This is a sentence that has intrigued me often, and I have been mulling over it from time to time for several weeks. That might have something to do with the fact that we’ve moved away from our two oldest sons, and though we keep in touch, it is not the same as hearing what goes on in their everyday lives and helping them put life into perspective or quietly praying when the time isn’t right for motherly advice. I want them to continue developing this habit and skill of encouraging themselves in the Lord.

As Christians we are supposed to encourage each other, but sometimes there is no one at hand to talk to, or sometimes another person doesn’t really understand, or even if they do understand and do try to help, it’s ineffectual if we do not take their wisdom and encouragement in for ourselves.

The passage that this verse comes from is I Samuel 30. David had been anointed king earlier, but he was not the acting king yet: in fact, he was in hiding from King Saul, who wanted to kill him. While David and his men had been away from their camp, Amalekites had swept in, burned everything, and taken the women and children captive. David’s men spoke of stoning him out of their distress over their families. And at that point, “David encouraged himself in the LORD his God” (verse 6b).

How did David encourage himself? Verse 7 says he asked the priest for the ephod and inquired of the Lord what to do.

We don’t have ephods these days — though sometimes that seems like it would be nice when we need a direct answer as to what to do next! But we have the whole word of God and the continually indwelling Holy Spirit if we’re Christians. One of the many reasons it is so important to read and hear the Word of God regularly is that, as we take it in, we get to know our God and His character better, and the Holy Spirit can then bring back to our minds the truths we’ve learned (John 14:26).

David wrote in Psalm 63 in an earlier situation (I Samuel 23:14, according to the reference notes in my Bible), “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips: When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice” (verses 5-7). All through his life you find him inquiring of the Lord or going back to what he knew of God’s character and His word. Near the end of his life he passed this same encouragement on to his son, Solomon: in I Chronicles 28:9 he told him, “And thou, Solomon my son, know thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the LORD searcheth all hearts, and understandeth all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee; but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off for ever,” and verse 20, “Be strong and of good courage, and do it: fear not, nor be dismayed: for the LORD God, even my God, will be with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee, until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the LORD.”

May we all encourage ourselves in the Lord throughout our lives.

I mentioned on Monday’s post of quotes that I finished Hoping for Something Better: Refusing to Settle for Life as Usual, a Bible study by Nancy Guthrie, but I am rereading it again in an effort not to let its truths and lessons slip away.

I wanted to share a few of Nancy’s thoughts in a section titled “What Keeps Us From Real Rest?” from the chapter discussing Hebrews 3:1-4:13.

When the Israelites left Egypt, they looked forward to getting to the Promised Land — a place of their own, a place where they would no longer be slaves, a place where “they would finally be at home…finally put down roots and really rest” (p. 42).

And yet, as surely as the Promised Land was theirs for the taking and as much as they wanted it, something kept them from entering the rest that God held out to them. The writer to the Hebrews wants us to see what kept them from rest so we can avoid the same aimless wandering in the desert and ultimately dying in the wilderness that those children of Israel experienced (p. 42).

Nancy then brings from the passage the things that the Bible says kept them from rest:

1. Hardness of heart

Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. (Hebrew 3:7-9)

We see that exemplified in the Israelites’ complaining and disobedience — they even went so far as to wish they had stayed as slaves in Egypt.

Nancy then explores some ways hearts can get hard. She mentions that broken hearts can become hard, just as when we try to fix something that was broken with glue, yet the spot of the break develops a hard ridge. She admonishes “Don’t let your hurts harden you against God. Let your hurts become the places where God can work on you to mold you into his likeness as you stay soft toward him” (p. 43).

She then points out that “hardness of heart is also something we develop when we experience conviction of sin but choose not to repent” (p. 43), just like a place that is rubbed raw and develops a blister eventually gets to the point of developing a callous that doesn’t feel much of anything.

You could probably also assert from the Israelite’ situation that a lack of faith, a lack of applying what they knew of God, a failure to “seek…and set your affection on things above” (Colossians 3:1-3) contributed to their hardness of heart and can contribute to ours.

2. Believing a Lie

But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:13)

“Only by saturating our minds with Scripture can we be equipped to recognize the voice of the liar in our lives and avoid the deceitfulness of sin that will rob us of rest” (p. 44).

3. Disobedience from unbelief

And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. (Hebrews 3:18-19)

The children of Israel would have said they believed in God, and yet they didn’t believe God’s promise that he would give them victory over the giants in the land. Therefore they didn’t obey God to go in and take the land.

Is there a giant in the landscape of your life that has you intimidated? What unbelief is keeping you out of God’s blessing because you don’t believe God is big enough or powerful enough or good enough to help you overcome it? (pp. 44-45).

She then mentions perhaps God has called us to do something and promised to supply everything we need to perform it, yet we hold back, or we wrestle with some sin we’ve asked forgiveness for and yet don’t believe he has forgiven, and other scenarios where “the problem” isn’t the problem, but the lack of faith keeps us from entering into real rest, resulting in disobedience.

She closes this section with, “What unbelief has led to disobedience in your life? Won’t you chose to believe God’s Word and thereby enter into the rest of God?” (p. 45)

I had heard many of these individual points before, but I had never heard this really laid out in this way, and it was a good admonition to remind me to guard my heart and watch for those places where I am allowing hardness, untruth, and disobedience to creep in.