In this sermon, the speaker shares personal experiences of growing up in a troubled family with an alcoholic father who was abusive towards his mother and him. Despite the difficult circumstances, the speaker emphasizes the importance of not letting the past define us and instead focusing on the practical teachings of the Bible. The speaker highlights the biblical instruction for wives to submit to their husbands in a way that is fitting in the Lord, while also emphasizing the need for husbands to love their wives and not be harsh with them. Additionally, the speaker emphasizes the importance of children obeying their parents and fathers not embittering their children.

Let's turn in our Bibles to the book of Colossians. Colossians 3, verse 18 through 21. It says this, wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Not one amen. All right, let me read it again. Wives, submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. I only hear men saying amen. Amen. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Amen. Oh, no, I'm leaving. I'm leaving, I'm in the wrong church here. Children, obey your parents in everything for this pleases the Lord. Amen. Fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged. In most of all of Paul's letters, every one of them, Paul sends a greeting. He usually gives thanksgiving at the beginning. Then he treats some theological subject that that church needs to hear about because he's heard reports that they've straying into false doctrine or false teaching or whatever. Toward the end of the epistle, the letter, epistle means letter, he then gives practical instruction on how to live out the Christian life in a way that pleases the Lord. We're not saved by obeying commandments. We're saved by God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Once we become born again Christians, now Paul's injunction is, are you going to displease him every day? Are you going to live in the stuff that put him on the cross? Are you going to drive new nails in his hands? So he now gives us instructions on how do fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, children, how do they live a life that makes God happy every day? Obviously God can be made happy, live a life pleasing to the Lord. If you can please the Lord, then logically that means I could displease the Lord. Yesterday I could have pleased the Lord or displeased. Today I can please him or I could do and say things that displease him. How many want to please him? Say amen. After all he's done for us. See that's what holy living and Christian living is all about. Not oh I don't want to go to hell, but I love you for all you've done for me. Why do I want to make my mom happy? So that I can become her son? I am her son. I want to please her because I love her. So now Paul gets into the practical teaching. Let's look at it again, practical teaching. Wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Notice husbands be tender like Christ is in his love. Wives who are co-equal partners with the grace of God. Give their input in all decisions and all of that. But then as God has ordered marriage, they live submissive to their husbands as is fitting in the Lord. They never do anything that is contrary to scripture just because their husband forces them to do it. Children, obey your parents in everything. See there it is again. For this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not embitter your children or they will become discouraged. Now let's just look at that verse 21 again. Say it with me out loud. Fathers, do not embitter your children. That's what I want to talk about today. And fathers is not just fathers, it stands for mother too, it's parents. Paul says when you raise your children, don't embitter them, don't frustrate them, don't be dictatorial with them, don't be harsh with them or you will break their spirit and you will discourage them. And the word discourage there means, as it does elsewhere in the New Testament, they will lose heart or be spiritless. You will break their spirit in the wrong way and they will want to quit and give up. Parents can help their children or Paul says, parents can embitter their children by treating them so unwisely and talking and handling them in such a wrong way that they discourage their own children as if there's not enough discouragements in life. That when you come home, you get further discouraged by your own parents. You know, a lot of us are bent out of shape in one way or another because of the unfortunate happenstance of the families we were born into. I showed you my mom and my dad you saw up there and he was a wonderful man in so many ways but he also for a time of almost 22 years was an alcoholic who beat my mother and I witnessed that and who went to hit me with chairs and whatnot and we didn't sleep at night. My brother married first, he's six years older so he was out of the house and I couldn't invite friends to my house. I couldn't have people come because I never knew on any given moment