Exodus 4:1 Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?”
When disappointment festers in our soul, it leads to discouragement – Joyce Meyer.
Discouragement is the aftermath of disappointment. Those who are discouraged don’t lack capability, they lack courage. Discouragement is not the absence of competency but the absence of bravery after a failure. Disappointment can shake our confidence, kill our enthusiasm and freeze our ambitions. The voice of discouragement will become louder as we fester and mull over the loss or succumb. Children of God can never be routed, we will only be rerouted. Disappointments are God’s GPS to redirect us towards our destiny. How we handle a disappointment and detour will determine if the disappointment will suppress us with discouragement or if it will refocus and redirect us in the destiny direction.
Moses gave five different excuses to politely refuse the mission to deliver the Hebrew slaves. The rudimentary reason for Moses challenging God and declining his commission over and over again was “disappointment and discouragement”. None of the excuses he gave to the Lord were valid. He was the Prince of Egypt, he was wise, smart, skilled and strong. “And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds” (Acts 7:22). He was a champion and the hero of ancient Egypt. The Jewish Historian Josephus says that Moses was the Military General of the Egyptian army that invaded Ethiopia and to strike a peace treaty with them he took an Ethiopian wife (Numbers 12:1). As a prince, he received the best education available in governmental administration, arms, trade, religion, science, music, art, literature, architecture, and many other fields. The Lord God trained him as a soldier in Egypt for 40 years and a servant of the most High God in the desert for another 40 years. However, discouragement had drained his confidence, courage and caliber.
Disappointment gives birth to Discouragement:
1. Knocked-down: When we are knocked-down by unpleasant circumstances, God is not punishing us, He is repositioning us towards our destiny. Defeats are not to disgrace us but to reposition us.
2. Kicked-out: When you are excluded from friendship groups or made redundant, don’t be dejected. God will remove the people and environments that will derail and distract us from our destiny. Praise God and move on. God is in the rejection, redundancy and rebuff.
3. Knock-out: Disappointments are not knockouts but a rollout for a new venture. God’s ‘no’ is only to give us the first best. When you lose something valuable in this world, be rest assured that God has something very precious in store. Moses lost his position as a prince only to become the most esteemed Pastor and Prophet of the King of Kings.
Disappointments are not rejections but divine redirections.
Exodus 4:10 Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”
Prayer: Dearest Jesus, pick me up when I am down with discouragement with your life giving words of encouragement. Amen
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