Discouraged?

 Discouraged? Will you take a minute and be encouraged by one of God's great soul surgeons? Let this old Puritan use his Bible scalpel to bring you healing and lift you up. 

"Behold says the Lord, I will allure her (that is the church, His people) and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her, and I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope." Hosea 2:14 

But you say, 'a wilderness condition is a lost condition, so what comfort can one have in a lost, condition?' True says God, you cannot, in and by yourselves, but here I will speak friendly and comfortably to her, and of all the times that I choose to preach the gospel to a poor soul, I choose to do it in a wilderness and lost condition. But you say, though the Lord does speak comfortably to us, yet if we are in a dry and barren wilderness where no food nor comfort is, how can we be anything but discouraged? No, says the Lord, but "I will give her vineyards from there." But you say again, if we sin and murmur in the wilderness, as the Israelites did, the Lord will cut us off as He did them, and a wilderness is a place of trouble, wherein we are apt to murmur and be discouraged. No, says the Lord, "But I will give her vineyards from there, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope." Now understand, the valley of Achor was the valley of anxiety, trouble, and of great discouragement, when the men of Israel fled, and fell before the men of Ai, for the sin of Achan, Joshua 7:26; yet it was an inlet to the land Canaan, to the land of rest. Now, says the Lord, see how it was with them, through the valley of Achor was a valley of trouble and anxiety, yet it was the door by which the Israelites come into the land of rest; so shall it be with you; I will make your troubles and discouragements the very door of your hope! The valley of your discouragements shall be the door and inlet unto all your rest and comfort. 

God takes the same way with the members (church) as He took with their Head; Christ's cross was an inlet to glory.