FJWL_02:368
         (Dad:) I know that you can get pretty discouraged sometimes. You start looking down, looking at the waves, and you start sinking, because everything seems so overwhelming. Everything seems to be a battle or a trial. The wind seems to go out of your sails and your boat starts drifting. You need to get back into the current. You need to get back to where the wind can blow in your sails again and push your boat along. When you're right where the Lord wants you to be, doing what He wants you to do, He'll put the wind in your sails and push you along. But sometimes, even though you are in His will, He allows the wind to die down as a test, to see if you'll still keep going even when there seems to be no inspiration.
         It's easy to serve the Lord and to keep going for Him when all is going well, when everything is going great guns and you're accomplishing a lot and you feel so inspired and so high in the Spirit. It's easy to serve the Lord then. But when it really counts in the Lord's eyes is when you keep going through the dry spells, those times when you don't feel so much inspiration, when you don't feel the anointing any more, when you don't feel like you're accomplishing that much, but you're just going on because you know the Lord expects it of you. You're doing it in obedience to Him, giving your life, dying daily because of His love for you and your love for Him.
         It's easy to "die daily" when everything is going great guns and you feel inspired. You're not really dying then. But it's the times when you don't feel inspired to do the Lord's will, when you feel discouraged and you feel the anointing is gone, when you really are "dying daily."
         It's at those times that your faith is tested the most, and the Lord allows it, because He uses it to refine you and to see what kind of metal you're made of. He puts us through the fires of testing to see how we'll come out on the other side. But the good thing about it is that He knows we can come out better gold, or He wouldn't put us through the fires in the first place. He knows that you're made of the right stuff. He knows that you're made of the kind of gold that can go through the fire and come out even better gold. So don't be too discouraged. Keep hanging on! Keep going for the Lord whether you feel encouraged or not. Keep giving it your best shot.



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