God is Enough

Speaker Glenna Salsbury, of whom I first became aware when I read an article she authored for the very first Chicken Soup for the Soul collection, has been an inspiration to me for years now. We've also shared a long-time personal email correspondence in which she has been a real encouragement to me as a Christian and as a pastor.

Glenna sends an emailed inspirational newsletter to thousands of people. It's called Heavenly Treasures. The December 21 installment was great. I asked Glenna for permission to present it here.

Heavenly Treasures
December 21, 2009
“How shall this be…?”
Luke 1:34

How many of us have been puzzled, discouraged, paralyzed or even hopeless over seemingly impossible circumstances in our lives? And in the midst of it all we want to believe the promises of God, but our faith is weak and waning.

Can you imagine how the Virgin Mary must have felt in the midst of her life experience as a very young Jewish girl? She was engaged to be married to Joseph, a carpenter in Nazareth. To be engaged was an official commitment that required divorce if it was terminated. And any form of sexual immorality was subject to death by a public stoning based on Mosaic law.

Suddenly, Mary’s quiet, simple life is thrown into incredible, unforeseen turmoil. This young virgin experiences an angelic visitation. That event, in and of itself, created complete consternation in her. “And when she saw him, she was troubled… “(Luke 1:29) And even more troubling was the message the angel delivered. “… God has decided to bless you. You will become pregnant and have a son… “ (Luke 1:30, 31 NLT) Mary’s response: “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” In the New Living Translation we read, “But how can I have a baby? I am a virgin.” (Luke 1:34 NLT)

Imagine the fear, the anxiety and the confusion that must have overtaken Mary. And how could this apparently strange event be a sign of God’s blessing on her life? The fear of rejection, embarrassment, ridicule, even death must have gripped her. The angel encouraged her not to be afraid. And then Gabriel, the angel, answered her question. He explained how the seemingly impossible would become a reality. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you… For nothing is impossible with God.” (Luke 1:35, 37 NLT)

Gabriel’s answer to Mary’s question is the ultimate answer to every question, every dilemma, every fear that enters our own apparently impossible situations in life. The Holy Spirit, God living in us as believers, is our only source of comfort and our only source of power. And He is enough. He is God in us.

As Christ was preparing to be crucified the disciples were confused and troubled because they could not understand what was happening. The Lord spoke to them, “Let not your heart be troubled… I go to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:1, 2) He promised them that what they perceived to be painful and agonizing and confusing was actually His sovereign plan for blessing them.

Now we know the end of the story in Mary’s experience: Christ was born! And we know of the Lord’s resurrection and pouring out of the Holy Spirit to comfort the disciples after His resurrection and ascension. The problem for us, humanly, is that we do not know the “rest of the story” in our own current circumstances. Yet the Lord is giving us the same promises right now. All that is unfolding in our lives is a blessing straight from Him. He has designed “all things” for our highest good. (Romans 8:28) And He has filled us with Himself, the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is by His power that God will accomplish the seemingly impossible in our lives personally.

The peace of God that surpasses our understanding is ours as we, by His power, rest in the reality of His promises, His Word to us. (Philippians 4:7) That is the answer to our question, “How shall this be…?”

Oh, Holy Spirit, free us from worry and fear and concern. May we look to You for answers, and not be disturbed in our circumstances.
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Glenna's new book HEAVENLY TREASURES is now available for $20 and Free Shipping. Just reply to this e-mail with a name and shipping address to receive your autographed copy. You can mail a check to Glenna Salsbury, 9228 N. 64th Place, Paradise Valley, AZ 85253 or provide Visa or MC information online or by phone, 480-483-7732. Also, Glenna's new 7 CD album, Digging Deeper...Discovering the Mystery That Sets You Free is available for $35.00 plus $4.95 for shipping. (The Study Guide can be downloaded from Glenna's website.)
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What If Your Family Was Discouraging?

Among the many jobs I've had in my lifetime is that of factory worker. At one plant, the now-defunct Lennox Industries facility in Columbus, I worked on a line that produced a huge air conditioning and heating unit--the DMS 325--used on office buildings.

Every day, during morning and afternoon breaks and at lunch time, my co-workers and I sat on the rollers with which the enormous units that we produced were sent from work station to work station along our line. Those rollers were our preferred cafeteria, where we ate and talked.

