So I was feeling pretty discouraged today.  I know.  How can that be when I’m for the second time reading through Tim Keller’s book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, and getting great grace from the Lord through it.

And, not only that, I’m blogging an overview of it.  So I’m forced to think deeply about the book’s message.  And, not only that, I’m often writing my response, which means I’m personalizing the message.

Recently, one of my daughters said, “Dad always was a half-glass-empty kind of person.”  Ouch!  And true.  Many years ago I took a personality test that confirmed it.  Besides, like Paul I sometimes feel like the chief of sinners whose sin-nature easily gains the upper hand.  (I’m earnestly hoping you’re saying, “I relate.  I, too, often fall under the dominion of discouragement.”  I hope you’re saying it because I don’t want to feel like some kind of freak.

Here’s how bad I am:  just about every day I allow thoughts of what I can’t do anymore due to my disability.  Today for instance, lurking there in my subconscious playing over and over was the thought (complete with subconscious image) that I’ll never even walk again.  Do you know how many things you can’t do because you can’t walk?  I could easily list a dozen; but that would only deepen my discouragement.

So  a cloud hangs over me.  It’s so dark my wife, Lois, asked why I was mad at her.

Then I found an email from my daughter–an email with a song her husband and she had found and thought of me.  (My two daughters do that all the time–hear a Youtube song and email it to me, hoping the Lord will use it to bear me up.)

Invariably when I listen, tears stream down my face, because the song, given in love by my daughters, becomes a gift of God’s grace to me.  The song below is one of those.

First, it convicted me.  I know its message.  So I should have filled my mind with it.  Instead, I let Satan control my subconscious.  But, then, I let the song speak to me.  My discouragement lifted.  The cloud drifted away.  God’s gift of grace filled me again.

Maybe the song will do the same for you.  Or, maybe it will ready you for the next time the dark discouragement cloud drifts near.  Listen to God’s grace . . .