Encourage Yourself in the Lord

Dannah Gresh: Over her years in ministry, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has encountered lots of discouraged women.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Almost every day I receive emails from women, and sometimes men, who are listening to Revive Our Hearts. They are writing to share how God is using the program in their lives, or they are asking us to pray for a specific issue or concern in their lives. Last night I was reviewing through some of those emails that have come recently and noticed how many of the women are in circumstances of life that are really discouraging.

A lot of those relate to a situation in their marriage. He's an email from a woman, and there's been given permission to share this. This is a woman who is thirty-three. She is a mother of four. She says,

My marriage has been a nightmare. My husband is an alcoholic. He is a drug addict. He has served jail time for these offenses. He left me and my children recently. We're penniless. We cannot pay the rent. Our propane tank (our source of heat) is at 12 percent.

I learned today that my husband is living with another woman and supporting her. He will not disclose his whereabouts, and he told me to leave him alone when I approached him for financial support.

My heart is breaking. Today for the first time in my life, I wanted to die. I am suffering deep depression and anxiety attacks due to this situation, and I'm on medication. I fear for my safety. I fear that my husband will try to kidnap our four-year-old son. The pain seems too great to bear.

Dannah: Wow. You’re listening to the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Facing Our Fears: Finding Him Faithful, for Wednesday, September 3, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy’s beginning a series called “Defying Discouragement” to help anyone in tough circumstances like that woman who wrote Nancy about her difficult family situation.

Nancy: I just read a portion of that email. I could read many others to you. Not just emails but letters, calls that we receive at Revive Our Hearts. And then I think of the people that I know, and some in this room who are facing circumstances that could be a cause for great discouragement—just feeling like the weight of these circumstances is crushing in on you and is more than you can bear.

We all have seasons of life . . . maybe not just like what that woman is experiencing who wrote that email, but we all have times in life where everything going on around us seems overwhelming.

I think that one of the most effective tools of the enemy in those times of our lives is discouragement. He uses discouragement to get us down, to get us defeated, and to bring us to the place where we may even despair of life.

You know, in the Scripture there were a lot of men and women who were godly men and women who faced discouragement, who battled discouragement. I'm so glad that the Scripture doesn't sanitize those stories and leave out the discouraging parts but gives us insight into what those circumstances were and how those people grappled with the issue of discouragement.

One of the first people that comes to my mind when I think of someone who faced a lot of discouragement was David. We know a lot about David's battles with discouragement because we have the Psalms.

In the Psalms there are a lot of words of praise and thanksgiving, but there are also a lot of times when David says, "My heart is overwhelmed within me. This is more than I can bear. The enemy is after me."

Sometimes it was literal enemies and armies; sometimes it was just his own heart. Sometimes it was his own sin and his own failure. There were many times when he felt that the circumstances were more than he could bear.

I want us to look this week at one particular incident in the life of David in the Old Testament. If you have your Bible, let me ask you to turn to 1 Samuel 30. Let me give you the setting. The chapters before and after give us the context for this incident that we're going to look at today and over the next couple of days.

David, as you know, had been anointed by God and told that he would be the next king of Israel. But for fifteen years after being told by God that he would be the next king, he ran for his life from the then-king, the one who sat on the throne, King Saul, who was an egomaniac and insanely jealous and insecure and was after David. He knew in his heart that David was going to be his successor.

So for those fifteen years, there was no sign in David's life that God's promises were going to be fulfilled. He was a fugitive. He gathered around him six hundred men and their families. The Scripture says that these were men who were in distress—they were in debt, and they were discontented.

These were kind of misfits who gathered together with David, and they with David hid out in the wilderness, in the forests and mountains, running for their lives. It wasn't just David, but it was David and his family and these six hundred men and their families. That's quite a troop to keep hidden away from the king for all of those years.

At one particular point of fear and weakness in David's life, he joined up with the Philistines, who were God's declared enemy. They were the enemy of God's people. But he wanted to protect his life, and so he allied himself with the Philistines.

Actually, in chapter 27, we read that the Philistine king gave David and his men a small city named Ziklag, where they could live and their families could live. David and his men settled into Ziklag for sixteen months.

