August hasn’t really been a great month at our house. The first 3 weeks have been extremely difficult in various ways. It seems as if the entire family has sunk into a depression. Everyone is battling discouragement and it’s been a rough go. And it’s not just my own little nuclear family, but my older kids and their spouses.
I’m seeing it too in those of us adopting from the same orphanage in Haiti, we’re becoming more and more discouraged as we wait for our children to come home.
This afternoon, while mowing the lawn, I was listening to Fee’s Hope Rising album on my iPhone and two songs really struck me (I’m posting links to them both below.) The phrase that is the title of this post kept repeating in my head as well. So I decided it was time for a blog post.
Too often we depend on our own strength to get through life and through discouragement. And sometimes, I think we have to get “to the end of ourselves” before we’ll allow God to work on our behalf. Even then, we want to control how he works. Unfortunately, I did a wonderful job teaching my children how to be strong. It’s unfortunate because they are right now coming to the end of themselves and I know that I did not do a great job of teaching them how to let God fight the battle for them.
So for my kids and for you and for me, here’s a great link to an article by David Wilkerson on battling discouragement.
http://www.tscpulpitseries.org/english/1990s/ts981228.html
And here are the two songs. The first is “Everything Falls”, the second is “The Arms that Hold the Universe”. It’s my prayer if you find yourself depressed or discouraged that you’ll read the article and listen to the songs and let the Holy Spirit do battle with the spirit of discouragement that has you in it’s grip.
Natalie Ames 