One of the guys on my line was a squat man with slicked-back black hair. He sported a pencil-thin moustache and a lousy attitude. No matter what the conversation, he would ultimately offer the same "wisdom" between drags on his cigarettes. "Born in hope; die in despair," he intoned. It was his mantra, his motto: "Born in hope; die in despair."

You should know that I actually liked the guy. He was uncommonly intelligent and well-informed, although he didn't spout off like, say, the average blogging pastor. (I can say that, given that I am one of those average blogging pastors.) He had a quick wit. Because of these winsome attributes, I often wondered what series of disappointments had come into his life that caused him to express such incessant discouragement.

I wondered, too, what he was like at home. What effect, for example, did his philosophy of hopelessness have on his wife and children? I cringed to think of how his mantra might be taken up by his kids as a way of thinking, as a way of living.

In comments he left regarding the last post in this series on discouragement, writer and blogger Richard Lawrence Cohen suggested that there was at least one source of discouragement in people's lives I had failed to consider thus far. That was the family that, instead of nurturing children with a sense of life's possibilities, convinces them that things always turn out worse than you hope. The atmosphere in these households is established by parents who, in effect, tell their children to keep their expectations low so that they'll never be disappointed. They're the families where one or both parents, by word and deed, pound home the message, "Born in hope; die in despair."

In my work as a pastor, I meet people who struggle with the aftereffects of being raised in such homes. They have an impoverished capacity for belief, for hopefulness. By this, I don't only mean to refer to the limited capacity they sometimes display for belief in God, although that often is the most significant casualty in the lives of people raised in discouraging environments.

But this limited capactity for hopefulness permeates their entire lives. They settle for less--for less warm and convivial family relationships, for less stimulating and challenging work than they might be capable of handling, for less of the enjoyment that comes from risking failure by striving to do and be our best.

I'm not advocating that people adopt a false or pollyannish optimism. I've recounted here the interesting conversation between author Jim Collins and Admiral John Stockdale, the highest-ranking American POW during the Vietnam War. Collins was stunned to hear Stockdale say that, while he never doubted that he would one day be free, he nonetheless said that the POWs most likely to crumple under the agonies of their brutal confinements were "the optimists." Collins paraphrased Stockdale's explanation of who the optimists were:

The optimists. These were the people who were part of the "fake it till you make it crowd," who would try to delude themselves and others to ignore the facts and simply because of a (probably internally-manufactured) feeling, named a date definite when they would be out. But when those deadlines passed, discouragement would overtake them, leaving them vulnerable.

To have the capacity for hope doesn't mean that you overlook the obstacles, pain, or difficulties--unforeseen and otherwise--that come in a life. It means that you have the ability to cope with the realities in life even as you strive to do and be more...even as you endeavor to meet the implicit promise that exists in every human life.

If you were raised in a household environment of discouragement, the antidote isn't to paste on a happy face and dig on. The people I've known who have successfully dug themselves out from under the rubble of such upbringings have taken some of the following steps:

• Looked for mentors who would be both affirming about their strengths and constructively critical of their weaknesses;
• Consciously worked at improving themselves by always reading and by making friends with good, wise, intelligent people;
• Specifically, in the area of reading, delved into the biographies of people who have achieved notable and worthy things, underscoring the possibilities in our lives;
• Worked at being good, reliable friends to others, becoming part of a network of mutual caring.

All of this stuff can be helpful in overcoming the discouragement that comes from being raised in a discouraging environment. But, I believe that there is an ultimate source of encouragement and that's the God we know through Jesus Christ. He's certainly been that for me!

In the New Testament book of Philippians, the apostle Paul, a guy who surely experienced more difficulties than most of us would likely endure in several lifetimes, writes:

For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. (Philippians 1:21)

What does that mean? Actually, there's a lot to those ten simple words. But, for our purposes, let me suggest a few:

• Death comes to us all;
• But if we believe in and follow Jesus Christ, the God-Man Who took our punishment for sin and rose again to give us life that never ends, death will not be the final word on our existences;
• Knowing that God gives us forever life through Christ empowers us to live both with greater confidence and less concern about failure. When you know that you belong to God no matter what, you can be a more insistent advocate of justice, for example;
• Knowing that God gives us forever life through Christ makes our days on earth here both more meaningful and more disposable. On the one hand, we know that every moment is soaked with eternal implications. We can invest ourselves in the only things on this earth that will outlast it, other people. On the other hand, we don't have to horde our days, using them selfishly. We can give ourselves to others and to the causes that promote others' well-being in the certainty that no matter how much of our lives we give to the service of God and others, God has lots more life to give to us.

