Jentezen Franklin - The Remedy for Discouragement
If you have your Bibles, open them with me to the Old Testament book of Zechariah. I want you to see some powerful verses in the book of Zechariah 1. We'll begin reading with verse 16. "Therefore, thus says the Lord, 'I am returning to Jerusalem with mercy. My house shall be built in it,' says the Lord of hosts, 'And a surveyor's line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem.'" He's saying all of this after Babylonian captivity, after the city, the nation has been destroyed. Seventy years of captivity and God sends this word.
And then He says in verse 17, "Again, proclaim, saying, 'Thus says the Lord of hosts, 'My cities shall again spread out through prosperity; The Lord will, again, comfort Zion, and will, again, choose Jerusalem.'" Verse 18, "Then I raised my eyes and looked," this is Zechariah, and he says, "There were four horns. And I said to the angel who talked with me, 'What are these?' So, he answered me, 'These are the horns that have scattered Judah,'" notice now, what are the horns doing? "'They scattered Judah, Israel and Jerusalem.' Then the Lord showed me four carpenters. And I said, 'What are these coming to do?' So, he said, 'These are the horns that scattered Judah, so that,'" Listen to it, "No one could lift up his head, but the carpenters are coming to terrify them, to cast out the horns of the nations that lifted up their horn against the land of Judah to scatter it".
So, I'm preaching today on, "Build It". In part one, this morning, I'm preaching on, "The Remedy For Discouragement". But I feel those words alive in my soul this morning, "Build It," in some cases, rebuild it. But you'll understand that what God is doing in this hour, I believe, is found in Zechariah 1. He speaks of a vision, and he speaks of seeing in the middle of it four horns rising up. He said, "And behold, I lifted up my eyes and there were four horns". Horns in the Bible are symbols and synonymous with power, with strength, with a ram's horn, is what it's referring to. And it has to do with aggressive power, not just power, but aggressive power, unbridled, without restraint. And it's coming to destroy, these four horns came up to destroy, notice what it said, "To scatter, rising up against Jerusalem," which is the capital city of Israel, "and, Judah," which is the people, the seed, the race, of Israel, "and Israel," the entire nation, "to scatter them".
That word is so important. The purpose of the horns was to scatter Israel. And we, today, the church, is spiritual Israel. There's natural Israel and there's spiritual Israel. And these things were written for our learning to understand how the enemy operates when he attacks Israel the church, the body of Christ, so that the people would be so defeated, so discouraged, and despondent that their head is looking down, not looking up. Adversity comes to take our vision, to turn our head down away from the future of hope, and the faith in our future to be dissipated, to be discouraged. And everything about that posture of looking down is unbiblical.
The Bible clearly says in Psalms 121:1-2, "Lift up your eyes unto the hills". You're not supposed to be despondent and looking down. That's the enemy and the spirit that's coming. And it came to the nation of Israel, the people of Israel, and the capital city of Jerusalem, and it said, "You are defeated, and you are to stay down. Don't you look up with faith and vision". "Lift up your head unto the hills from which cometh your help, your help is the Lord". It's time to break out of the present problems. It's time to lift up your eyes. I'mma preach what God told me to preach. We have a bright future. Your family, if you believe in Jesus Christ, I don't care how scattered and divided it is, you lift up your head. You do have a future and God still has a vision for miracles in your home. It's not over. Better days are coming.
God's not done, God's not gonna let it end like this, and it's not His will for your family to be scattered, broken, divided, and defeated. In the name of Jesus, help is on the way. I believe that when you begin to focus on where you've been, that's where you stay. But he said, "Together, Israel, Jerusalem, Judah, everything the enemy's tried to scatter and divide", and there is a great, great spirit, I believe, that has come to divide our nation, to divide our families, to divide our marriages, to divide us from our future place of destiny and calling. And a scattering of Godly marriages is happening. A scattering of families raised in church, and then comes those four horns to scatter, and divide, and tear to pieces. And you sit here without your children Sunday after Sunday and your heart swells, and you wonder, "Where in the world, and how in the world is this thing ever going to change"?