or day how my dad would be because when he had just one drink, he would start slurring his words. He kept the liquor downstairs and I remember this coming to me, I'm 11 years old or something, I heard my mother crying in a room next to our bedroom, the three of us slept in one bedroom, we were in a railroad apartment here in Brooklyn and I heard my mother crying and I jumped out of bed and I peeked through and she was talking to my grandmother on my father's side and my mother was just sobbing and saying, what am I gonna do, Mary? Nick is drinking and that 11 year old, that hit my mind. What, the guy who takes me to church? And I remember my brother soon after that calling me downstairs in the basement where he would study and say, do you notice something different in dad? I said, yeah, he always beats me but the last time, he almost killed me, beat the tar out of me. My brother said, I think he's drinking. I said, what? And I put that together with what I had heard. It was all hush hush, no one said anything. You know, that's how it is in the home of an alcoholic and my brother said, yeah, I hear him rustling with a bag in another part of the basement. I said, let me go see that. He went, no, no, you can't do that but I was different than my brother. I was like, oh yeah? So I went, I got it, took it out of the bag, big bottle of bourbon, poured it down the sink, put it back in the bag, put it back up there and knew he couldn't say a word to me because he was hiding the fact that there was any alcohol in the house. I must have poured out 20, 20 bottles. Thank God by his grace, I had the understanding that that was not my father when he was acting like that and cursing me and going after my mom and whatnot but that was hard on me. Never made it to my wedding. Never, never was present at my wedding. So that leaves a mark on you and God has to help you emotionally, mentally, right? I said, right, right? But some of us grew up, why we embitter our kids is because we're replicating the way we were raised which was wrong. BT Kids people, they sometimes come to me and they're crying because they say when the kids that are being ministered to now and in the 12 noon service, when they're picked up by the parents here, they just hear the parents talk to the child for just 30 seconds and they wanna cry and grab the child and not let the child go home with the parent. Not let the parent even take the child or the guardian or the aunt or whatever. Totally inappropriate yelling, shut up! Just shut up, I know that. And here, we're trying to tell them that God is love and trying to get through to their heart and you see parents talking to children that you say, oh my goodness, they should make a law that not everybody can have children because children don't have enough problems with the schools they go to, with what's going on. We live in a city with a very perverse board of education, very perverse city government, very perverse. Some very great teachers, some not so good teachers but the philosophy of the board of education in our city is getting more ungodly like while the meeting's going on. So the kids are having foisted upon them all kinds of evil things and it's being presented as legitimate and good. Now when they come home, they have to hear that from some mother or father who's just raising them the way they were screamed at in their house in Jamaica or Poland or Bronx or Trinidad or Puerto Rico. You know, we're going to raise them our culture way. Why would you want to raise people? Why would you want to touch children with your culture? Why wouldn't you want to raise them with the love of God and with the wisdom? Can we all say amen to that? But you hear people say that. That's the way we do things. I thought as Christians, we're not supposed to act like that. We're supposed to raise people with some wisdom, children with wisdom. So I don't even know what to say. I just feel as a failure as a pastor when I hear these workers come and tell me, pastor, it just breaks our hearts. Just the 30 second interaction, you want to get up in the face of the parent and say, why would you want to talk to your child that way? See, you're acting stupid again. You're acting, you're always bad. Well, that's a great thing to plant in your child's mind. The Bible says here, this is very real. Parents, not just fathers, but mothers, don't embitter your children. Don't frustrate them. Don't hold things for them that they can't reach or else what will happen? You'll discourage them. Can you imagine that tragedy? Can you imagine when the books are opened at the end of time and we find out that some children never made it to the Lord because the Christian parents that went to church and lifted their hands went home and talked so nasty to them that they went, I don't want your Jesus, I don't want your God, I want your church. Because what you do there is not what I see at home. How many times I hear that? Then the kids just, they get discouraged. Now, discouragement is something we