Even if we were raised in a culture of discouragement, our lives can be changed. It can happen when we dare to believe in Jesus. And don't worry if you suffer from "an impoverished capacity for belief." Even the most deeply faithful person you ever met in your life was incapable of believing in the crucified and risen God-Man Jesus on their own. The New Testament says that nobody can say that Jesus is Lord without the help of God's Holy Spirit. All we have to be is willing to believe in Jesus and to maintain that willingness. We surrender our wills to Christ and God will begin to forge faith in our lives. Encouragement will only be one of the blessings that then will flow into our lives.
[Here are the previous installments of this occasional series:
Discouragement and Some Antidotes
Discouragement and Mr. Nice Guy
Discouragement and the Human Touch
What If I'm the Source of Another Person's Discouragement?]

What If I'm the Source of Another Person's Discouragement?

In one of his wonderful books, psychologist, pastor, and author Alan Loy McGinnis talks about a man who had come to receive his counsel. The man's problem? He was discouraged. And the source of his discouragement? His wife.

If ever there were a time when she was pleased with his efforts, happy with his choices, or even glad he was in her life, the man told McGinnis, it would lighten the oppressive weight of discouragement under which he lived day after painful day. Nothing he did seemed to please her. No success was worthy of a compliment.

The man was discouraged because he simply didn't see that things would or could ever get better.

You've probably heard the story of the experiment done with a predatory fish. He was placed in one-half of a large tank divided by a glass partition that would have been invisible to him. On the other side of the partition, were oodles of his favorite prey, fresh little fish delicacies just waiting to be gobbled up by the predator with which they shared the tank. The predator lunged for the food, but came up empty on hitting the partition. That's weird, he must have thought in his predatory fish brain. No matter, he'd just try again. And he did. Over and over and over. Always the same result: a head sore from beating against the partition and still no food!

Later, the experimenters slid the partition out of the tank, leaving the tiny fish the predator so wanted to munch on utterly exposed. But the predatory fish didn't make a move to catch them. These little guys would actually swim right next to the predator, their scales brushing against his and nothing happened!

Why? The predator had become discouraged. He was sure that no matter what he did, he could never get hold of those little fish.

Here's the point: When spouses, parents, leaders, or others consistently deride, belittle, or make light of others' concerns or needs, discouragement sets in.

As long as we human beings have a realistic hope that things will get better in our marriages, families, jobs, communities, or our churches, we can handle setbacks and disappointments. But once we no longer have hope for improvement, discouragement rears its ugly head. The discouraged person thinks, "Others may have reason to hope. But not me." The light starts to go out in their lives.

This was why the man came to see McGinnis for counsel. He wanted his marriage to work. But after years of exposure to the corrosive effects of a constantly-critical and carping spouse, he had begun to grow discouraged.

One of the most interesting passages of Scripture to me comes in a series of bits of advice given by the apostle Paul in the New Testament book of Colossians. Paul says:

Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose heart. (Colossians 3:21)

This passage intrigues me because I think it helps us see how one person brings discouragement to another, whatever the nature of the relationship. We discourage others when:

• Provoke them to anger without giving them the chance to give their sides of any story.
• As a corollary to that, when we fail to truly listening, belittling their concerns or complaints.
• When we're unfair.

Now, here's the bottom line, as I see it: We discourage others when we "throw our weight around," using power we may or may not legitimately possess.

Discouragement happens to people any time we feel mortified by a sense of powerlessness.

When a spouse, who's supposed to be a partner in a 50-50 relationship, always gets his or her way in both overt and subtle ways, they set off discouragement in the marriage partner.

When parents abuse their responsibility to discipline and correct by always telling their children, "No," simply because they can get away with it, because of unwarranted fears, or because of the desire to dominate, discouraged children result.

When leaders no longer lead, but manipulate, those being led will eventually become discouraged.

Discouraged spouses may turn to obsessions with alcohol, drugs, or a multitude of other destructive habits and addictions. They may get involved with affairs or more understandably, give up on marriages which have, because of the domineering ways of their spouses, become marriages in name only.

