“Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again–my Savior and my God!”
                                                     Psalm 42:5, 42:11, 43:5  NLT

Have you ever been so down that you thought you might never get up?  I was having one of those days.  My mind was spiralling into the depths of despair and I started to cry while working at my computer so, I decided to stop working and start relying.

[tweetthis]This devotion is written for those times when you’re really down.[/tweetthis]

I can totally relate to David’s feelings in these verses.  Can’t you?  David repeats himself three times because once just wasn’t enough.  Have you been there?

That’s where I was this morning.  I started off feeling discouraged so I put on Christian music and that helped for a while.  Then the feelings came back and I got so sad I began to cry and let God know what was going on in my life (‘cause He didn’t already know!?!).

[tweetthis]Sadly, I was magnifying my problems and not my God. [/tweetthis]

I knew I needed to be more assertive on this attack so I decided to go upstairs and get into the Word.

SCRIPTURE CARDS

For the past few years I’ve been compiling scriptures on certain areas of struggle for me in these ringed cue cards and often find strength in them.  At first, I began to read the scriptures but that wasn’t changing anything.   I knew reading wasn’t enough to defeat the lies of the enemy swirling around in my head so, I got serious and began to declare those verses out loud; even inserting my name to personalize them.  I spoke these verses out like prayers to my God and kept declaring until it happened.  A verse almost leapt off the page and into my heart.  To be honest, I don’t think it really had much to do with that one verse but more with the compound effect of all the verses I had declared over my life that morning.

Peace, joy and hope began to overflow and the discouraging sadness was broken.  I put my hope in God and now I’m singing His praises again!

When you’re really down, you need to do something, heck sometimes you need to do a bunch of things.  Taking your thoughts captive and making them obedient to Christ1 isn’t easy but when you do, you’re not down anymore!

Prayer

Father…I thank You for the power I can access in You and Your Word.  I’m choosing to Speak Your Scripture over my struggles; Your truth over my trouble.  I refuse to live “under the circumstances” of my life but to rise above victorious in Your Name, the name that is above all names!  In Jesus Name…Amen

[tweetthis]Speak Scripture over your struggles; God’s truth over your trouble.[/tweetthis]

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  1. 2 Corinthians 10:5

blogger prayerYOU CAN OFTEN FIND ME LINKING UP WITH:
MONDAY Monday Meditations – Laura J. Davis,
TUESDAY Cheerleaders of Faith #RARaLinkup – Kelly Balarie,
WEDNESDAY Coffee For Your Heart – Holley Gerth, Word Nerd Wednesdays — Liz Giertz
THURSDAY Heart Encouragement Thursday – Crystal Storms,
FRIDAY Dance With Jesus Linkup – Susan B. Mead, Grace and Truth Linkup – Arabah Joy, Counting My Blessings – Deb Wolf, Fresh Market Friday – Crystal Twaddell

Sherry Stahl