How to Pray And Encourage Yourself!

No matter who you are there comes a time when no one can help you and you need God. Sometimes you have to encourage yourself, but how do you do that in prayer? Join us as we look at the life of David and the Bible teaches us through his life that prayer reaches every single situation.

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Transcript

Press means to apply force. When God said press, prayer reaches every single situation. He gave us permission to apply force to every situation that we will go through.

And in this podcast, we are going to learn to apply force to what's applying pressure to us. Welcome to the Press Podcast. Glad you joined us today.

Let's hop on over to 1 Samuel chapter 30 and get this started. I am loving looking at the scriptures and we are going to have an awesome prayer today that we're going to study from 1 Samuel chapter 30. We are visiting the life of David and how he talked to God.

Verse number 8 is the entire prayer and the answer. So we'll read it real quick and then we're going to go back to the backstory concerning this particular prayer. The Bible says, I've heard this preached.

I've heard it taught. People get excited when you say you're getting all your stuff back. Whatever the enemy stole, you're getting it back.

But I often watch people proclaim this and wonder if you really got the word from the Lord for this scenario, for that specific moment. One thing I admire about David in reading through the Bible is that he did not take for granted that God was going to do the same things the same ways every time. He knew enough to know, though he's strong, though he's this great warrior, though he slain his ten thousands, he needs a word from the Lord every single time.

Just because God did this that way last time doesn't mean he's going to do this the same way this time. He is a God you have to follow, not lead. And David was such a great warrior that he understood he could pick his battles but he could not win them.

You can pick them but you can't win them. So before he even picked the battle, he wanted to know, is God with him? And what does the Lord say? In first Samuel chapter 30, David is still on the run from Saul. He has now ran to the Philistines to stay with them.

Now remember, David really hops on the radar of the country by killing Goliath, who is a Philistine. Now he's going back to the same people he once killed to protect him. It was basically a thing where the enemy of my enemy is a friend because he knew that the Philistines were still going to attack Saul and Saul's going to attack him.

So he figured the best place I can go to is the enemy of my enemy. And he became friends with the king there, King Achish, and the king loved him. He allowed David and his men to stay in the territory of the Philistines and gave them a place called Ziklag.

And in Ziklag, they dwelt for over 16 months. So they actually became part of the community. With that said, everybody didn't trust David.

He never left his loyalty to the word of God, to the command upon his life, or to the children of Israel. But David knew he was not safe with Israel just yet because Saul was looking to kill him. So when he was with the Philistines, however, Saul stopped pursuing him because now he would have to fight the Philistines to get him.

In chapter 28, we see Saul terrified of fighting the Philistines. We just covered chapter 28's prayer last week, the prayer of Saul going to the witch of Endor, where the Lord says, I'm going to take the kingdom from your hand tomorrow. So we get to see in chapter 30, what's happening with David the day after Saul's prayer.

Now, this is not completely chronological because you're seeing two lives meshed. There's two stories. So there's time elapses in both.

When we get to chapter 30, we're seeing also the life of David that's happening when Saul is pursuing him. David is loved by King Achish, but not by the men who served King Achish. They did not trust David.

They did not believe he was on the side of the Philistines. And so in chapter 29, when they're preparing for battle against the children of Israel and Achish is like, no, David can go with us. He and his men can go.

The Philistine lords with the lowercase l are definitely protesting and saying, King, he can't go with us. He may get into battle and turn on us. You can't trust him.

And though Achish trusts him, he does listen to his advisors. And so he sends David and his men back to Ziklag, back home. When they get back home, they find out that the Amalekites have raided Ziklag and taken their wives, taking their families.

They've been robbed. They took great and small things away from them in verse two of chapter 30. They have been completely robbed.

They've taken their wives, their sons, their daughters. Everybody's been taken captive and the city was burned with fire. Can you imagine coming home to that when you're already in a foreign land, uncomfortable and being chased? Now I've lost my family.

I've lost any stability I thought I had. The Bible says that the people that were with David lifted up their voice and wept until they had no more power to weep. These people are devastated.

I don't know if you've ever been so hurt. You couldn't cry anymore. You're too weak to cry.

You're too tired to cry. But the pain now reaches so deep, a cry can't even reach it. This is them.

They have no more power to weep, but they have some power because the people started talking about in verse six, stoning David because they were so grieved. They're blaming him. You brought us out here.

Now our sons are gone. Our daughters are gone. Our wives are gone.

David also lost his wives. They were kidnapped, but it didn't matter. Now he's sitting here dealing with their grief and his.

But the Bible says that David encouraged himself in the Lord. That alone is a Selah moment. Take a moment.

Think about it. At your lowest, what do you reach for? At your lowest, what you reach for tells you about what you really love, want, and believe. It's hard when you're going through things.

It is hard when you suffer loss. It is hard when your heart hurts and there's no comfort for it. But one thing I would say about sadness is that it's taught me what I really believe.

It was in the quietest moments when nobody could help, when nobody could touch where I was, that I heard myself say, I love you, Jesus. I need you, Jesus. Or a random hallelujah would come out.

Those were the moments sometimes I even shocked myself because I was like, oh my gosh, hold on. I believe this. I believe this with all my heart.

I believe it with all my soul. It's not just for the moments when I'm happy. It's not just for the moments when things are going well.

I actually believe and look to God in the good and the bad. That was David. At this low moment, his wives are gone.

His children are gone. He's being blamed for everything. His community is suffering.

He said, I've got to encourage myself in the Lord. Some people, when they get bad news and you say, I'm gonna pray for you. Oh, they get mad about that.

Or you say, but the Bible says, they're like, I don't want to hear that right now. I can't do that right now. But I'm telling you what you reach for tells you what you believe.