Discouraged children will become rebellious, heedless of their parents. (Having been critical of James Dobson's forays into ward-heeling politics, I should mention that one his dictum on parenthood has exerted immense influence over me through the years. Parents should discipline out of love, not punish out of anger. He also says that the job of parents is to shape the character without crushing the spirit. Good advice!)

Discouraged followers may torpedo the initiatives of leaders or jump ship.

Some discouraged people, certain that their situations cannot improve and feeling personally impotent from years of abuse, may even contemplate suicide.

I've observed all these effects of discouragement many times in my twenty-one years as a pastor.
So, what should we do if we suspect that we are the source of others' discouragement. Here are a few steps I would recommend:

• Listen to the other person. Even be so bold as to open a conversation with them with an open-ended question, "Do I ever discourage you?" (This is really rooted in Jesus' command on how to resolve disputes over sin within the church.)
• When you have these conversations, eschew all defensiveness and always refrain from going on the attack or being dismissive of the other person's point of view. After hearing the other person out, respond not as though you were in a debate. You're out to resolve things, not score points. That means making, "I feel..." or "I think..." statements rather than, "You've got it all wrong..." statements.
• Be open to the possibility that you are in the wrong and open to seeing some legitimacy to the other person's perspective.
• Apologize for past wrongs to the person.
• Repent for past wrongs in prayer with God and ask God to help you become an encouraging person.
• Think of Jesus' Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," without countermanding rationalizations or self-justification.
• In every relationship, see yourself as a servant first. This doesn't mean being a doormat. It does mean thinking of the other person's interests, welfare, and preferences.
• With regard to the previous statement, never automatically presume that you know what's best for the other person.
• Before being critical of another person: Stop. Pray for guidance. Think about what you're going to say. Ask yourself, "Will what I'm about to say be helpful or hurtful?"
• Find the most helpful thing you can say even when you must be critical.
• As the old saying goes: You have two ears and only one mouth. Listen twice as much as you talk.

I'll have more to say on this subject of discouragement, which I think has reached epidemic proportions in today's world, in later posts.

[Here are the previous installments of this occasional series:
Discouragement and Some Antidotes
Discouragement and Mr. Nice Guy
Discouragement and the Human Touch]

Discouragement and the Human Touch

In my mid-twenties, I went through several years of trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Finally, at age twenty-six, I sensed the call to become a pastor. At first skeptical about taking this path, my wife ultimately gave her approval to my desire to enroll in seminary. Four-and-a-half years later, we moved to the first parish I served as a pastor, a wonderful congregation in rural northwestern Ohio.

For me, this new life daily brought new challenges I found stimulating. And while my wife was enjoying our new setting, the transition was not always so wonderful for her. She'd gone from working professionally in the Arts and in special events planning in an urban area to being, at first, a stay-at-home mother amid the soybean and corn fields. It was a life of relative isolation, relieved by occasional encounters with people she barely knew. Most of the time, the only company she had were our three year old son and our brand new baby daughter.

Some days, anxious to prove myself to my parishioners and to get to know them, I was on the go from early in the morning until 11:00 at night. In retrospect, I realize that I didn't treat my wife very fairly. While she quickly made good friends and I made every effort to stay at home at least three nights a week, there still was no way to completely compensate for the droning demands imposed on her by day-after-day mommydom.

Then, little more than a year into my ministry, I got the chance to attend an out-of-town conference. After three days away, I was pumped and inspired for my work and ready to see my family. I got back in mid-afternoon. The house was quiet, a sure sign that nap time had arrived. I thought that my wife would be reading in our room and that perhaps we could steal a little time to talk about this energizing conference I'd just attended. When I walked into our bed room, I found her spread out on her stomach, face buried into the mattress, her hands cupping both temples.

"Hi, honey!" I enthused.

Slowly, she replied, each word sounding like a painful paragraph, "Why don't you just go away?"

What happened? It's really pretty simple. I had selfishly allowed my wife to fall prey to the effects of isolation. Yes, she'd made a few friends with whom she had occasional contact. Yes, I was there regularly and so too were our then little children.

But she needed more human contact. We all do. While most men don't realize how desperately they need to interact with other people or how important friendships are, most women seem to be attuned to these realities.

