Sheryl Brady - Hope Matters

I want to talk today about the subject of hope matters. I don’t know who is here today, and I don’t know who is watching online, or who feels like they’re in a hopeless situation, but I have a few strategies for you today—strategies that I’ve lived, strategies that I’ve studied, and I believe that if you’ll pull your chair up to the table, God is going to speak to you today through His word. So when we get ready to sit down, get your phone, get your pen, get your iPad, get whatever you need to get out, grab your neighbor’s sleeve if necessary, but get ready to write some things down because I believe there’s hope in this place today.

Spirit of the Living God, I love you, and I thank you for your word. It’s coached me; it’s carried me through nights when I didn’t know what to do. Your word has counseled me—the word that was hidden in my heart, that I didn’t even know was there so many times. But when I lay down or when a tear pours down my face, your word comes up within me. So today, I pray that as I declare it in this house, our spirits would be open to receive what you would say to us. There is no doubt that you have visited us with hope, and we thank you for that, God. We give you the glory for your word. In Jesus' name, somebody shout, «Amen!»

On your way down, tell someone on both sides, «Hope matters! Hope matters! Hope matters!» I’m so proud of myself right now because I read my whole scripture off my phone—that’s big! I lost it about halfway through, but I got it back in the name of Jesus. Hallelujah! One of the most dangerous spirits that you can play with or give yourself to in life is the spirit of discouragement. If you’re not careful, discouragement will take you out much further than you want to go, and it will keep you out a lot longer than you’d want to be there. Does anybody know what it’s like to ever feel discouraged? I mean, you’ve found yourself giving all of your courage to everybody else, and then you wake up one day and think, «God, I feel empty. I feel discouraged.» I guess there aren’t many of us, but for the five or six of you—thank you for being honest today; I have felt discouraged in my life.

Now, it’s not a sin to get discouraged. You can look at the news and feel discouraged. So, it’s not a sin to feel that way, but it is dangerous to allow that spirit to run recklessly throughout the corridors of your life and your mind. As long as you keep building up discouragement within you, the enemy will continue to hand you things to build with because he understands that if he can get you discouraged enough, you won’t encourage yourself. And how many of you know we have to be able to encourage ourselves in the Lord? We can’t wait for everybody else to do it for us; it’s something we have to be able to do for ourselves.

Now, if you’re just getting saved and just coming to know Jesus, you might need people around you to encourage you—and truly, all of us do at some point or another. But there comes a time in our walk with God and in our friendship with Jesus Christ when we develop this ability within us: that if no one is there to encourage us, we can look in the mirror and remind ourselves of the goodness of God in our lives. That can be enough to encourage you right there, with no one but you and Him. Have you ever gone into your prayer closet and had to encourage yourself in the Lord?

We can’t allow the spirit of discouragement to go unchecked, unrestricted, and unrestrained in our lives, because we will never do or be what God has called us to do or be if we don’t check those things. Whenever something tries to move in and take up space, telling you fifty reasons why you shouldn’t praise God or be happy or rejoice, that is when you must remind yourself that the very fact the blood is still running warm in my veins is enough for me to give God the glory. And one of the best things we can do for ourselves in life is to stay encouraged. The way we do that is by identifying what discourages us and uprooting it. Notice I didn’t just say pull it up from the surface; we have to uproot some things every now and then. Amen? Somebody say, «Uproot!»

You’re acting like a quiet Catholic church today. I am that preacher who would love to hear an «Amen» every now and then. But the way we build up encouragement within us is by going deep and uprooting everything that tries to block us and stop us from reaching what God has called us to do. Discouragement is one of the reasons we need to get it out because discouragement leads to what is called dissatisfaction.