and slept under a broom tree, suddenly an angel touched him, and said to him, “Arise and eat.” ⁶ Then he looked, and there by his head was a cake baked on coals, and a jar of water. So he ate and drank, and lay down again. ⁷ And the angel of Yehoah came back the second time, and touched him, and said, “Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you.”

The behaviour of Elijah, despite his extreme discouragement, is respectful towards Elohim since he is asking Him to decide about his fate: he does not commit suicide but he prays Yehoah asking Him to put an end to his life.

With his faith, Elijah will take the road again and he will have much more to do; and finally he will disappear surprisingly to wait for his participation in the first resurrection.

Jonah in the depths of the abyss!

We must never forget that in the eyes of the Lord, no situation is desperate. There is always a way out from any problem if at least we do not reject our Father deliberately.

Even death is powerless against Yehoah as we will see in Jonah's adventure. Let's first read verse 3 of the first chapter:

" But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yehoah. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of Yehoah. "

Here we have just read that Jonah is fleeing from Yehoah because he refuses to obey His order. Now let us jump to verses 1 to 10 of chapter 2:

"¹ Then Jonah prayed to Yehoah his Elohim from the fish’s belly. ² And he said:

“I cried out to Yehoah because of my affliction, And He answered me.

“Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice. ³ For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all Your billows and Your waves passed over me.

⁴ Then I said, ‘I have been cast out of Your sight; yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.’ ⁵ The waters surrounded me, even to my soul; the deep closed around me; weeds were wrapped around my head. ⁶ I went down to the moorings of the mountains; the earth with its bars closed behind me forever; Yet You have brought up my life from the pit, O Yehoah, my Elohim. ⁷ “When my soul fainted within me, I remembered Yehoah; and my prayer went up to You, into Your holy temple.

⁸ “Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy. ⁹ But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed.

Salvation is of Yehoah.”

Jonah, now in an extreme distress, turns to his Elohim as a last resort. Jonah also shows that he reads and knows the Bible as he is using in his prayer a part of Psalm 18 written by David, several hundred years before his time. Knowing the content and meaning of the Bible is a source of help and hope when you are in trouble.

Note also that the prayer of Jonah starts when he is swallowed by the huge fish and it ends after his physical resurrection similar to that experienced by Lazarus with Jesus Christ. This shows that death is in no way a barrier for our Father!

Jesus will also use Jonah as an example to announce what he would have to suffer from his people and how he would have to die too and stay dead for three days and three nights. These three days and three nights will become an important sign that allows believers to see that Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches are teaching a lie by pretending that our Savior died on a Thursday afternoon and resurrected on a Sunday morning! This space of time would disprove the Bible because it contains only 2 full days and 3 full nights!

Daniel sentenced to death and thrown into the lion's den!

Let's read the beginning of this adventure in chapter 6 of the book of Daniel, verses 7 to 9:

"⁷ All the governors of the kingdom, the administrators and satraps, the counselors and advisors, have consulted together to establish a royal statute and to make a firm decree, that whoever petitions any god or man for thirty days, except you, O king, shall be cast into the den of lions. ⁸ Now, O king, establish the decree and sign the writing, so that it cannot be changed, according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which does not alter.” ⁹ Therefore King Darius signed the written decree”

Before we turn to Daniel's reactions, let's see how the king, who has a lot of esteem for Daniel, lets himself be blinded by these jealous servants. He is blinded and does not realize their lie when they claim that all the authorities of the empire want this law: But they are lying as Daniel is also a leader, apparently the best according to verse 4, and he is not among them!

When Daniel heard that this decree has passed, he makes no reasoning in himself for deceitful behavior by disguising his habits of praying to Yehoah. Like Jonah and Elijah, he does not put his trust in people but in his Lord and he turns himself, as usual, to Jerusalem to pray to Elohim. But have you ever wondered why Daniel turns himself to Jerusalem? Is it deliberately that he turns to Jerusalem? If you are looking for the answer to this question in the Bible, you will discover that Daniel is an attentive reader of the Bible. He is turning himself to Jerusalem as he is looking for the accomplishment of Yehoah’s promise made as an answer to Solomon’s prayer that we will first read in the first book of Kings, chapter 8, verses 46-53:

"⁴⁶ “When they sin against You (for there is no one who does not sin), and You become angry with them and deliver them to the enemy, and they take them captive to the land of the enemy, far or near; ⁴⁷ yet when they come to themselves in the land where they were carried captive, and repent, and make supplication to You in the land of those who took them captive, saying, ‘We have sinned and done wrong, we have committed wickedness’; ⁴⁸ and when they return to You with all their heart and with all their soul in the land of their enemies who led them away captive, and pray to You toward their land which You gave to their fathers, the city which You have chosen and the temple which I have built for Your name: ⁴⁹ then hear in heaven Your dwelling place their prayer and their supplication, and maintain their cause, ⁵⁰ and forgive Your people who have sinned against You, and all their transgressions which they have transgressed against You; and grant them compassion before those who took them captive, that they may have compassion on them ⁵¹ (for they are Your people and Your inheritance, whom You brought out of Egypt, out of the iron furnace), ⁵² that Your eyes may be open to the supplication of Your servant and the supplication of Your people Israel, to listen to them whenever they call to You. ⁵³ For You separated them from among all the peoples of the earth to be Your inheritance, as You spoke by Your servant Moses, when You brought our fathers out of Egypt, O Yehoah Elohim."

This prayer in itself would not be enough for Daniel to pray turning himself in the direction of Jerusalem, he must be sure that Yehoah answered yes to Solomon! This is what we will find a little bit later, in chapter 9, verses 2 and 3:

" ² … Yehoah appeared to Solomon the second time, as He had appeared to him at Gibeon. ³ And Yehoah said to him: “I have heard your prayer and your supplication that you have made before Me; I have consecrated this house which you have built to put My name there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. "

The Bible to find the path of Hope!

We have just read that the hope of Daniel and Jonah was rooted in the Bible. The Bible is never a source of disappointment for its readers.

So put the Bible in trial, even if you are deep in despair. Believe in the Bible teachings inspired by the Lord and put into practice the precious advice that Paul gives us in Romans, chapter 15 and verse 4:

" For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. "

Egoism is often the source of discouragement!

This may surprise you, but very often, the main cause of discouragement is EGOISM, self-love and the setting aside of love for the Lord and for our neighbor.

Have you ever bothered to carefully observe a person who starts to be depressed and gives himself up to discouragement? Very often, such a person turns all his eyes and thoughts to himself only! A depressed person locks himself into a shell that prevents him from seeing and listening to the outside world and his surroundings. Such people are all turned towards themselves and are living in complete selfishness. This is also one of the critical problems that psychologists and psychiatrists are facing to build some connection with depressed people in: how to capture a little bit of their attention?

Moses, one of the greatest of the Bible, has also shown his egoism when he is arguing with Elohim asking him to go and deliver the Hebrews. As we will read in Exodus, chapter 3, verses 6 to 12 and chapter 4, verses 1 and 10 to 14, Moses is only looking at himself and his little worries. He completely forgets Yehoah and his people who are suffering for so many years. This dialogue will also end with Elohim’s anger caused by the bad behaviour of Moses:

" ⁶ Moreover He said, “I am the Elohim of your father—the Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Isaac, and the Elohim of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon Elohim.

⁷ And Yehoah said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. ⁸ So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. ⁹ Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. ¹⁰ Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

¹¹ But Moses said to Elohim, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” ¹² So He said, “I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”...

Chapter 4

¹Then Moses answered and said, “But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice; suppose they say, ‘Yehoah has not appeared to you.’ ”...

¹⁰ Then Moses said to Yehoah, “O my Yehoah, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since You have spoken to Your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.”

¹¹ So Yehoah said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord? ¹² Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.”

¹³ But he said, “O my Yehoah, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send.”

¹⁴ So the anger of Yehoah was kindled against Moses, and He said: “Is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And look, he is also coming out to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.... "

There are so many reasons

To KEEP COURAGE THANKS TO

The path followed by the Son of Man!

The Son of Man, Jesus, our Savior and Lord, had an exemplary attitude quite different from that of Moses. The Father also entrusted him with a mission to save the race of men. Jesus better than anyone else knew all the details of his difficult mission because He read carefully and understood all the Scriptures.

In particular, He read Isaiah's prophecies, describing in detail what His Father expected from Him, first in Isaiah 52 in verse 14, and then in chapter 53, verse 1 to 4, and the second part of verse 12 :

" ¹⁴ Just as many were astonished at you, So His visage was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men; ...

Chapter 53

¹Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of Yehoah been revealed?

² For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.

³ He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. and we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

⁴ Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by Elohim, and afflicted....

¹² … because He poured out His soul unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors, and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."

But our Lord did not let selfishness and his carnal nature dominate him because he put his hope forward to keep courage through the other passages of Isaiah that follow those we read above:

· Isaiah 52, verse 15:

"... .. So shall He sprinkle many nations. Kings shall shut their mouths at Him;

For what had not been told them they shall see, and what they had not heard they shall consider."