Often, wives, to the bafflement of their clueless husbands, communicate this need and the men are hurt. "What's wrong with me?" they may wonder. "Aren't I good enough company for my wife?" You probably are good company. But if husbands are the only good company their wives have, it can be crushing for the woman. Disconnectedness creates discouragement.

And that's true for everyone, male or female.

Take the businessperson or doctor, male or female, who sees himself or herself as a person whose life and identify revolve around living not as a human being, but a human doing. The human touch gets lost and discouragement sets in.

The same thing happens to pastors who see themselves not as persons, but as parsons.

It happens too, to elderly folks who fail to be proactive in maintaining friendships.

The late priest and spiritual leader Henri Nouwen wrote, "Boredom, resentment, and depression are all sentiments of disconnectedness."

God has made us to be in relationships, with God and with others. According to the Old Testament book of Genesis, for example, God concluded that it wasn't good for the first man, Adam, to be alone. That's when God made Eve.

And when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, He said that first, we're to love God completely. But then, He noted that the second one was just like it, to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

So, here are a few suggested steps for defeating discouragement by fostering connectedness, in ourselves and in others:

• At work or at home, when you ask someone, "How are you doing?," look them in the eye and really listen to their answer.
• When interacting with your spouse or kids, take some time to put down the newspaper or turn off the TV to talk together.
• Pick up the phone and call a friend.
• Treat the harried clerk at the store with respect.
• Offer your help to someone, especially when you'd rather not do it.

Someone has said that if you want to know what the right thing to do might be, ask yourself what is the hard thing to do. It's hard to militate against things like workaholism, habit, or the temptation to measure our worth by productivity and instead, to focus on simply being with others. But it's also liberating...for us and for those whose lives we touch.

[This is part of an occasional series. Previous posts:
Discouragement and Some Antidotes
Discouragement and Mr. Nice Guy]

Discouragement and 'Mr. Nice Guy'

His sudden death, seemingly in the prime of life, had come as a shock to his wife and family. One phrase was used repeatedly to describe him. "He was a nice guy," everyone said.

As someone who had informally counseled with him, I knew this to be true. But I knew something else about him: He was deeply discouraged and unhappy.

"I'm everybody's doormat," he told me. "It's not that I mind doing things for others. It's that people expect me to drop everything and do for them whenever they need help. But I never seem able to muster the courage to ask anyone else to help me."

He revealed that he was so burdened by the obligation he felt to please others that he couldn't imagine ever striving to achieve the goals he had for his life, even those he felt certain God had planted in his mind.

Mr. Nice Guy, a deeply committed Christian, would then hang his head in shame for these supposedly "unchristian" thoughts. He thought that he was called to be a nice guy/pleaser/doormat.

Of course, we should all be interruptible, open to opportunities to do loving deeds for others. Jesus says that whenever we care for those who need care, we're really serving Him. Such service can be a way of fulfilling Jesus' call to "love others as we love ourselves."

But it's been my experience that people don't fall into the doormat way of living, which is really a life style of slavery, out of gratitude for the love God offers through Jesus, the proper motive for Christian service. Jesus' love doesn't enslave us, but liberates us to become our best selves.

Pleasers though, seem to be motivated by one or more of several different desires:

• Keeping others from becoming angry with them
• Placating those already angry with them
• Avoiding confrontation, creating an atmosphere of false placidness in which differences are swept under the rug, the pleaser accepting servitude without a whimper
• Getting people to like them
• Getting people to depend on them
  
• Subtly soliciting and receiving compliments
• Making others feel beholden to them, even if the pleaser's desire to be perceived as being competent may prevent them from ever "calling in their chits"
• Feeling powerful, capable of doing for others what they won't or can't do for themselves
• Feeling competent

Notice that there isn't a benevolent or loving impulse in the entire list! That's because much of what motivates people to be inveterate pleasers is the elevation of the self. Often, nice-guyism is at least partially motivated not by love for others, but by the desire to be indispensable. (I know because I've wrestled with being my own version of Mr. Nice Guy!)

"If I can be nice enough to everyone," the pleaser subconsciously thinks, "they'll all like me, they'll do what I want them to do, and my life will be easier."

Behind all the nice person's efforts to please everyone is self-loathing. Inside, there's a quaking child with a gaping hole that the pleaser tries to fill with the trophies of others' appreciation and compliments. But such self-aggrandizing approaches to life simply don't work!