all deal with. Notice how Paul says it's like a forbidden thing. Parents, don't frustrate your children. Don't embitter them. Don't vex them. Don't act inappropriately with them. Don't be unwise. Don't be harsh with them. There's many ways to correct children. I've made mistakes so I'm not talking down to anyone here. By the grace of God, all my children are serving the Lord. My grandchildren too. But be careful how you raise your children. Don't embitter them or they'll become discouraged. And when someone becomes discouraged, you know what that means. All hell can break loose. Did you know that discouragement is the door that goes into rooms that we don't want to think about? You know what it is to get discouraged, don't you? Israel had a battle with discouragement in the Old Testament. Why? Discouragement means you lose heart. You want to quit. You don't want to go on. Am I the only person here in this room that has had moments in their life where you wanted to quit? You wanted to give up? Am I the only one here? I don't hear any amens but I'm gonna preach this anyway. I don't care if you don't say one amen. This is the truth. Haven't we all been discouraged at one time? Come on, one time or another. You just want to quit, give up. You're just like, I can't take it anymore. I can't take it anymore. And then think of a child facing all this junk in the playground and the junior crips and the junior bloods and the drugs and everything else, right? And this filthy rap coming at them from left and right, gangster rap, gangster culture, everything coming at them left and right. And now when they get home, they get treated wrong at home too. So then what's the sense of living? Why do you think the suicide rate of children around the world is rising and rising and rising? Because it's like, where do you hide? Where do you go? You get discouraged, you quit. That's why people commit suicide, kids do. Over in Korea and in Japan, it's an unspoken thing but it's almost like a plague now over there. So many kids are just opting out of life. Unreasonable demands, unreasonable stuff. And then they get discouraged. But adults get discouraged. And when you get discouraged, Satan comes and says, what are you living for God for? What are you resisting the flesh? Why are you trying to live a pure life? Why are you trying to serve Jesus Christ? Let it all hang out. And when you're discouraged, your ear is open. When you're discouraged, it can lead to just depression and you say, guess what? I'm not fighting anymore, I'm dropping out. All kinds of people drop out. You don't see them dropped out but in here and in here, they've dropped out. They've dropped out. They're not trying anymore. They're not fighting any good fight of faith. Why? Because they're discouraged. If you're discouraged, you don't want to fight anymore. When you play basketball as I did in high school and college and you play the other team, there's a saying that you want to break their will. You want to discourage them. Football, what it is, or boxing, whatever you do, you want to break their will so they get discouraged. They lose their will to even try to win. That's what you want to do. You want to take their heart from them. If you talk rough in sports, you go, well, I'm going to rip your heart out of you. We're going to break your heart. What does that mean? It means I'm going to discourage you so much that you won't even try anymore. That's what happens in life. You get discouraged. Tell me if this isn't true of you. In the Old Testament, the Bible says Israel, 40 years in the wilderness and sometimes the places they went to with no water, very dry, very hot, the Bible says the road got so long they got discouraged. Isn't that true about life? Have you had an easy life? I haven't. Anybody here had an easy life? And sometimes the road gets so long and so hard and there's so many mountains to go over and valleys to go through and there we go again and now there's another problem that if you're not careful, you can get, forget the C word, cancer, how about D word, discouraged. Then depression, sin, quitting, taking your eyes off of God, losing your faith, when you get discouraged, anything's possible, of course. When Joshua became the leader of Israel, remember after Moses died, the thing that's repeated over and over again in the first chapter, they said to Joshua, now listen, here's the word of the Lord for you. Don't fear, neither be discouraged. These are the two battles in life. Don't be afraid and don't be discouraged. Fear is that sense of intimidation. Discouragement is when you're just worn down, you're just beat down. Anybody ever got beat down by life? Sometimes the task in front of you, like raising kids in this day, let's be honest, it's not easy, it's hard. Sometimes the task, getting along with a boss who's unreasonable, coworkers, getting along with them, sometimes it's so difficult that you're tempted to get discouraged because you try your best and nothing changes. Or how about this? The