Be Encouraged

There was a Christian hymn made popular by Mahalia Jackson many years ago.  The Song was His Eye Is On the Sparrow.  The words are:
 
Why should I feel discouraged?                                                                           
And why should the shadows come?                                                                                  
And why should my heart be lonely,                                                                   
And long for heaven and home?                                                                                    
When Jesus is my portion,                                                                                     
My constant friend is He                                                                                              
His eye is on the sparrow, And I know He watches me.                                                          

I sing because I’m happy.                                                                                     
I sing because I’m free.                                                                                                               
His eye is on the sparrow and I know He watches me.
                                           
It’s so comforting to know that our Savior, every moment, is watching over and looking after us. (Matthew 10:29-31;Luke 12:6-7)
 
The Christian life is not an easy life (1Peter 4:12-13) - but it is an abundant life as is written in John 10:10. God knew we’d need to depend upon His strength, not our own.  He knew that we needed to let Him work through our weaknesses and strengths as we surrender our bodies as living sacrifices to Him - to not be conformed to this world’s value system but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom 12:1-2).  

He put His Holy Spirit into us, so that HE can lead us to experience the abundant life promised by our Good and Gentle Shepherd, Jesus Christ. (John 10:10).   The Holy Spirit leads us into all truth (John 16:13) through a balanced diet of His spiritual vitamins and supplements for the soul.

In addition, God allows trials in our life.  We have no control over them, only how we handle them.  He comforts us in those trials so that we can comfort others in their trials (2 Corinthians 1:4) with the same comfort God gives us in our trials.  And we are more than conquerors (Romans 8:37) in every trial and suffering.

What problems and difficult circumstances have you come through?  You may even be experiencing some difficulties right now. 

Scripture gives us many reminders of why we should be encouraged today!

• Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending (Revelation 1:8) - The Blessed Controller of all things. 
  
• He sees the end from the beginning and HE works all things together for good to those who love and serve Him (Romans 8:28).  
  
• His Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path (Psalm 119:105). 
  
• The steps of a righteous man are ordered of Him (Psalm 37:23). 
  
• We have become that “righteous man” because He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). 
  
• He tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all [our] heart and lean not on [our] own understanding; but in all [our] ways acknowledge Him and He will direct [our] path.” (Proverbs 3:5-6). 
  
• Those who ask Him, receive from Him.  Those who seek Him, find that He has already been searching for them, and He runs to embrace them.  Those who knock on His glory-filled throne room, find His door immediately opening to them! (Matthew 7:7-8; Luke 15:11-32).

So, what hardships have come upon you?  What difficult situation(s) have you gone through?  What difficulties are you facing today? 

• Have you been beaten and robbed on the Jericho road? (Luke 10: 29-36) 
  
• Have you been born blind? (Luke 18: 35-43) 
  
• Have you been crippled since birth? (Acts 3: 1-8)  Have you been suffering with disease for 38 years? (John 5: 1-9) 
  
• Are you one of the ten lepers who came to Jesus to be healed?  Or maybe even the only one who returned to say thanks? (Luke 17:12-19)  
  
• Have you been a notorious tax collector thief, who wishes he’d been a better person? (Luke 19:1-10) 
  
• Have the soldiers of this angry world pressed a cruel crown of thorns on your head?  Have they led you off to a hill to punish you like a common criminal? (John 19:1-3, 16-18) 

The Bible tells us:

• “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:36-39).
  
• Let the joy of the Lord be our strength (Nehemiah 8:10).  He sees our courage in the battle with what appears to be overwhelming odds.  But each of us and He together, represent overwhelming firepower! 
  
• Do you remember when Elisha’s servant saw all the horses and chariots of Aram surrounding them?  Elisha prayed that his servant’s eyes would be opened.  And when they were opened, he saw that the horses and chariots of fire from God far outnumbered all the others. (2 Kings 6:8-23). 
  
• As believers, we are reminded that:
  
  • He who is in us is greater [by far] than he that is in the world (1John 4: 3-4). 
    
  • No weapon formed against us shall prosper (Isaiah 54:17)! 
    
  • With every trial or temptation, our Lord provides a way of escape (1Corinthians 10:13). 
    

Trials in our lives are to make us better not bitter – the difference between the two is whether we see and embrace an “e” (representing eternal outcomes) or an “i” (representing immediate outcomes). 

The eternal outcome is that we are always being shaped into the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  As the Apostle Paul proclaimed, “…that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead….Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3: 10-14).

So, today let’s trust in the Lord and be encouraged.   Let HIS word encourage you today, no matter what you are going through!