Sometimes you can't get that encouragement from outside people. So you may tell them, hold on, give me a minute. I can't listen right now.

But what you reach for in your silence, what you reach for in your distress is going to tell you where you stand with God. David encouraged himself in the Lord. And then the Bible says, he said to Abiathar the priest, Ahimelech's son, bring me hither the ephod.

And Abiathar brought hither the ephod to David. The ephod was the priest's clothing. The ephod is holy.

He's reaching not only for God, but everything he knows that is holy because he needs to go before God. And when he does that, he begins to pray. Shall I pursue after this truth? Some would take for granted, of course the Lord wants me to fight.

I'm fighting for my family. I'm fighting for this. Now you need to know, are you going to go into, is this my fight? David's humility and understanding that God is still in charge did not waver because his heart was broken.

His community was broken and the situation looked dire. This is not an easy prayer to bow to, asking the will of God, not knowing what he'll say, and then being ready, bracing yourself in his holiness, in his sovereignty and in the Lord for his answer. This is the kind of bowing God wants from us in prayer.

When you don't know what he'll do before you ask him to move, you're still saying, I recognize who you are. You are still the hope of my salvation. You are still who I trust.

You're still encouraging yourself in the Lord. That's what he wants from us today. Now, of course you can go read the rest of this story and read the rest of the book and see what the Lord did, but I want to stop here for today because I love recognizing that these people did not know the end of their story when they prayed.

Some people want to know what God is going to do before you trust him. It does not work like that. But when you follow the pattern that David has set here, the pattern of first encouraging yourself in the Lord, that word encouraged means to fasten upon, to seize, to be strong, courageous, be firm.

When you firm up yourself in the Lord, then you start to secure your next step. You can secure your next step before you know what your next step is. In the New Testament, the Bible tells us of speaking to ourselves in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts and giving thanks always for all things into God the Father.

This is one way we encourage ourselves. We speak to ourselves in Psalms and hymns, spiritual songs. This is Ephesians 19 and 20.

So if you want to know how to encourage yourself today, put faith in your ears, put things in your ears that will feed your faith. Put your memory of what God has been to you. Sing of the hymns, sing of the spiritual songs, sing what the Lord has given you.

He tells you that again in Colossians 3.16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Now in Colossians, it's talking about one to another. Get people around you that are going to encourage you.

When you're down, don't invite everybody to the party. You know Job in the book of Job, he had friends that did not always help him out. They didn't see the spiritual side of what Job was going through easily and so they didn't always encourage him and they gave him bad advice.

When you're down, that's not what you need to do. You need to find those that can know how to speak your language. You need to find people that know how to talk in spiritual songs, in hymns, in Psalms.

You need those kind of people around you because they will know how to minister to you through whatever is coming. So when you go to encourage yourself, one, remember God. Remember the testimonies.

Remember how he's kept you. Remember what he's already done, what he's already said, what he's already been. You can do that before you know what he'll be next and then you can add to it the spiritual songs, the Psalms, the hymns.

Turn to them in the Bible. David that we're looking at here wrote about half of the book of Psalms and you get to see how expressive he is concerning the things he went through. He knew he needed God to keep him but he also dealt with the reality of, I'm going through this.

He wrote things like in Psalm 61, when my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock. He didn't say I'd never get overwhelmed. He acknowledged his humanity but he recognized, God if I can't get me where I need to go, then you bring me where I need to go and secure me.

Spiritual songs. Now there's all kind of songs out there right now and that is not what this podcast is about but I'll tell you if they sing more about you and how you feel and if the songs have a whole lot of the word I in them from the you perspective, meaning they're not speaking on behalf of God, they're talking about themselves, skip that. Turn on some music that actually talks about God.

Not just your emotions, not just how you feel but actually about God. Not throws God in it somewhere so they can say it's a Christian song but still play it on secular stations. Make it about God.

And the hymns, those old school throwback songs, those are what we today call hymns. Find you some. Get a reason to study the songs and understand what they were saying on a hill far away was an old rugged cross, the emblem in suffering of shame.

So I'll cherish the old rugged cross and exchange it someday for a crown. Wow, the kind of songs that make you look forward and yet recognize he suffered but his suffering was my beginning and my suffering is not my end. Get you some hymns.

The Bible, when it uses the word hymns, is talking of a religious ode or a song that revolved around celebration. Find a reason to celebrate. If your only reason is the God of heaven and earth still sits on the throne, find a reason to celebrate.

As I said, we're not going to the end of David's story today but if I could summarize the preview, I would tell you this low moment that you're getting a glimpse of in first Samuel chapter 30 catapulted him into the promise of God. He was literally only days away from what God had told him he would be a long time ago. This was the grand finale, the last battle, the climax at the end.

It was coming. They didn't know it would be in chapter 31. He didn't know how chapter 30 would end outside of what the Lord said but what we know is God did it and he took the right posture before God before he even did it.

Today, posture right. Posture yourself right before God and if you find yourself in a hard place, encourage yourself and then pray because prayer reaches every single situation. Join the movement.

Join the community. Like, share, and subscribe to this podcast. Visit us at PressToPray.com or find us on Instagram or Facebook.

Did you know that when you are quiet, your voice is missing to God's ears? I know some of us have prayed and we're wondering how long should I pray about this? Why should I pray if God already knows? How will I know God is answering? And what do I do when I feel like God's not listening? But God is listening for your voice. It's too quiet in this world for the troubles we have. You have to raise your voice and God wants to hear from you.

It's too quiet in a book about prayer. It's designed to answer your prayer questions and build your faith. Visit PressToPray.com

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