Bible says in Proverbs somewhere, hope deferred is a terrible thing, it breaks your heart. In other words, you're praying for something, you're believing for something, and then it doesn't happen in your time frame. And while you're waiting, what's the temptation? Discouragement. Like, where is this thing? Where's God? He didn't show up. David, you see him in the Psalms. He's battling with discouragement. God, I cried out to you, but where in the world are you? Come on, hasn't anybody ever dealt with that? What am I, speaking to angels here? What are you, real people? How many can empathize with what I'm saying? Just lift your hand. Well, the road gets long, the task becomes super difficult, or you don't see the thing come through, and there's all kinds of temptation, you get discouraged. How many Christian women have I seen almost or wreck their lives because they can't wait for God's guy? He has one for her. They can't wait for that, so then they get discouraged. I'm serving God. I don't see any guy taking interest in me and whatever, so then you know what? That guy is looking fine. That guy on the job, he's looking fine. Yeah, but he doesn't believe in the electric light bulb. He doesn't believe in God. He doesn't believe in anything. Yeah, I don't care. You know, what's the sense? He wants to take me out. He wants to put his hands all over me. I don't care anymore. I don't, listen. You don't think we've counseled some people? See Pastor Hammond nodding, and Pastor Burke goes, what do you think, we've never talked to people like that? Talk to people all the time like that. When they have a mess, and the guy walks out on them, and they have a baby, this, that, whatever happens, and then they, oh, help me. Jesus is praying, but you know what got him in that? Discouragement, discouragement. Do you ever meet people who discourage you? They just talk to you when they're done. You just want to get a Bible, go on your knees, get along with God. They discourage you. I wonder how people look at you. You just said people discourage you, and people discourage me. I remember meeting someone who heard that we were trying to buy this building, and then fix it up, but was in total disrepair. You know what we'll do before Christmas? These pictures that we just got before and after. Some of you don't even know what this used to look like. Oh, you got to see it, and how God helped us. But I met one minister, and he looked at me, said you'll never do that. I said no, like we prayed, we feel God led us. Somebody gave me a million dollars without me asking for the church. You're living in fantasy. You'll never pull that off. It involves too much. That was a great word to hear. Just feel like jumping around after you meet people like that, right? Come on, how many have ever met somebody like that? Everything's negative, everything's wrong. They're embittered, they're defeated, so then they pull you down. Or they're envious, or they're whatever. They're so insecure they can't root for you, because insecure people never root for other people. You know that, right? Insecure people are so wrapped up with themselves, they can only tear you down, which somehow in a sick way lifts them up by tearing you down. And like I told you about, I heard this woman just greet a choir member coming off the risers, you know, so unwise. Hi, how are you? And she said, hi, how are you? Oh, you look fat. That is an encouraging word to somebody. There are people like that. They just discourage. And here Paul says, don't embitter your children, or else they'll get the D word. And then, oh my goodness, they'll get discouraged. Take their eyes off of God, wanna quit. How you gonna fight the good fight? How you gonna finish the race if you're discouraged? Let's take the other side of that. We've all been discouraged by people, haven't we? Forget circumstances. You know, you're battling against circumstances, then you meet people who discourage you. I wonder how people look at you. Are you a discourager or an encourager? Ah, now there's not so much laughter and so much amens, right? When people meet you, I wonder when your name comes before them and they picture your name, Ward or Jim or whoever, I wonder do they think, oh, I love to be around him. I love to be around him. He's an encourager. He lifts me up. Or do they think, oh no, God forbid, I run into him at lunch because he will pull me down to just talk about himself, not be interested in anything in my life. Not interested. You know, there's many ways to discourage people. And sometimes it's just wanna talk about me, myself and I. And what they're going through, you don't give a care about it. And that discourages them. Because they have to listen to you ramble on about your little life for like an hour. And then you don't even ask them. That's discouraging. That's discouraging. And we know what discouragement can do to a child or to an adult. It puts you in a very vulnerable position. That's why the Bible puts such a high value on people who