Beating Frustration - Part 1

Transcript

Hello everyone, thanks for joining with me on another Helping You Become podcast. I pray it's a blessing to you.

Turn in your Bibles please to the book of Ezra, just after Second Chronicles. And as you turn over there, I'm going to pause and just pray for us and for our study today.

Father God, Lord God, we thank you for your goodness. Lord, we thank You for Your kindness, Your mercy, Your grace, Your abundance, Your provision, Lord. And Father, we thank You for Your patience. Lord, as we grow together, as we learn together, as we increase together in Your Word, Lord, we just thank You that You bless our actions. Lord, I just pray that You give us actionable intelligence. Lord, wisdom, revelation knowledge from Your Word so that we can take it, understand it, and apply it to our lives and grow further and further in our obedience for you and to you. And Lord, we ask these things in the wonderful name of Jesus. Amen.

Now the book of Ezra is a fascinating book and it discusses the rebuilding of the temple and some of the things, some of the obstacles and difficulties that were encountered by Israel as they did that, as they returned from exile. And I've called this study beating frustration before it beats you. Beating frustration before it beats you.

And frustration is a very real thing. And I'll explain how I came to look at this
study as we progress through it. But I said previously, and I've said a little while now, many times over a little while, that I think the years of 2020 through to 2040 are going to be particularly difficult for planet Earth. We're going to see the rise and fall of empires. We're going to see massive debt levels that are already in play in nations around the world. We're going to see the outcomes of those.

We've already experienced pandemics and lockdowns and many, many other things. And the spirit of division, the concept being a house divided against itself will not stand. So we see that happening all around us with the vaccination people and the people that are opposed to vaccination.

We see the climate change people and the people that are opposed to climate change, we see the left wing in politics opposed to the right wing in politics. So this constant barrage and attack of being opposed to each other, being opposed to each other, very rarely walking in love, very rarely walking in graciousness and mercy and patience, we see these things being played out daily in the news, you know, all around us.

So as things progress, as the momentum of evil on the planet gathers and picks up
and becomes more targeted in its approach, as Christian people we need to be able
to navigate through these obstacles of life. And I recently taught a series on that, but one of the things that's come up, a person said to me recently, "Joe, I just the frustration. I'm just absolutely up the wall. It's just doing my head in. And I
say, "Sorry, what? Frustration." Okay, frustration.

And I started to think that through in the Scriptures. And years and years ago I taught a series about 12 or 15 years ago. It was one of our Bible bootcamps and it was about frustration. And I looked at that again and I'd like to share some of the key points of that study with you.

Starting in Second Chronicles and reading in the Amplified Bible. In verse 36 and 2 Chronicles 36, the last two verses pick up where the book of Ezra starts. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also
put it in writing.

Isn't there a good lesson in that. Wow, it's okay to say things, but the moment you start to write them down, it changes the importance, it changes the significance, and it can change the significance for eternity.

Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, "All the kingdoms of the earth, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me. And he has charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever there is among you, "Of all of his people, may the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem." Wow, that's strong.

Now, the book of Ezra picks up and begins with this decree of Cyrus, and the returning exiles, they came to Jerusalem, it's around about 538 BC, under the leadership of Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and they started this incredible project of rebuilding the altar, and they started, you know, sacrifices, and rebuilding the temple, and they began that rebuild of the temple.

Now, for about 18 years or so, they were delayed and frustrated and hindered and harassed by enemies from the north. But about 520 BC, an appeal to Darius who was the king of Persia at the time, made it possible for them to resume work. And, obviously, Haggai, the prophet Haggai and Zechariah, whose prophetic messages were directly related to the rebuilding of the temple project. And the people completed, and they dedicated the temple in 516 BC as it's recorded in Ezra in chapters 1 through to 6.

It's very interesting. I'd like to turn over to Ezra chapter 4 and
we'll start the study with the foundation verse here. I'm going to read from verse

Ezra chapter 4 verse 1 and this Bible is the Amplified Bible. Now when the Samaritans, the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin, heard that the exiles from the
captivity were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they came to
Zerubbabel. So this is the enemies, the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin, okay,
the opposition.

They came to Zerubbabel, who was never governor, and to the heads of the fathers' houses, and said, Let us build with you, for we seek and worship your God as you do. And we have sacrificed to Him since the days of Eshahedon, King of Assyria, who brought us here, but Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of the Father's houses of Israel, said to them, "You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God, but we themselves will together build to the Lord.

