Study

The Mercy of Exhortation

Jackie Hill Perry

6 Days

A Different Discouragement

Day 4

Stay on track with Passion Equip

Create a profile or sign in to track your progress and access your bookmarked content.

Create a Profile

As we journey into day four, you might be in an entirely different category. Maybe you are confident God is with you, but you are discouraged by the results.

You could lead a small group faithfully week after week, yet you haven't seen lives change the way you have been asking for.

Or you work in a corporate setting and live for the pace of hard work and hustle. As your calendar fills, your priorities lull, and what was once a passion to see your place of work shift for His kingdom has become a forgotten folly.

You may have made ministry your career. You have been faithful to show up and serve, yet every day feels more like a grind than a gain.

You don't have to see your situation in this story to know how it ends: what we are striving so hard for suddenly feels ineffective. The question is no longer "Is God with me?" but "Does the Gospel have the power to do what scripture says it can do?"

Sometimes, we wrongfully equate initially uninspiring results with a useless Gospel.

Summary

When we find ourselves in this discouragement, we rely on our skills or strategies instead of prayer and the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, how talented, intellectual, or interesting we are takes the position of the power He promised.

The apostle Paul warned us of this when he told the church in Corinth that he was not there to display divine wisdom or extraordinary skill but to demonstrate the work of God's Spirit and let it do the talking.

1 Corinthians 2:3-5 says, "And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God."

Paul wants the church in Corinth to see that their faith must rest on something more substantial than his skill. We should bring great strategies, biblical sermons, and life-giving worship to the table, but without the Holy Spirit, they do not have the power to produce lasting change.

The effectiveness of your ministry is wholly dependent on God. That means we must be wholly dependent on God.

God commissions us, He cares for us, and we can be confident that He is able and willing to complete the good work He began in and through us.

Hold steadfast to His spirit today.

What's Next?

Have you relied on your skill in place of His Spirit? Write down 3 days you can shift your dependency off of yourself and onto God.

Scripture References

7So, as the Holy Spirit says:

“Today, if you hear his voice,

8do not harden your hearts

as you did in the rebellion,

during the time of testing in the wilderness,

9where your ancestors tested and tried me,

though for forty years they saw what I did.

10That is why I was angry with that generation;

I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray,

and they have not known my ways.’

11So I declared on oath in my anger,

‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”

12See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

14We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.

7for he is our God

and we are the people of his pasture,

the flock under his care.

Today, if only you would hear his voice,

8“Do not harden your hearts as you did at Meribah,

as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,

1The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the

Lord

commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

2So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the

Lord

to the test?”

3But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”

4Then Moses cried out to the

Lord

, “What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

5The

Lord

answered Moses, “Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.

6I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.” So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.

7And he called the place Massah and Meribah because the Israelites quarreled and because they tested the

Lord

saying, “Is the

Lord

among us or not?”

13Jesus answered,

“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,

but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

11These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come.

13But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

14We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.

15As has just been said:

“Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts

as you did in the rebellion.”

16Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt?

17And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness?

18And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed?

19So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

16For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

7Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

1The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the

Lord

commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

2So they quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.”

Moses replied, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the

Lord

to the test?”

3But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”

Jackie Hill Perry

Jackie Hill Perry is an author, bible teacher, poet, and hip-hop artist. Since becoming a Christian, she has been compelled to use her speaking and teaching gifts to share the light of the gospel of God as authentically as she can. She is the author of Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been and Holier Than Thou. At home, she is a wife to Preston and Mommy to Eden, Autumn, Sage, and August.