We're scattered. We're divided in our families, and in our homes. But I did not come to preach bad news. I have a remedy. I have a solution for all of the scattering, dividing, demonic spirits that have come against families, marriages, homes, and this nation. The problem is scattering, but here is the good news. He said, "My solution for scattering spirits is there is another force in the vision that started rising up". He said, "I see a group of people and they've got work belt strapped on. They've got hammers. They've got nails. They're not tearer downs, they're builder ups. They're builders. They're laborers. They are workers. They are carpenters. And they are coming, and they will destroy the word said those four horns and what they wanted to do to the families of Israel".
What is happening is I will send forth the carpenters, and they will subdue the scattering spirits. There's about to be building and rebuilding of that which has been scattered and divided. God needs carpenters right now, not critics. God needs carpenters right now, not complainers. And God needs carpenters and builders right now, not a bunch of cynics who say, "Well, I believed last year and it's gotten worst". I don't care. God is in control and God is working even when it doesn't look like He's working. And He's saying, "I need some carpenters who will get their head up, get their faith up, and get their tools out and start building back what the enemy's tried to destroy". The walls of Nehemiah, the walls of Jerusalem that Nehemiah rebuilt were rebuilt in 52 days, but it did not happen with empty hands.
The Bible said every man, woman, boy, girl, took a tool in one hand, a hammer or something like that, and they took a sword in the other hand, and they said, "We will fight for our families. We will fight for our marriages. We will fight every evil spirit that comes to scatter and divide us. If you wanted a fight, Devil, you picked this fight, you gonna get a fight. I'm gonna take the sword of the spirit which is the word of God, and I will stab you to death. You will not get my family, my nation, my home, my children, my grandchildren. I gonna build with one hand and fight with the other. Building and battling, building and battling". But it won't happen with idle hands.
The enemy wants your hands idle while the enemy is scattering and dividing your children, and your family, and tearing everything to pieces. But you have to put on a work belt. Get you one of those nuclear powered... Oh, I don't know what they're called. You can tell how gifted I am in that department. You need just to feel like a man. You need a tape measure on your belt. You need a hammer hanging off of you. When hell comes to destroy everything that you love, you just grab a sword in one hand and grab your power drill in the other hand and say, "Devil, I know you've attacked through drugs, through alcoholism, through demons of depression, and bipolar, whatever. In the name of Jesus, I have the spirit of a carpenter and I'mma rebuild what hell has destroyed".
Get your head up. Get your faith up. Get your vision up. God has not forsaken you or your family. Glory to God. Jesus, for the first 30 years of His life, was not raised in the priesthood. He was raised in a carpenter's home. And the last three years of His life, when He started doing miracles after He had worked in His father's carpentry business rebuilding broken things, the people said when they saw Him doing miracles, "Is not this Joseph the carpenter's son"? Carpentry has always been God's remedy for scattering, and dividing, and discouraging God's people. Jesus showed up with the spirit of the builder when He came. And He said, "I've got the tools that I need to rebuild any marriage, any family, any nation, any people who will turn to me. I've got three nails, I've got a hammer, and I've got two beams".
And if you take the cross, and the nails, and you take the sacrifice of His blood on the cross, it can rebuild any broken place in your life. That's my carpenter. His name is Jesus. So, there are three things that God wants us to rebuild if you're gonna see the spirit of the carpenter hit your life and raise back up what the enemy has scattered and divided. First of all, you gotta rebuild the altar. Every problem with people is a prayer problem. If you fix your altar, you will fix your life. If your altar is unfixed, your life will remain unfixed. There comes a point when you get so desperate that you rebuild your altar. And if you will rebuild the altar and put God first in your life, and begin to call on Him, and begin to listen to Him, because prayer is talking to God, word is listening to God. And if you will rebuild your altar, your altar will rebuild your life, rebuild your marriage, rebuild your children, rebuild your future. There is no shortcuts.