During that time, David and his troops—and this is all helpful background information—David and his men went out regularly into area settlements of the Philistines and would attack those settlements. They would kill everybody in the settlement. Then they would take all the loot back to Ziklag. The king of the Philistines never knew David was doing this because David would destroy all the people who could have told what he was doing.

Then in chapter 29, we read that David went fifty to seventy miles away (depending on which commentary you read) with the Philistine army, with the king of the Philistines, getting ready for a battle against the Israelites, his own people. The Philistines were going to fight the Israelites, and David had been with the Philistines for these sixteen months. David joins them and is prepared to go into battle against his own people.

When, the king of the Philistines, when his generals, his leaders, learned that David was there in the battle with them, they said to the king, "You're nuts! Don't let David here with you in this battle. When push comes to shove, he's not going to stand with you. He is going to turn on you, and he is going to fight for his people."

So the king of the Philistines sent David and his men back to Ziklag. He said, "You can't fight with us, as much as you want to. This is too great a risk. You need to go back home."

So David and his men marched three days to get back to their home. You can just imagine as they were approaching home that they were a little discouraged. Plans had not been fulfilled as they had expected. Now they're looking forward to getting back home to their wives, to their children. They're going to have some peace and quiet.

When we go back home, so to speak, whether it's just from work or for a vacation or if we've been gone from the family for some time, we have expectations of what it is going to be like, what that reunion is going to be like.

When they got back, what they found was not at all what they expected. They were caught off guard. That's where we come to verse 1 of 1 Samuel 30.

Now it happened, when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, that the Amalekites had invaded the south and Ziklag, [they] attacked Ziklag and they burned it with fire, and [they] had taken captive the women and those who were there, from small to great; they did not kill anyone, but carried them away and went their way. So David and his men came to the city, and there it was, burned with fire. (vv. 1–3)

The language there suggests that they could still see the smoke rising up. I mean, this was a fresh event. The city was still smoldering. Their wives, their sons and their daughters had been taken captive.

So David is faced with this huge loss, this enormous tragedy. The city has been burned with fire. David and his men have lost all their possessions, they've lost their families—their wives and children. It is presumed that their wives have been taken to be sold as slaves in Egypt. This is an enormous time of grief. So we see in verse 4 the response of David and the people who were with him.

Then David and the people who were with him lifted up their voices and wept until they had no more power to weep.

When I read that verse, I think of a friend who in rapid succession lost through death several family members one after the other.

Then there was an employee who, at the age of forty-two or so, died suddenly of a heart attack. I was with this friend when she received word of this last in a series of deaths of people who were close to her.

I can still remember when the word came in that Jim had had a heart attack and had died, this woman—she just exploded with weeping, with sobbing, with wailing and crying out, "No! No! No!"

It was kind of this pent-up, compounded grief that just came out in this explosive weeping. That's what I picture when I see David and the men here. It's like this is too much to bear. They wept until they had no more power to weep.

Not only was there this general sense of corporate loss of the city and their people, but this was a very personal loss to David. He is trying to help all his men cope with their own grief and their own loss, but he has got his own loss.

Verse 5 tells us, "David's two wives, Ahinoam the Jezreelitess and Abigail the widow of Nabal the Carmelite, had been taken captive." So here is David dealing with this enormous group loss, but he has also been affected very personally by this loss.

Being a child of God does not exempt us from grief. It does not exempt us from loss. Being a godly woman, wanting to walk with God, seeking to be obedient to God, does not mean that there will not be loss.

 

In fact, you can count on it. There will be. There will be seasons and times of life of pain, of heartache, of heartbreak. Many of you in recent days, if not at this very moment, are experiencing things that cause you to weep—loss in your family, financial loss, health issues—maybe you've just received news of a terminal illness. Your heart is overwhelmed by this. You've been in church and involved in Christian work and you're trying to please the Lord and serve the Lord. But being a child of God does not exempt you from having these times of heartache.

We're going to see as we move on in the passage that we have a God who is sovereign even in our times of loss. He's a God who knows what He is doing, a God who does not make mistakes. What David couldn't see at this moment was that just ahead God was going to put him on the throne. He didn't know that. He couldn't see it.

