We put in long hours, we experience a unique form of loneliness and we face difficult decisions every day. It’s easy to get discouraged.
And I think discouragement is one of the most deadly of diseases. Everybody can catch it, and you can catch it more than once. It’s highly contagious and spreads easily and quickly.
But here’s the good news: Discouragement is curable. Whenever I get discouraged, I head straight to Nehemiah. This great leader of ancient Israel understood there were four reasons for discouragement in ministry.
First, you get fatigued. You simply get tired as the laborers did in Nehemiah 4:10. We’re human beings, and we wear out. You cannot burn the candle at both ends. So if you’re discouraged, it may be that you don’t have to change anything. You just need a vacation! Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is go to bed.
Second, you get frustrated. Nehemiah says there was rubble all around. So much that it was getting in the way of rebuilding the wall. Do you have rubble in your ministry? Have you noticed that anytime you start doing something new, the trash starts piling up? If you don’t clean it out periodically, it’s going to stop your progress. You can’t avoid it, so you need to learn to recognize it and dispose of it quickly so you don’t lose focus on your original intention.
Now, what is the rubble in your life? I think rubble is the trivial things that waste your time and energy and prevent you from accomplishing what God’s called you to do. It could be committee meetings. It could be television. It could be just about anything that turns you from God’s purposes.
The third cause of discouragement is failure. They were unable to finish their task as quickly as originally planned, and as a result, their confidence went down the drain. They were thinking, “We were stupid to think we could ever rebuild this wall.” And you might be thinking, “I was dumb to ever think I could lead this church. I can’t do it any more.” You feel like a failure.
But you know what I do when I don’t reach a goal on time? I just set a new goal. I don’t give up. The fact is—if you’re in the ministry, you’re going to fail. Everybody fails. Everybody does dumb things. So the issue is not that you failed—it’s how you are going to respond to your failure. Do you give into self-pity? Do you start blaming other people? Do you start complaining, “It’s impossible”? Or do you re-focus on God’s intentions and start moving again?
Finally, fear causes discouragement. Nehemiah 4:11 says this: “Also our enemies said, ‘Before they know it or see us we will be right there among them and will kill them and put an end to their work.’” You know the background to this story. You’ve preached on Nehemiah before, and you know there were people who did not want the wall to be rebuilt. They were doing everything they could to keep that from happening. First, they criticized the Jews, and then they ridiculed the Jews. When that didn’t work, they threatened the Jews.
