When You Encourage Yourself - Pastor Stacey Shiflett
- Pastor Shiflett
- Sep 28
- 5 min read
When You Encourage Yourself
1 Samuel 30:6
Intro: As we know, the Amalekites are always a type of the flesh.
They have always been a problem and they always will.
Is it possible that Satan has attacked our desire to fight by using the flesh to discourage us?
God has given us many things in our Christian life to help encourage us.
Many of us have Christian parents to help us keep moving forward.
Many have a spouse – a husband and a wife that keeps us motivated to keep going for God.
We all have Christian brothers/sisters in the Lord that we can go to for strength and encouragement
We have our Sunday School teachers/godly mentors/our pastor
BUT – there will be times when you won’t have anyone to pump you up and push you forward.
What will you do then?
1. David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.
2. David asked the priest for the ephod.
3. David prayed for direction.
And then DAVID WENT.
We have to encourage ourselves and get ourselves motivated to overcome for the following reasons:
When You Encourage Yourself…
I. The Family can be Rescued
· 18 And David recovered all that the Amalekites had carried away: and David rescued his two wives.
· 19 And there was nothing lacking to them, neither small nor great, neither sons nor daughters, neither spoil, nor any thing that they had taken to them: David recovered all.
Even when others were too faint to go on, he went on. A third of the people had quit on him.
When others wanted to camp by the brook Besor (cheerful), he undertook a difficult task.
When 200 of his companions fell by the wayside, too tired to retrieve their own families and their own belongings, David kept going.
He didn’t let the weariness and inconsistencies of others dictate his will to fight on.
He didn’t allow quitters and those that were too feeble to go on hinder him from doing what was right.
He didn’t chose to sit around feeling sorry for himself.
After all – it was his family. This made it HIS problem.
He didn’t wait around for somebody else to risk their life; to inconvenience themselves for HIS family.
It was HIS place because it was HIS family.
You may have experienced a setback or a disappointment or a loss in your family.
What are you going to do about it?
When You Encourage Yourself…
II. The Forsaken can be Revived
We cannot imagine the pain and distress David was feeling at this point in his life.
But he did not get so overcome by his own problems that he couldn’t stop to help someone else.
In his effort to overcome his own hurt and pain, he took time to care for others that were hurting.
While he was focused on restoring his own family, he stopped to restore total strangers.
This Egyptian that had gone without water and food for 3 days is a picture of the unbeliever.
The typologies of this man being a picture of a lost man are amazing.
He found him in the field. – look on the fields; they white already unto harvest.
After he ate the bread and drank the water, his spirit came again to him. – and you hath he quickened…
He identified himself as a man of Egypt (the world), but a slave to an Amalekite (the flesh).
His master had abandoned him when he was no longer useful to him.
Left him for dead three days ago.
He agreed to help David if he didn’t turn him back over to his old master.
He went from burning David’s belongings to helping bear David’s burdens.
He went from being a persecutor of David to a partner of David.
David’s compassion for those in need proved beneficial.
In David’s prayer for direction, notice how this Egyptian held the last piece of the puzzle.
God put a sick, dying Egyptian in his path to help him find his way.
15 And David said to him, Canst thou bring me down to this company? And he said, Swear unto me by God, that thou wilt neither kill me, nor deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will bring thee down to this company.
David thought he was helping the Egyptian, but the Egyptian was put there to help him.
When You Encourage Yourself…
III. The Flesh can be Restrained
Notice verse 1, 2: The Amalekites had invaded…and smitten…and burned…and taken…and carried them away…and went on their way.
The Amalekites are always a type of the flesh.
· 16 And when he had brought him down, behold, they were spread abroad upon all the earth, eating and drinking, and dancing, because of all the great spoil that they had taken out of the land of the Philistines, and out of the land of Judah.
· 17 And David smote them from the twilight even unto the evening of the next day: and there escaped not a man of them, save four hundred young men, which rode upon camels, and fled.
Great spoil – vs. 16 the unsaved (Philistines) and God’s people (land of Judah) had been ravaged by this enemy
NOTE: verse 17 – it is a 24-hour job fighting this enemy
They won that battle but 400 got away to fight another day
NOTE: David pursued with 400 men, and 400 of the Amalekites escaped to fight another day.
They enemy is not going to roll over and play dead just because you’re discouraged.
They are not going to stop fighting just because you stop fighting.
You NEED TO ENCOURAGE YOURSELF, GET WITH GOD, SPEND TIME PRAYING AND KEEP FIGHTING THE FLESH!
When You Encourage Yourself…
IV. The Faint can be Refreshed
· 20 And David took all the flocks and the herds, which they drave before those other cattle, and said, This is David’s spoil.
· 21 And David came to the two hundred men, which were so faint that they could not follow David, whom they had made also to abide at the brook Besor: and they went forth to meet David, and to meet the people that were with him: and when David came near to the people, he saluted them.
· 22 Then answered all the wicked men and men of Belial, of those that went with David, and said, Because they went not with us, we will not give them ought of the spoil that we have recovered, save to every man his wife and his children, that they may lead them away, and depart.
· 23 Then said David, Ye shall not do so, my brethren, with that which the LORD hath given us, who hath preserved us, and delivered the company that came against us into our hand.
· 24 For who will hearken unto you in this matter? but as his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff: they shall part alike.
When You Encourage Yourself…
V. The Faithful can be Rewarded
· 26 And when David came to Ziklag, he sent of the spoil unto the elders of Judah, even to his friends, saying, Behold a present for you of the spoil of the enemies of the LORD;
If David had not encouraged himself in the Lord, none of his faithful friends would have been blessed with a present.
You never know who will benefit from your taking the initiative to encourage yourself.
Others need you!