· Isaiah 53, verses 5-8:

" ⁵ But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities;

The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

⁶ All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way;

And Yehoah has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

⁷ He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth;

He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

So He opened not His mouth. ⁸ He was taken from prison and from judgment,

and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. "

· And finally the beginning of verse 12 of Isaiah 53:

" Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong,... "

Thanks to all these writings, the Anointed One was warned in detail of the dramatic events that He would have to face but as He kept His eyes fixed always to the final goal, the rescue of the human race and the eternal victory over the kingdom of death and its king, Satan, He kept faith and courage! The words of His Father did not remain vain for Jesus and that is why He could say what is written in John in chapter 12, verses 23 to 32:

" ²³ But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. ²⁴ Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. ²⁵ He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. ²⁶ If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.

²⁷ “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. ²⁸ Father, glorify Your name.”

Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.”

²⁹ Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.”

³⁰ Jesus answered and said, “This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake. ³¹ Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out. ³² And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”

It is also thanks to this faith nourishing His courage that Jesus can still say at a moment so close to his murder what we are going to read in John, chapter 14, verses 29 to 31:

" ²⁹ And now I have told you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe. ³⁰ I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. ³¹ But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here. "

Be courageous, we are also warned of difficult moments approaching!

But keep in focus the Wonderful World to Come that will make us quickly forget these difficult trials!

Just as Jesus and His servants are writing to us in many places in the Bible, we are informed as well as them if not better about difficult times that will fall on earth and on us. They are going to fall first on the Children of Israel in the largest meaning of this name. Israel, unlike the very simplistic view of the world, represents a lot more than the Jewish people. The Jewish people, by the way, are completely wrong when they are pretending to be the only descendants of the people of Israel! This is biblically completely false because the Jewish people essentially gather the descendants of Judah, Simeon, Benjamin, and Levites who fled the kingdom of northern Israel at the time of the reign of Jeroboam, the first king of the northern Israel. There were certainly some Israelites individualities of the other tribes who also attached themselves to the Jewish people in the course of history but these are only tiny exceptions.

The prophecies of Jeremiah are confirming that there will be a time of trouble that will soon strike Jacob, in chapter 30 and verse 7:

" Alas! For that day is great, so that none is like it; and it is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it. "

Later, all the other nations will follow and experience also a trouble unique throughout all history of mankind, because our Father is behaving the same to anyone. Let's read Jesus' warning in Matthew 24, verses 14 to 21:

" ¹⁴ And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations,

and then the end will come.

¹⁵ “Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand),
¹⁶ “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. ¹⁷ Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. ¹⁸ And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. ¹⁹ But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! ²⁰ And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath.

²¹ For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. "

Carefully note that this warning is given by Jesus to every attentive reader of the Bible and this warning is for the readers who will live at the end! The context also shows that it is addressed to all nations.

Paul, in Romans 2, verses 1 to 10, warns every man not to be troubled by this type of stressing period of time and he gives good advice so that it does not surprise us:

" ¹Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. ² But we know that the judgment of Elohim is according to truth against those who practice such things. ³ And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things, and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of Elohim? ⁴ Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of Elohim leads you to repentance? ⁵ But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of Elohim, ⁶ who “will render to each one according to his deeds”: ⁷ eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; ⁸ but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath,

⁹ Tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek; ¹⁰ but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. "

Don’t let your heart harden and don’t despise the huge goodness of our Father! Let us not be deceived by the false welfare offered by the Devil and created for our loss.

Stress or anxiety are there to bring down people who lets themselves be conquered by them as we are told in Proverbs, chapter 12 and verse 25:

" Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad. "

And the good words, you will find them as much as you wish in the Bible and always at the right time!

Here is for instance few words to keep forever:

" ²⁷ Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. ²⁸ Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.” (Luke 21: 27-28)

Leave the feelings of concern and discouragement to their owners!

We must train ourselves to live according to the example of our Jesus, knowing that difficult trials will come. But as Jesus, we must also see the promising future beyond the trials and above all, we must know how to leave anxiety, worries and discouragement to their owners, namely Satan and his devils:

“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”

Luke chapter 8, verses 26-31, shows very well that, unlike the true followers of Jesus, the world of Satan is a world of anxiety because all the devils are knowing very well that their power will come to an end very soon but they do not know when ; this is the essential reason of the anxiety in which they live themselves:

" ²⁶ Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee.
²⁷ And when He stepped out on the land, there met Him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house but in the tombs. ²⁸ When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before Him, and with a loud voice said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High Elohim? I beg You, do not torment me!” ²⁹ For He had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles; and he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the wilderness.

³⁰ Jesus asked him, saying, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion,” because many demons had entered him. ³¹ And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss. "

The best way to fight anxiety that causes discouragement is to follow Paul's advice in Philippians, chapter 4, verse 8:

" Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. "

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