have the ability to encourage. See, encourage is the opposite of discouragement. Encourage means to lift somebody up. To say positive things. To tell them that Jesus loves them. To tell them that God will help them. To understand what they're going through and then say, but God has not forgotten you. And to encourage people like that. Can we all say amen to that? That's what encouragement means. And the Bible says that God himself is an encourager. Look at this verse. This passage in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah 117. This is a command. Learn to do right. Speak justice. And encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. But notice the second sentence there. Encourage the oppressed. Encourage the people are being beat down in life. You know what folks are going through here? You saw how many came forward. They can't pay their rent. They're going through a lot in life and now you're gonna discourage them on top of that? No, the Bible says make every opportunity a possibility to encourage and lift somebody up because God knows there's enough in the world and the flesh and the devil to pull us down. So in the Old Testament, the command was given. Encourage the oppressed. How many of us do that? What do you think this ministry New Hope is doing? Notice New Hope. One of the things they wanna do is go and encourage the people in shelters. Imagine if they went in and discouraged them while they were living in a shelter. Oh, that's just beautiful. We got some discouragers coming here while we're living in a shelter. That just makes the day perfect now with a great message of discouragement. No, we're going in to encourage them. Look up at this passage here. This is in 2 Timothy 4.2. This is how challenging it is to be a minister. In the Old Testament, we just saw encourage the oppressed. Say that with me. Encourage, say it again. Encourage the oppressed. Can we not all do that? Yes. Can we do that? Can't you meet somebody today? In fact, every contact you have today, think, did I encourage them, or did I ignore them, or did I discourage them? Think how hard it is to be a minister. This is written to a pastor like me. Preach the word, okay, that I got. Be prepared in season and out of season. Always be ready to minister, to speak. Now notice, correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. But look at that connection. Correct what? If people are believing wrong and doing wrong, in love, correct them. People don't like to be corrected. But worse than that, correct if their belief system is wrong. Correct them on the word of God. But then rebuke. Rebuke means sharp words. Who in the world goes to church to hear a pastor rebuke them? But if you're heading down the wrong trail, you don't say, I love you, you love me, everything's fine. If someone's heading to destruction and making trouble in the church and contaminating other believers, you're not only correct, sometimes you have to rebuke, but notice what you have to do to other people. Encourage. And you gotta keep doing it because some people just easily get discouraged. So you gotta encourage them. You can do it. Come on, you can make it. Jesus loves you. You're gonna make it. You will pay your rent. Notice how hard it is to be a true pastor. Not just a guy smiling and shaking hands and telling people what they wanna hear. Think what the Bible call on my life is and on us. We have to correct, rebuke, and encourage. Most people wanna be encouraged. Hardly anyone wants to be corrected and rebuked. But hasn't God corrected us? Come on, how many ever been corrected by God? How many ever been rebuked by God? You get a little pow-pow, right? How many ever got a good little spanking from God on something, right? We don't mind it from God. We just don't like it when it comes to another person, especially a wife or a husband, correct, don't you go there. But encourage the people. Then the Bible says, but not just pastors. One of the spiritual gifts that God put in the church is this. Romans, we have different gifts according to the grace given us. This is in a church. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it's serving, like new hope, let him serve. If it's teaching, I'm trying to do that now, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let him encourage. Some people, that's what their gift is from God. They just have the ability to lift everybody up. Just lift everybody up. You know what that means when you lift someone up? I was in the ministry three or four months. You can't imagine how depressing and discouraged that I was. Never being prepared, rundown building, less than 20 people on a good Sunday, two people sometimes on a Tuesday night, offerings ridiculous, $85. You can't pay any bills with tithes and offerings of $85. Discouraged. Sermons that were so bad that you don't want to know. You don't want to know. One time when I was preaching, a guy just put his head down like this, no, and had his head down, and I thought, my goodness, he's under