You can't see now and I can't see now what it is that God is up to, what He is orchestrating, what is His plan. But I want to tell you, He does have a plan. His plan is good.

You would think at this time of great need that these six hundred men, the men he had cared for, the men he had led for all these years, that they would support him, that they would be sympathetic and loyal. But now what happens is that even these men turn against David, because they saw him as the cause of their disaster. They had lost their wives and children and possessions. They turned to their leader and said, "How did you get us into this mess?"

The men he thought he could count on, the men he had fought in the trenches with, they began to murmur against him. So we come to 1 Samuel 30:6.

David was greatly distressed for the people spoke of stoning him, because the soul of all the people was grieved [or bitter, is another translation], every man for his sons and his daughters.

These men were discouraged. They were grieved. They became bitter in their hearts. They turned on their leader. They talked about killing him, stoning him.

So now David is facing a personal attack. He's already got this mess of a situation. The wives and children have been taken captive and he knows not where, and now his life is in danger. So he finds himself in this helpless, hopeless situation.

If you try to put yourself in David's sandals there, you can just imagine some of what may have been going through his mind. "If only I hadn't gone off to join the Philistines in this battle! If we had just stayed home! If I hadn't left Ziklag, this wouldn't have happened!" You can imagine that there must have been a sense of emotional turmoil and burnout. He is responsible for these six hundred men and their wives and their children. Now he feels like this is all his fault. So emotionally, the weight and the pressure of that. Now he is feeling betrayed. He can't trust his own men.

We're going to see in this passage that they are physically exhausted. In fact, when they begin the trek to go after the Amalekites, a third of the men can't even make the trek. They are so exhausted that they have to stop. This is a picture we all experience. There is physical exhaustion. You know when you are physically weary . . . when you have a newborn and you have several other little children and everything seems more major at this time. So this is all going through David's mind and his emotions, his circumstances are pressing in on him.

We see in 1 Samuel 30 a contrast between the way that David's men respond to the circumstance and the way that David responds to the very same circumstance. In fact, that's true in life. You can watch people go through the death of family members, through loss of a job, through physical ailments, through rebellious children. You'll see some people go through it and they become bitter and angry, and their lives are destroyed. You'll see other people go through very similar circumstances, and they come out with a fragrance and a radiance and a fullness that's even greater than what they had before they went into the circumstance. It's all in how we see the circumstances and how we respond to those circumstances that determine the way that we come out.

So David's men fretted over their loss. They gave way to their emotions and their passions. They were upset. They were frustrated. And, they just vented; they just let it all out. They gave way to it, which led to bitterness, to anger, to vengeance, disloyalty, blame, discontent, impatience. You'll notice that all of those responses didn't do anything to change the circumstance, did it?

Let me say by the way, the way those men responded, do you relate to some of that? Isn't that the way you and I often respond to pressure? That's our natural way of responding. That's usually our first way of responding—to be impatient or angry or bitter or disloyal, to attack the person that we think got us into this circumstance.

Now, David could have responded to his men in the same way that they were treating him. He could have retaliated. He could have been angry in turn. He could have said harsh words to them. There is no record that he did. Instead, he turned to the Lord.

Now I want say, this for David was not just a pious platitude. This was not just a spiritualized answer. This is where the rubber met the road in David's life again and again and again and again in a lifetime of crises. He found himself turning toward the Lord.

Because David knew something about the character of God, about the providence of God, about the grace of God, he could respond differently than others did to the very same types of issues. His understanding of the ways of God gave him the ability to respond with grace under pressure, and to provide godly and wise leadership to his men who had really lost it in their responses.

So what did David do? The rest of this week we want to look at David's response. The first thing I notice is that David got encouragement and strength from the Lord. I'm talking physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. David got his empty tank refueled from the Lord. Who else was going to do it for him at this point? I mean, there was no one. He didn't have his wife. He didn't have children. He didn't have a mentor. He didn't have a pastor. He didn't have a counselor. He didn't have his best friends. There was no one. It was just David and the Lord.

