Created for Work ~ Ch. 20 "Sidestepping Discouragement"

"We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world."

~ Helen Keller

In this chapter, Schultz adresses one of the most successful strategies in the devil's playbook: discouragement. 

~

It's an undermining tool that's hard to beat for its simplicity and effectiveness. I imagine that if the devil were instructing one of his minions, he would say something like this: "My boy, if you want to defeat a Christian, all you have to do is get him to focus on himself instead of his God." That's the essence of discouragement. It's focusing on your own pathetic self instead of on Almighty God. And the consequence is debilitating. 

~

A Christian who constantly allows himself to be sucked into discouragement and then wallows in it will never do anything worth speaking of. He will never work the way God intends for him to work because he's too mindful of himself and too forgetful of Christ. He is allowing his selfish feelings to dictate what he will or will not do. His is a sorry state.

~

Discouragement is a thing all of us encounter it at one time or another. What matters is how we deal with it. Do we sidestep it, and go on to do what God has commanded us to do? Or do we give up, turn back, as Pliable did when he and Christian fell into the Slough of Despond? 

~

William Tyndale. John Calvin. Martin Luther. Ulrich Zwingli. These are the names of some of the greatest men of the Reformation. Can you imagine the amount of discouragement they faced? They were constantly threatened by death, prison, and all manner of ghastly persecutions. They were hated, scorned, and hunted down like beasts. Yet through all this, they persevered in the work God had given them. Imagine how history would have been affected if they had let discouragement get the better of them. 

~

Even though he was a brilliant composer, most of Scott Joplin's works were received with little or no enthusiasm. Ragtime music was considered by most people to be "lower class". Joplin became depressed and finally had a nervous breakdown from which he never recovered. In 1917, he was admitted to a mental hospital, where he died soon afterwards. Joplin met with discouragement and succumbed to it.

~

So how does one sidestep discouragement? Here's some practical advice from Schultz:

Work even when you don't feel like it. "A discouraged man doesn't have to stop living. He doesn't have to wait until he feels joyful to accomplish his work. When you are committed to a job that you don't feel like doing, do it anyway. Waiting until you feel like working promotes laziness, destroys your productivity, and clouds your mind."

Ignore the excuses. "The leaves in the yard need raking. It's your job. Your afternoon is free, but it's raining lightly. Everybody knows that human bodies don't melt when exposed to water. Still, some discouragement sneaks into your mind to announce, 'It's too wet to work outside.' Once allowed into your mind and permitted to stay, that one discouraging thought opens the door to his buddies who enter declaring, 'By all means work on any other day but not today!' Is your body able to do the job? Yes. Forget the phantoms in your mind and let your body at it! Get a coat. Slap on your hat. Walk straight for the rake and begin. Soon you'll be finished!"

Keep your eyes focused on God, not yourself. "God has not given us a spirit of fear to back down from work. He has given us a spirit of power and of a sound mind to do the tasks before us. A good worker can keep a clear mind by tackling his work, especially when he doesn't feel like it."

~

"So we built the wall; and all the wall was joined

unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work."

~ Nehemiah 4:6

* * *

Persevero,