conviction from my preaching. I couldn't believe it. And he had his head down like that. I knew he wasn't sleeping. You know, just had his head down like this. So at the end of the meeting, he still was like that. I thought, oh God, thank you for my first message that ever did anything to anyone. And I went, and I tapped him finally on the shoulder, and he lifted his head, and he had a piece of paper. He was drawing stick figures for the entire meeting. My sermon made him an artist. Just drawing little men with little heads, and their feet were sticking out. That's the truth. This missionary comes from Africa, a real man of God. And he comes there to speak. Nobody would want to speak, but he knew my late father-in-law. So he came to speak on a midweek service. I can remember his message to this day. Special man of God. So full of, he had, among other gifts, he had the gift of encouragement. So he does the Wednesday night meeting. There's 11 people there, and I'm there three months, and he takes me down to the corner of Atlantic and Third Avenues, and we're sitting in this little diner type thing, and we're eating, and he's just looking at me. And I'm so young, and I'm just eating and fighting this discouragement. He's just looking at me, and I looked up to him, and he went, this is amazing. And I'm going, what's amazing? He went, you. I went, what? He says, oh, what God is gonna do here. He said, I get it. And I'm just looking. Is he talking to somebody behind me? Maybe the waiter has a call of God on his life. And he goes, yeah, look at this. It's a total disaster. The neighborhood, the building, you're untrained. You have no people, you have no money. It's set up by God. He's gonna bring such glory to his name. He's gonna do something. Come on, can we praise God? He said, no, listen, the Lord is with you. He led you to this so that people will say, how awesome is God? And I remember the tears forming and my heart beating. Now I can still remember like, could this be true? Yeah, something told me God's gonna do something. You know how he encouraged me? I walked into that diner like this in my spirit. I walked out of that diner like, come on, get this thing on. Come on. How many love to be encouraged by somebody? Come on. One last verse in closing. But look at the call on all of us. Hebrews 10, 25, let us not give up meeting together. That means going to church. Because people, you know, whenever someone stops going to church, they're in trouble. No, no, no, pastor, they worship at home. They're in trouble. No, no, they promise me, they're reading their word. Elise, they're in trouble. They're in trouble. Whenever someone doesn't come to the house of God regularly, they're in trouble. Let us not first give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us, what? And all the more as you see the day, the day of Christ's return approaching. Notice what's supposed to happen. We're supposed to encourage each other, but coming to church and gathering together, we're supposed to encourage each other. And that starts with me. If I have not encouraged you better, please forgive me. I look back now, all these years, decades of ministry, I figured out recently that I've spoken in or run because of the multiple services here and travels between nine to 10,000 service in my life. That's why I look so old. I'm 28 years old. I just, it's the truth. I just turned 28. But as God is my witness, when I think of services, I say, oh God, please help me to encourage the people. Even if I have to correct, even if I have to say difficult things from the word of God, if I haven't encouraged you more, if we fail to encourage you, forgive us because we love you. I want to encourage you. I want God to help me to encourage you more because it's hard out there. It's flat out hard to be a Christian now. My wife and I have been doing this for a while in the 80s, 70s, 90s, especially 70s, 80s. It was so much easier to serve the Lord in this city than it is now. There's an oppression. I know greater is he that's in us than he. I know you don't have to quote the verses to me. I know that, but it's still hard. The road gets hard. Come on, does the road get hard? Lift up your hand if you know the road gets hard. It's like something in the air. It's like something you feel. So every time we meet anybody during today or any other day, you got to think of this. God, give me a verse. Give me something to ask or say so that I can encourage this person because you do not know what they're going through. You do not know the battles. You don't know the battles of Satan attacking them. How would you know that? How would I know that? You don't know their financial situation. You don't know what's happening in their family. You don't know anything. You don't, you see the choir lifting their hand. You don't know the battles they're fighting. Come on, some of them are fighting through tears and they're praising God. They're fighting through heartaches. Am I right, choir? They've gotten up there hanging