We don't like being put into a situation where we have no one and nothing to turn to other than the Lord. But you know, often it's not until we come to that place that we draw upon the strength and encouragement that God can give us better than anyone else could anyway. The Scripture says in verse 6, "But David strengthened [or encouraged] himself in the LORD his God."

Did you know you can do that? In times when everything is crashing in on you, everything is pressing in on you, and there is no one who understands, there's no one who is there, there's no one who can enter in the deepest hurts and parts of your life; you can strengthen and encourage yourself in the Lord.

That doesn't mean that David didn't feel the pressure and the weight of the circumstances. David wept. We read that in verse 4. He was distressed. We see that in verse 6. But in the midst of his weeping and being distressed, he strengthened and encouraged himself in the Lord. That word "strengthened" or "encouraged" is a Hebrew word in the original language that is used 290 times in the Old Testament. It means "to strongly support, to find strong support." In fact, in some instances, it's used in the sense of God holding someone's hand. Isn't that a great picture? When there was no one else there to hold David's hand, he turned to God to hold his hand. He strengthened himself. He found strong support in the Lord.

Notice that he turned to God first before turning to other human beings. We're going to see tomorrow that there was another human being that God used to help minister grace to him. But before he turned to anyone else, he looked to the Lord. I read that and I think, Why don't I do the same thing? Why is my first tendency to pick up the phone, rather than to get on my knees when I'm feeling discouraged or pressured and problems are crowding in around me? We're so prone to turn to human counselors, human helpers. We're going to see that there is a role for those people in our lives; but there is no counselor who can do for you what the Wonderful Counselor will do for you, if you'll let him.

I notice, too, that David found God to be his helper, even at a time in his life when David was not completely in the will of God. David should never have been allied with the Philistines. Part of the reason he was in this mess was his own fault. Yet even having made that mistake, having sinned against God, he knew that God was a God of mercy and grace. He could come back to God and turn to God as he should have before he even went out with the Philistines.

He could now come and find that God was still there. God was available to give grace and mercy. He had to humble himself. He had to acknowledge that he needed God. It could have been a natural response on his part to say, "I've blown it. There is no way I can come back to God now." We have a God who stands ready always when we humble ourselves and we cry out to Him to extend grace and mercy and to help us in our time of need.

Dannah: If you are in a time of need, I know this message from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been encouraging. Nancy will be right back to pray with you.

Before she does, I’ve got to tell you that today is one of the best days of the year. We’ve got two birthdays to celebrate. First, happy birthday to my dear friend, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. Nancy, I’m so glad you were born on this sweet September day. It’s always a joy to celebrate you! 

You know what else I love to celebrate? The birthday of Revive Our Hearts. That’s right! This ministry is twenty-four years old today, and I’m marveling at all the ways God has blessed it. I mean, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com/international to see the growth he’s given. The message of freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ is reaching all across the globe.

If Revive Our Hearts has impacted you and you’d like to celebrate with us, you can give a financial gift at ReviveOurHearts.com. When you do, we’ll send you a booklet called Endure: Forty Days of Fortitude. This resource walks you through a forty-day challenge designed to help you stand firm in God’s grace. Be sure to ask for it when you make a donation of any amount. Again, you can give at ReviveOurHearts.com, or you can call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

Well, today Nancy urged you to encourage yourself in the Lord. And tomorrow, we’ll look at several examples of men and women who did just that. I hope you’ll join us!

Nancy’s back to pray.

Nancy: Forgive us, Lord, for so often turning first to other people, to other means of help and strength when You are right there, the Wonderful Counselor, wanting to strengthen us and encourage us, to send mercy and grace. Lord, I pray that You would so work in our hearts, show us Your ways and Your heart, that it would become our reflex reaction in times of pressure and problems to turn to You and to strengthen and encourage ourselves in You.

Thank You that You are the God of all encouragement, the God of all grace, the God of all comfort. Even now we think about the circumstances that are pressing in on us and we cry out to You and say, "Lord, would You strengthen and encourage our hearts by Your grace?" I pray in Jesus' name, amen.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the NKJV unless otherwise noted.

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