The God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the King of Persia, has commanded us. Thanks for the offer, guys, but we're not interested. That's my rendition. It's a little loose, as you can tell. I'll just read that again. "You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God. We don't want you here. We don't want you involved. You have nothing to do with Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Zip. Nada. Haha, as my daughters would say.

Okay, we do not want you involved in this project. Then the Samaritans, the people of the land, continually weakened the hands of the people of Judah and troubled and terrified them in building. This is fascinating. This is really starting to unfold now. and they hired counsellors against them to frustrate their purpose and frustrate their plans all the days of Cyrus King of Persia, until or even until the reign of Darius II King of Persia.

Now, that's really interesting. The Samaritans, the people of the land, the enemies, the opposition, okay? Continually weakened the hands of the people of Judah and troubled and terrified them in building. They hired counsellors against them to
frustrate their purpose and to frustrate their plans. You ever been frustrated?

You ever been on a project and it's just not working. There's so many things, little things that come along and just harass you and niggle and stop the progress and get in your head and distract other people let a part of the project oh man oh man oh man

You know so many people that need to be in church and their children are sick so they can't come things like this all sorts of things that are going on I mean that's just one example from 20 plus years of pastoring the frustration aspect

What is it to be frustrated I mean we all know what it feels like oh man I tell you you know it just absolutely just, oh, how do you explain that? Extreme annoyance, discomfort. It's like somebody, you know, just scratching away distortion in the background of your product or your project or whatever it is that you're doing. It's just this annoying, niggling thing that just won't go away. Frustration.

My dictionary describes frustrate to hinder or prevent the efforts of the plans of or the desires of so to hinder or to prevent the efforts of the plans or desires of something it then says frustrate means too upset to agitate or to tire now frustration is the condition of being frustrated well that's not hard is it makes sense so frustration, something that frustrates.

The third definition is the prevention or hindering of a potentially satisfying activity and the emotional reaction to such prevention that may also involve aggression.

Wow, there's a lot in that. The emotional reaction to such prevention that may also
involve aggression. Have you ever been frustrated that your emotions or have you ever been so frustrated that your emotions have become highly stirred and you've said or done things that would just, how do I say this politely? Well, maybe I can't.

That we're just dead flat wrong. And we did the wrong thing. At the wrong time
said the wrong thing to someone perhaps that you love and you know wow suddenly now this whole situation has just blown out a proportion. Words can't be taken back and now we've got another major problem on our hands. You know I've done that plenty of times. I think we all have.

You know frustration is a terrible thing if it gets away and that's what I've called the series or why I've called this series beating frustration before it beats you. So important and as I said previously I think that 20 year period from 2020 to 2040 across the planet is going to be hard particularly so in the western world. Oh man it's going to be difficult.

So how do we deal with some of the frustrations particularly the ones that we got no control over you know I've got no control over what the Fed does on interest rates all of these sorts of things so in Ezra chapter 4 verse 5 they hired counsellors against them they hired counsellors against God's people to frustrate the purposes of God's people they hired this is I mean this is a deliberate deliberate premeditated act of going out to stop the project.

We've got to annoy these people to such a degree that they stop the work. We cannot let God's project get going. We cannot let these people serving their God and his project and what they want. We cannot allow that to unfold the way they're trying to do it on the planet. We don't want it.

And that's how premeditated these people are. "The people of the land continually
weaken the hands of the people of Judah and troubled and terrified them in the
building, and they hired counsellors deliberately on purpose, went and hired people to frustrate their purpose and to frustrate their plans."

Wow, I looked up that word "frustrate" in the Hebrew, and in my strong's concordance it's word number 656, and it's pronounced, I think this way, or face, spelled a-p-h-e-c.

Now the root meaning of that word that we take our English word frustrate from
means to disappear and to disappear as in cease to stop or cease to exist. Another way of putting it that we get I think in the English vocabulary would be to say something like to be clean gone. It just, that resonated with me.

To be clean gone, they want this thing gone, man. I tell you, they are not having
these people worshiping their God in this temple thing. We're not having it. We're
going to stop it. They want it to be clean gone. Also, it means at an end, to be brought to naught or to be brought to nothing, to fail.

Therefore, I believe, this is my opinion, the role or the task of frustration is to cause to disappear, to make cease, to make something cease or to stop, to cause it to fail, to bring it to zero, or to bring what to zero? Well it tells us in verse five of chapter four, to frustrate their purpose and plans, all the days of Cyrus, King of Persia, because that's really important, Cyrus, King of Persia, because the Cyrus, King of Persia.

