discouragement on Frustration

One evening I was taking a stretch break from study, walking out into the night. Soon I began speaking prayers of complaint . . . a little like the lament psalms in the Bible. I wasn’t angry, really, ...

Lord, You answer our pleas for help. You draw near to us when we are hurting; You save us when we are crushed by life. Your Psalmists declare it on every page. Yet we often feel abandoned and alone. W...

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just grad...

We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous."

Learned Helplessness can be easily seen in a research study when participants are given a math test. In this study, some participants are told, “men don’t tend to do well on this test,” or “Millennia...

My friend Wendy calls the incremental disappointments we endure over the years “the slow leak of life.”

Do not be discouraged by the resistance you will encounter from your human nature; you must go against your human inclinations. Often, in the beginning, you will think that you are wasting time, but y...

O Lord, we are too easily discouraged when things don’t go our way, when we face trials, testings, and even persecution. Lord forgive the weakness of our faith. We too often respond in anger and hurtf...

“Why our son?” are the only words you can muster. The funeral is over and the words of comfort have been politely said. Now it is just you, your memories, and your question, “Why me?” “The tests were...

Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.

"The future came and went in the mildly discouraging way that futures do."

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons we could not learn in any other way.

Gracious God, we confess that we are often dissatisfied with our lives. We recognize the gap that exists between what we are and what we want to be. Lord, like the woman at the well, we know our failu...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we often see difficult circumstances and discouragement as barriers to doing the work you have called us to do. Rather than rejoicing in what you have provided, we lam...

Lord and God, sometimes we have thought, even said, that you were nowhere to be found, when life’s insecurities, disappointments, and crushing defeat left us empty and full of despair. In our desolati...

Leader: Today, we celebrate that Jesus has come, and that He promises to come again! We know He came to bring light and hope, People: but our hearts are often shrouded by darkness and despair. ...

Almighty God, we confess our need of Your presence and Your guidance. We each have our hopes and expectations for what lies ahead, but only You can give us the strength and the wisdom we need. In life...

Heavenly Father: You know all about us – our weakness, our failing, our sin; And you still love us enough to give your Son to redeem us. Hear the cries of our hearts today. There’s someone for who...

If the Book of Job reaches across two and a half millennia to teach anything to men and women who consider themselves normal, decent human beings, it is this: Human beings are sure to wander in ignora...

God is never a God of discouragement. When you have a discouraging spirit or train of thought in your mind, you can be sure it is not from God. He sometimes brings pain to his children-conviction over...

In the silence, we raise our voice before you. We wonder aloud why you are so far from us when we call. In the agony of our cry, we are reminded that it is we who have wandered from your fold, from th...

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake u...

When do we hear God’s voice most clearly? It is often in our deepest struggles that we hear God’s voice. In the 1640s, George Fox, who would later establish the Quaker or Friends movement, wandered th...

One summer, Johnny was ministering among the poor on a six-week urban project with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Los Angeles. Part of his assignment was to spend time in a convalescent home in ...

If right now you’re complaining about something, you’re not complaining because you have a lack of resources problem… people problem, …fairness problem, physical health problem, church problem, m...

It was advertised that the Devil was putting up for sale all of his tools. On that date the tools were laid out. They had prices marked on them for public inspection, and there were a lot of treachero...

Joseph would be the first to tell you that life in the pit stinks. Yet for all its rottenness, doesn’t the pit do this much? It forces you to look upward. Someone from up there must come down here and...

God is working right now, but not so much to give us predictable, comfortable, and pleasurable lives. He isn’t so much working to transform our circumstances as he is working through hard circumstance...