by a thread and minister to you because they want to encourage you, but they need to encourage themselves. Am I speaking the truth, choir? Yeah, we're in this together. We need encouragement. That's the first thing you learn in a basketball team. Whether you're on the bench or you're playing, you encourage the other guy. If a guy misses a foul shot, you don't go, why'd you miss that shot, man? You can't make that shot. Nobody was guarding you. You're 15 feet away. You can't shoot that shot. No, you go, come on, bang them on the back end and you go, come on, you're going to do it next time. Come on, are we going to do it next time? Yeah, you're going to make it next time. Come on, we're going to win. And the minute you see anybody discourage and huddle with a minute left, I was the point guard and the captain at the University of Rhode Island. So you get up, no matter how big they are, it's my job to say, hey, are you quitting? Are you quitting? Because if you're quitting, get on the bench. Let somebody get in who has heart. We got it, we're going to win this thing. Come on, let's encourage each other. Come on, we're going to encourage each other. Turn right now to your left and right and just shake the hands of the person next to you and say, be encouraged, come on. I want to encourage somebody today because some of you might be beat down. Now listen, we've all been beat down. Then there are better moments. But then sometimes you're fighting discouragement. Have we not all fought discouragement? The choir has a word for you. God is giving right now while I'm speaking the choir a verse or a word or a prayer over you very briefly for those of you who are fighting discouragement. I can't encourage everybody. I'll pray a prayer, but I want it to be up close and personal. The deacons, they're going to encourage you. We're going to say something to you that's going to lift you up. Because outside these doors, it's different, isn't it? Here, it's like we love each other, don't we? You love everybody here, right? Don't we love the Lord? Don't we love one another? Aren't we in the house of God? That's why, by the way, that's why church fighting is so horrible or gossip and slander or disunity. Why? Because in the world, we're used to being attacked. But when you come to church, you want a place to go, thank you, Jesus. And you want to be prayed for and ministered to. But if you come to a church, I'm trying to help a church in another part of the world right now. And they're going through some real tension problems. Some troublemaker has made for a lot of problems trying to help a pastor and guide him through it. And the closest thing to hell is a bad church environment on earth. Because if you can't get encouragement in church, where will you go? Thank God we can be encouraged by him. Sometimes we have no one around us. How many ever been encouraged by God, by his word, in prayer? Yes. But God uses people. Close your eyes with me. If anyone prophesies, let him prophesy according to his faith. If anyone's gift is giving, let him give liberally. If anyone's gift is teaching, let him teach. And if anyone's gift is encouraging, let them encourage. How important, God, must this be to you? Help us with our children. Help us with one another. Help us to speak positive, life-giving things into people. Forgive me, forgive us for ever being a discouragement to anyone, frustrate anyone. Forgive me, have mercy. If you're here today and you're fighting discouragement, see, it's okay to say you're doing it, because we all have. Get out of your seat real quick. Come up. I don't care if you're from that visiting group. I believe God brought some people from that visiting group because he knew they needed to hear this word to be encouraged. Come on, come out of your seat and stand up here. Anybody here fighting discouragement, you want God to help you? Been beat down, things have been going wrong. It's hard, it's hard. God's going to help you. He's going to encourage you today. Wait till you hear what's going to be whispered in your ear. Wait till you hear the prayer, brief prayer prayed over you. Wait, just come up. Just say, God, I'm battling right now. The road is very long, very hard. The task in front of me seems insurmountable. Hope deferred has made my heart sick a little bit and weak because I keep waiting and I don't see the answer. Come on, be honest. God will lift you up. Anyone who humbles themselves, God will lift up. Father God, let encouragement roll like a river in this place. Lift the downtrodden. Raise up the person who's bent down in their spirit. Get their eyes focused on you, Lord. Your faithfulness, your promises, your love for us. Every eye closed. Father, we leave this building with a smile on our lips, with our hearts full of faith. Our God is able. Come on, everyone. Our God is able. Say it with me. Our God is able. Say it again. Our God is able. Thank you for lifting us, encouraging us. Those of you that are still not praying, turn around, hug somebody.