Just reading back now in second Chronicles, thus says Cyrus, King of Persia, you know, the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished and the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia. Cyrus was on a mission from God exactly the same as Jeremiah the prophet, Haggai the prophet, Zechariah the prophet, Ezra the scribe, yes?

And they were all together on a mission from God, on a plan and a purpose from God to get the exiles back into building the temple, to bring what to zero, the plan and the purpose that God had for His people at the time. Delivered through, Cyrus, delivered through the fathers of the houses of Israel? I mean, everybody's on board here, okay?

We've got the political world, we've got the religious world, and obviously there's a certain amount of financial backing in all of those two environments as well, in those two arenas as well. So please understand your purpose and your plans that God has given you, there I think there is an enemy that is deliberately assigned to frustrate your purpose and plans.

Have you ever spoken to a pastor who's on a mission from God, maybe to build his church, to plant a church, to grow his church? Man, oh, man, oh, man, Linda and I did it for nearly 20 years, you know, I've been on radio around the world for nearly 20 years and I've encountered a lot of frustration.

I really have and I don't think personally that I've probably managed it that well.
But praise God, you know, and I see in Ephesians that's, yeah, about God abounds to water in all wisdom. Well praise the Lord, I don't have to stay stupid. Yeah, I
can move on, I can grow, develop and increase and learn and become wise in the
things of the Lord.

So I think that we need to truly understand and really have it not just as an understanding in our mind, but as a revelation in our heart, the danger of frustration. When our emotions get stirred, something goes wrong and wrong
and wrong and wrong and it's hindered and hindered and hindered and obstacles and niggles and all sorts of problems, constant, constant, constant.

When all of that's happening, our emotions get affected and when our emotions are affected, sometimes we can make bad decisions. We can say the incorrect thing. We can give off the wrong signals and the wrong body language and we can and many things wrong when frustration sets in.

I think the primary target person, certainly in this context here in the book of Ezra, the primary target person that frustration has in mind, has frustration has in their sights. Are those people engaged in any project of the Lord? And I would go as far as to say that I think, and this is my opinion, I think that the secondary target people for frustration, first target people, are those that are in a project and a plan and building something for the Lord.

The second target people for frustration to turn its attention to is anyone actively involved in a non -evil capacity. Those that are doing general good, general humanistic good. There are many, many good things that go on on the planet, it's okay, you know?

And if you're actively out there practicing evil, chances are, once again this is my opinion, but I do think that frustration will probably attack you less than those people that are practicing good or those people that are actually actively engaged in building something, delivering God's intention for the earth and they're involved in delivering that and bringing that to pass on people's lives. They're going to be the first target for frustration.

Let's get into this a little bit in chapter 4 and we're nearly out of time for today but we'll pick it up next week because this is going to be a really quality helpful study I pray. In chapter 4 verse 1, before we get into some of the funding and some of the workforce and staffing of God's project.

Chapter 4 verse 1, Now when the Samaritans and adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles from the captivity were building a temple to the
Lord God of Israel, they were the enemies of God's people. If you are involved in
evil practices and have an ungodly lifestyle, then you're on the same side as
frustration. Frustration.

Frustration has less of a need to bother you, because you and frustration are on the same side. Okay? Your lifestyle, your approach, not godly, not holy, not moral. If you're practicing evil deliberately, and you're in a situation that you're going against the flow of God, then I think that frustration is probably going to trouble trouble you less.

Now that being the case, can you see why, and this is one of the things that's intrigued me across some 35 years of ministry now, can you see why I think this helps to explain why it appears that so many ungodly people can have often much smoother lives than Christians. There is no enemy actively frustrating their plans or purposes.

Now, we know that when the Lord God of heaven evicted Satan from heaven and cast him to earth, and he took one third of the heavenly host with him when he was
evicted from heaven. Well, that's fairly clear that the Satan and his demons, they're
finite resources, so obviously they need to deploy their resources wherever the need is the greatest.

And I think the greatest need for Satan to deploy his resources against is the Christian church. The second need would be those doing humanistic good, and then I think the third need would be those practicing evil. But the greatest need that devil has, the devil and his demons have, is to frustrate the work of the Lord.

Now there's quite a process involved in how this has been gone about, how they've effectively tried to introduce frustration almost as a last resort. But certainly one of the steps, the significant steps along the way if it's not actually the last resort.

We're going to look into that next week as we build the study and start to unpack these first few chapters of the book of Ezra.

And I do invite you to join with me next week as we look at beating frustration
before it beats you. God bless, make sure you go to church somewhere this week and may the Lord bless you as you are kind one to another, tender -hearted, forgiving one another, as God, for Christ's sake, has forgiven you.