Sometimes, You Have to Encourage Yourself (Episode 24)

We all need to be encouraged at times. Believers attend church regularly to be encouraged through the good news of the gospel. In this podcast episode, Evangelist Frank King says it’s also important to be able to encourage yourself.

Sometimes, your need to be encouraged can’t wait until the next time the church doors open. Or the kind of encouragement you need to hear may not be the message for the day at church. Your best friend may not be available to talk to or come by. If you don’t know how to encourage yourself in the face of circumstances that threaten to overwhelm you, you will have a problem standing in times like that.

A time occurred in King David’s life when he had to encourage himself. While he and his army were out at war, the Amalekites came into their city and burned it and took their wives and children captive.

When David and his men returned home and saw the destruction, they were emotionally devastated. “David and the people that were with him lifted up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep” (1 Samuel 30:4, KJV).

As if that was not enough, the men of David’s army talked about stoning him! Now David did not burn down their city. He did not take their wives and their children captive. He was one with them. He’s feeling the same loss they were. But the men were grieved.

David could have lost it at this point. He could have wallowed in self-pity. But “David encouraged himself in the Lord his God” (verse 6).

Anyone subjected to what David experienced would be emotionally distraught. No matter how spiritually mature you are and how much you love God, a button exists that life can push and bring you to a low point in your life.

But David was able to overcome by encouraging himself in the Lord. No other source of encouragement existed. His entire world had fallen apart.

It’s moments like this one that we find out what we are really made of. All of us know how to thrive when all is well. But what about when the bottom falls out of life? David challenges us in that regard. When he had lost his possessions and his wife and his children, and his own army wanted to stone him to death, he encouraged himself in the Lord.