Discouragement - Leadership Prayers
Discouragement
Bring the renewal my spirit needs to keep on leading.
No one is here to comfort me; any who might encourage me are far away. Lamentations 1:16
Disappointment, discouragement, and despair constantly hunt the leader’s spirit. The leader’s inner self-renewal is essential, but so are external protection and support from others. No great leader leads alone.
DISAPPOINTMENT and dissent are facts of leadership, and I expect them, God. Normally they don’t take me down or make me doubt like this. But sometimes the restraints, resistance, and reversals feel so overwhelming that there is no clear path to the goal. I feel as if I have been pushing a rock uphill with a lot of people telling me I will never make it. Maybe they are right.
Things are going badly, and I am disappointed in myself. But I am not just disappointed, Lord, and not just tired. I am really discouraged. My body is strong enough, but my spirit is weak; my will is failing. If something doesn’t improve soon, I will despair entirely and give up trying to make this happen at all. I am not sure this is worth it anymore, or maybe I am not the right person to lead it. I feel like I am all alone and no one else really cares enough to do anything.
What do all these foul feelings mean? Are you trying to tell me we should cut our losses and quit this effort, or are these just barriers that we have to get past? Maybe this was a stupid thing to even start. I need some kind of sign if you want me to keep going. Send something, or send someone. I’ve had it, Father. I can’t keep going like this.
When others get discouraged, I feel it, just as they will start feeling it from me. Maybe that downward cycle has already started. I sense that they are disappointed with me as their leader. I haven’t met their expectations or their needs, and we are floundering.
I know you forgive me and love me, and your Spirit comforts me, and I am deeply grateful. But I need you to send me a touch or a word of insight or encouragement in human form. I feel like no one else knows where I am in this. Worse, maybe they just don’t care. If no one else cares, maybe I shouldn’t care either.
It takes faith to quit and faith to keep on, so this is not about my faith in you, God. It is about confidence in myself and about whether to keep leading in this direction. If I am supposed to quit leading on this one, does that signal that I should quit leading altogether? I am at your mercy, Father. If you want me to press forward, send a messenger who will . . .
Bring the renewal my spirit needs to keep on leading.
Reflections
During his years heading Youth for Christ in the U.S., Jay Kesler also preached forty Sundays a year in his home church. On one occasion he was asked about a certain situation in which people were acting in nasty and petty ways. “I am very disappointed with the church,” he said, “but I am not discouraged.” The distinction stuck with me. It was part of how he carried such enormous responsibilities with such a joyful heart, and how he turned his own mistakes into growth experiences for himself and all those around him. He admitted disappointment and often found humor in it, but he wisely guarded his heart against discouragement.
Disappointment is not fatal to leadership. It goes with the territory. Indeed, part of what qualifies a person to lead is the ability to cope positively with criticism, mistakes, and failures. Every leader shows some version of “thick skin” because disappointment is ubiquitous. If we cannot take the arrows of disappointment, we cannot lead.
But disappointment differs from discouragement or despair, when we must admit that further pursuit of the goal makes no sense, when a particular person can no longer be trusted, when support would be wasted, when pearls would be cast before swine. Unlike disappointment, discouragement cannot be managed safely in isolation. The discouraged leader needs the touch of trusted and loving friends who bring the healing consolation of prayer.
