This is the final post in a three-part series about discouragement. I’m taking you on my journey of how I’ve moved past finding my worth in my work, and what the gift of discouragement can teach us.
What possessed us to do this, I will never know. One Saturday when Ryan and I were bored, broke and newly married, we decided to switch personalities. I became a laid-back, low-talking, even-keel golf-watcher. Ryan morphed into, well, me. I lasted all of 60 minutes with myself—I couldn’t take any more me. This exercise was life changing, and it showed me some things about myself that I’d prefer to ignore.
In the same way, discouragement has been showing me things about myself that I’d rather put aside. Putting my worth in my work and focusing more on people-pleasing and less on pleasing my Father are just a couple of things that led me to discouragement, but rather than getting overcome by it, I’ve decided to learn from it.
Here are the three truths discouragement has forced me to learn that I would’ve preferred to ignore.
TRUTH #1: Spiritual growth happens through discouragement.
Here’s what I want: to read a book or hear a podcast and instantly be more like Jesus. I’ll skip the tears and failure course please. Straight to dessert…I mean, Fruit of the Spirit.
However, in God’s Big Story, He consistently uses hardship and discouragement to grow the faith of His people—think about the enslaved Israelites, betrayed Joseph, or jailed Paul. Timothy Keller in Walking with God through Pain and Suffering writes, “Suffering is shaking out of our grasp something that we allowed to become more than just a good thing to us.” God will strip us down to see if we love Him for the blessings He provides or, simply, for Himself.
So how can discouragement be used for our growth? Keller writes that, “we must recognize, depend on, speak with, and believe in God,” even as we go through the hurt. When we remember that His ultimate goal for us is to know and love Him, we understand that He’ll move any obstacle that’s preventing us from doing that. We understand that as we lean into Him we’ll “reorder our loves.” It’s not that God wants us to stop caring so much about our people or not enjoying our work. It’s that He wants us to get the order right.
TRUTH #2: God is in control, and I am not.
Here’s what I want: to be in control all the time over all the people and all the things. As Achievers that lean more on self and less on the God of amazing grace, we believe that we’re in control.
However, God uses discouragement to get beneath the mask of togetherness and control that we wear, and it shows us who we are. Discouragement “transforms our attitude toward ourselves. It humbles us and removes unrealistic self-regard and pride. It shows us how fragile we are…we have an extremely unrealistic idea of how much control we have over how our lives go. Suffering removes the blinders.” (Keller)
While we want God to be sovereign and loving, we also want to approve of and understand His plans, but that’s not a deal God makes. Just as we give the children we love rules and limits for reasons they don’t understand, God uses discouragement to love and shape us for reasons we may not understand. We worship a God who is totally divine and uses ways that aren’t our ways. As writer Evelyn Underhill says, “If God were small enough to be understood, He wouldn’t be big enough to be worshipped.”
So how can discouragement move us away from our need to control? I love what Larry Crabb writes in Shattered Dreams, “When life falls apart, lose all confidence in yourself to put things back together.” While we may assent to the intellectual knowledge that God is in control, until we’ve gone through the valley of discouragement, our hearts haven’t caught up. Allow God to use these experiences to remind you that He alone can put you back together.
TRUTH #3: Knowledge about God is not equal to knowing God.
Here’s what I want: for my knowledge of God to be equal to experiencing Him without all the trials and tribulations.
However, God uses discouragement so that “we are liberated to put our hope not in our agendas and plans but in God Himself.” (Keller) When Job is struggling with the fact that his life was stripped from him, God meets with him not to explain or to condemn but to encourage. The presence of God was what soothed his crushed heart.
So how does discouragement bring us from knowledge about God to relationship with Him? Crabb writes, “And full abandonment, real trust, rarely happens until we meet God in the midst of shattered dreams, until in our brokenness we see in Him the only and overflowingly sufficient answer to our soul’s deepest cry.” Just like Job, we should cry out to God in our pain so that He can meet us where we are.
These lessons came at a high price, but they’ve helped me grow in a way I couldn’t have without them. Now when I’m discouraged, I’m training myself to ask the following questions:
- How do I need to grow?
- What area of control am I not releasing?
- God, will you move me along the path of Your Presence?
Achiever-Friends, discouragement is never the route we would choose to become more like Jesus, but it’s a vehicle God uses. His goal is for us to know Him and discouragement plays a part in that. As Crabb writes, “As nothing else can, [discouragement] moves us away from demanding what’s good… toward desiring what’s better… until heaven provides what’s best.” Now, that is truth that I don’t want to ignore but embrace.