In the next installment of this series on discouragement, I'll talk about what I'm starting to learn does work or can work, if we let it.

Discouragement and Some Antidotes

I've been thinking lately about discouragement. (That's partly because I've been wrestling with feeling a bit discouraged about a few things in my life and because I've been dealing with lots of other folks coping with some sizeable cases of discouragement.)

This morning, in an unsystematic way, I jotted down a few things that cause discouragement. The list includes:

1. Things not going the ways we want them to go
2. People not cooperating with us
3. Being taken for granted by others
4. Persistent failure (or the perception of persistent failure)
5. Taking the short view of things
6. Feeling that nothing we do matters
7. Financial difficulties
8. Insufficient reliance on God
9. Shame, something that comes to us when we either refuse to accept God's forgiveness for past sins or when we have sinned and refuse to repent, allowing the sin to become part of our personal make-ups.

Here are a few antidotes for discouragement that I listed:

1. Altering our expectations. Notice I didn't say "lowering" our expectations! One example of altered expectations would include accepting that things don't always go our ways and so, having the humility and sense of humor to try our best and let the chips fall where they may, as the saying goes.

Another might be accepting that, contrary to the Coldplay song, Fix You, we can't fix other people or make them do what we want them to do. Why would we aspire to be such control freaks that we would want to "fix" people anyway?

2. Accepting that I'm not God. I believe it was Chuck Swindoll who first alerted me to two fundamental facts about life that lead both to sanity and faith: God is God; I'm not.

3. Learning to pray and really mean, "Your will be done." That's the central and most important petition of the Lord's Prayer, the template prayer taught by Jesus.

Don't misunderstand: There is a difference between faith and fatalism! But once we've prayed and tried our hardest--in our relationships, in our work, and so on, we need to be able to let it go and to let God be in charge.

4. Related to #3, rely on God. One of the most common prayers I'm offering to God these days is a simple one: "Help!" or "Help so and so!" or "Help me!" I used to try to micromanage God, describing in detail how I thought he should go about helping me or others. But if it's true that God is God and I'm not, this is a bit presumptuous.

What, someone might ask, about the statement in the Old Testament that if we approach God in prayer, He'll give us the desires of our hearts?

I believe that the deeper we go in our relationships with God, the more our desires will be reflective of His will and even when they're not, our greatest desire will be that God's will be done.

Besides, there is absolutely nothing wrong with telling God what we want, so long as we're willing to accept that He may have better ideas than we do. (The may in that last sentence is meant to be ironic, folks.)

5. When daunted by a seeming profusion of failures, count your successes. The old Irving Berlin song sung by Bing Crosby in the movie, White Christmas, says, "When I grow weary and I can't sleep/I count my blessings instead of sheep/And I fall asleep, counting my blessings."

Homely advice? Terminally unhip? Yes and yes. But still valid advice. When things are going poorly, it's easy to fall prey to thinking that everything always has been and always will be lousy. Remembering blessings reminds us that this isn't true.

Some people I know keep their prayers in a notebook and as each one is answered, sometimes in ways they never would have anticipated, they make note of the answers and the dates on which they learned of these blessings.

Years ago, I began a habit of putting all the thank you notes I receive into file folders. When I'm feeling discouraged, I leaf through those notes. They remind me that I'm not as incompetent or unworthy as I might be feeling in my discouraged state.

However you do it, counting your successes--so long as you don't take too much credit for them--is one more antidote for discouragement.

6. Because some forms of discouragement stem from sin and its consequences, repentance and acceptance of God's grace is another antidote for discouragement.

God is gracious. That means that He has our best interests at heart and that in spite of our imperfections, He willingly forgives those who turn from their sin (which is what repentance means) and sends His Holy Spirit to help them avoid that sin in the future.

There's a big difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is God's way of getting our attention. The person without a capacity for guilt can't sense forgiveness or know the joy of having God renew them. Guilt drives us to the God we know in Christ, where we can find brand new starts and God's love for us.

A passage in the New Testament says this:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (First John 1:9-10)

Shame, on the other hand, walls us off from God. It makes us think that we are our sin, makes us despair, overwhelmed by the seeming futility of our lives.

We need to let God love us to restoration and healing.

Just a few thoughts on discouragement and how to combat it.