Encouraging Discouraged Saints

Some of the saints may come to the end of the year with discouragement. Our plans for the Lord's work and glory may have been disappointed, and the good things we set out to accomplished were failures. Our hopes to help the downtrodden, to fight injustice, to comfort the helpless, to preserve some noble institution, or to preach the Gospel may have foundered.

We thought that the Lord wanted us to pursue these things, and yet our efforts failed.

Consider the desperate saints described in Daniel 11, facing the wicked onslaughts of the invader Antiochus Epiphanes. He was a cruel and vicious tyrant who desecrated the Lord's temple in Jerusalem.

Daniel foretold that the saints who knew their God would do exploits.

And yet, in the end, the saints are destroyed. Their efforts against evil seem to fail.

We still do not know what the Lord's purpose was in all this, but we know that God is sovereign, and works out everything according to His will.

God often permits the righteous labors of His people to fail in the face of evil for His own good reasons according to His own purposes.

This theme is repeated in the Revelation, where the Saints are slaughtered. God even says that He watches as the death of the saints fills up that which He has appointed.

This happens every time our work falters and fails. God takes note, for He planned it so, and yet He promises that all things work together for our good and for His glory. Therefore, the work was not wasted, even though it seems to us that it failed.

Paul exhorts believers never to be discouraged because of any of this. Why? Because God loves us! Nothing can stop God from loving us! We are safe in Jesus.