Whenever you face crisis, there is two ways of responding to the crisis. You can respond to

crisis with encouragement, or you can respond to it with discouragement. The root word is in the

middle of both words, encouragement and discouragement is what? Courage. And so we either face crisis with courage or lack thereof.

And this whole issue of discouragement has to do with courage.

But what makes the difference between a person who faces challenges with courage and one does not. What makes the

difference? I want to tell you, listen carefully. What makes the difference is having the

eternal perspective. What makes the difference is your perspective of who God is. What makes

the difference is the God factor in your life.

Only the person who sees everything through the biblical prism will be able to face whatever crisis will face with courage.

And courage will overcome discouragement every time. And before I get to the message

that I want to share with you four things that I have learned through the years about this whole

issue of discouragement. To defeat discouragement and not stay in it, the first thing you need to do

is be realistic.

Be realistic.

Be realistic about yourself, your abilities, and be realistic about others.

You see, high false expectations, perfectionism, not taking personal responsibility, and always blaming somebody else for our problem.

All of these are going to cause us discouragement every time.

But being realistic about yourself and about others is going to help you beat discouragement.

The second thing I want to share with you for my own personal life is this.

Remember your identity. Not your title, not your job, not your profession, not who you are,

not your family's name, who you are in Christ. And remember this. This is how I think about it.

Of all the billions of people in the world, God called you.

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