That's why when Elijah wanted the fire to fall on his nation again... They were in a drought for three and a half years and he went to Mount Carmel and he said, "I've got to first build an altar to solve this problem, to rebuild the nation, rebuild the altar". And he got 12 stones, he stacked them on top of each other. He built a fire with wood. And he did not start the fire, he just put the wood there and he laid the sacrifice on the drywood, and then he did something strange. He called for 12 barrels of water. The one thing they didn't have was water. It had not rain nor dew had come in the mornings. There was no dew or rain for three and half years, and water was the one thing they didn't have much of at all.
Isn't it amazing that the thing that will help you build your altar is the thing you don't have enough of. And most people don't pray when they have what they need. But the thing that you don't have that you desperately want to see happen is the very thing that should cause you to pour, and build an altar. And they drenched the altar, and the fire fell from heaven and lit the fire, and the famine was over, and the nation was blessed and restored. Rebuild the altar. Don't leave the altar in disarray. If the enemies come through your family with scattering and dividing, rebuild the altar. Altars are always the result of when you don't have enough in yourself to do it. It's gonna take God. Use that as fuel to make you build an altar. "I can't do it. I don't have enough," but God can.
The second thing you gotta do, if you're gonna get your head lifted up into vision and future, and rebuild your life, and rebuild everything that the enemy has scattered and divided, is you gotta rebuild your relationships with people. You see, we have got to unself ourselves. We are a selfie generation. That's why we take our cellphones, and we'll hold it up, and some people post 400 pictures of themselves a day. It's called a selfie. And the spirit of the selfie has got in the church and all we think about is ourselves. But when you lift up your head and God begins to rebuild your altar, it will make you begin to focus on other people not just yourself. But you start saying, "Well, if I'm walking through this, I'm walking through it because God's gon' get glory out of it and that means I'm gonna be healed by helping somebody else and building somebody else up, because I've been there, and I know what they're facing".
That's why this one is important. The third one is build yourself up. Jude 1:20 says that, "Beloved, you are to build up yourselves in the most holy faith". How? "Praying in the Holy Spirit," praying in the heavenly language. Praying in the Holy Ghost. Walking and praying in the spirit. How do you do that? You build yourself up by putting on CDs of worship, by putting on music in your heart, singing, making melody, building your faith up, walking, and praying, and talking to God. And I can tell somebody here that the spirit of the carpenter is here this morning to tell you if you have no hope, if you have your head down looking only at your present and grieving that the remedy for discouragement is here comes Jesus Christ, and here comes His army of believers, the encouragers, the laborers, the builders, the carpenters. I'm looking at 'em.
And God says, "I've done too much for you to have empty hands and not be building somebody else's life because I rescued you and rebuilt you, I want you to rebuild others and their faith, and it starts with you rebuilding the altar out of your own need". Can you just throw your hands up right where you're sitting at every campus? Just say, "Lord, here's my family. Here's my marriage. Here's my future. Here's my life. Here's my disappointments. Here's my trials. Here's my addiction. Here's what I don't have. Here's where I am". And that spirit of scattering, that satanic scattering and dividing, in the name of Jesus, I've come with the remedy that has caused your head to not be able to be lifted up unto the hills from which comes your help.
And that remedy is the spirit of the carpenter Jesus Christ who has come not to demolish but to rebuild broken lives, broken families, broken marriages, broken relationships. Rebuild broken relationships. Go to work. Quit worrying and start working. There's a verse in Nehemiah 4 that says, "The people had a mind to work". If you get the mind to work, your hands will follow. And some of you gotta get a mindset that, "I'm not gonna just sit back and let the enemy scatter and divide my family. I have a mind to work on this. My mind is renewed about this, and I have the spirit of the carpenter and I'mma start building steps and a bridge back to what the enemy has scattered and divided".