We all need to be encouraged as we journey through life. We live positively different when we are encouraged! When we are discouraged we can make decisions that we live to regret. So let us all make sure that we are ones who encourage others to be all that God wants them to be.
There is another ministry of encouragement and that is the ministry of self-encouragement ourselves. In 1 Samuel 30:6, we read:
“But David encouraged himself in the Lord His God” (KJV).
The Amplified Bible says: “But David encouraged and strengthened himself in the Lord his God.” (Many Bible translations use the word “strengthened” rather than “encouraged”). Isn’t it a fact when we are encouraged we are strengthened to do the will of God?
Why did David need to encourage himself? While David and his men were out fighting the battles of the Lord, on the home front his city was burned with fire, and their wives, sons and daughters were all taken captive. David returned to find the enemy had wrecked what he had in Ziklag. The men with David were also heart-broken and full of grief. In their time of distress they blamed David as the cause of this (human nature always wants to blame someone else). Suddenly David is standing alone, with the finger of accusation being pointed at him for the loss of family and houses, etc. As broken-hearted as he was, David showed a quality of character that we all need. In his hour of distress he knew how to encourage himself. How would he have done that? We can guess he might have reminded himself of God’s faithfulness to him, His promises and how God had delivered him in times past ~ that this was not a time to get a wrong spirit and hardness of attitude toward God because of the circumstances, and other negative people, around him. So David encouraged himself. He talked to his own spirit and told it to rise up, to not be beaten by what the enemy had done. He encouraged himself enough to seek the Lord to see what He wanted him to do in this situation. God answered him with these wonderful words of comfort:
“You shall surely overtake them and without fail recover all” (1 Samuel 30:8).
The circumstances looked hopeless and lost; but through David encouraging himself He was able to look beyond the tragedy and hear God’s promise on the outcome. The result was that the men who accused him were able to also rise and go with him to recapture their wives and families. And that is exactly what happened. If David had not known how to encourage himself, that day could have spelled the end of numbers of peoples’ faith in the Living God.
Do you know how to encourage yourself? Do you know how to speak the positive promises of God…? Do you know how to look above and beyond the negative circumstances that come to us all at different times in life? We need to. For, often, in those times, there are no others who are around or with us to speak encouragement into us. So we have to do it ourselves!
One of the Greatest Tools of Self-Encouragement
Did you know that one of the greatest “tools” of self-encouragement that God has given us is the gift of speaking in other tongues? The Scripture tells us:
“He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself” (1 Corinthians 14:4).
When we are edified we are encouraged and strengthened personally. When I need to be encouraged more, I go pray-walking and speak in other tongues out loud. It is not very long before I am built up in my faith and inspired to keep pressing on with the Lord and His call on my life.
Consider this verse:
“But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (Jude 20-21).
Surely this also is telling us of the power of speaking in other tongues? When we speak/pray in other tongues we are speaking spirit to Spirit directly to God. How good is God to enable us to have a spiritual language that causes us to rise up above all our discouragements and disappointments!
I want to encourage you to speak in tongues more. If you do not have this God-given gift, let me encourage you to seek it. Ask God to fill you to overflowing with His Holy Spirit and to give you that ability to talk “spirit to Spirit” with Him. You will be so blessed when you can communicate with God in this way, and it will build you up personally to do more of the will of God in your life. I have had that gift since I was born again in 1973, and it has helped me enormously over the years to be able to discern and continue in the will of God for my life. He wants that for you too
Bibloscope 