The Encouragement Blog

The most encouraging news that anyone could ever hear is the message that “God loves you.” Just exactly why that is so heartening lies in the Bible verse, Romans 5:8, But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Note that this verse doesn’t say Christ died for us AFTER

Life is a sexually transmitted disease, with a 100% mortality rate! In other words, we are all going to die. It is just a question of when the trapdoor opens underneath us and we fall off the planet. At that moment, gravity will no longer work for us and keep our feet connected to earth. The only question for us

One of the most bandied about accusations against belief in the Living God goes something like this… “Why is there so much misery in the world? I cannot believe in a God who allows such suffering in the world.” Well, there is no doubt that the misery and suffering around the world is acute and growing. The number of poor,

To many people, the suggestion that worship and religion unite us is absurd. They point out that millions have been killed in the name of God through religious wars, the Crusades, and the Inquisition. They argue that religion has been a great source of division and suffering in the world—and in some ways they are correct. Religion focusing on “do’s

Yet for us to get right with God, we’ve all got to attend what Oswald Chambers would call our own “white funeral”—the burial of our old lives. We call it a white funeral because our old natures—the accepted wisdom that we’ve relied on has gotten us nowhere—must die. Most of us who know Jesus Christ as our personal Savior remember

Love: This fruit encompasses them all. When we love because God first loved us (see 1 John 4:19), it shows that we understand grace and have accepted God’s love for us. Joy: When we know our names are written in the Book of Life, because of His grace, we will be joyful in the way we act and conduct ourselves

Rachel was eleven when her parents split up. She was angry with her parents and angry with herself since she mistakenly blamed herself for her parents’ divorce. The rage got worse when her mom’s new boyfriend started making sexual moves on her when she turned thirteen. It boiled over when her mother didn’t believe her when she told her about

We carry around the chains of pride and self-centeredness that prevent us from asking God to unlock the manacles of hopelessness. Some of us are afraid to trust Christ because we don’t really believe He will get our lives right. We fall into the trap of thinking that a life in Christ is all about rules and regulations. It isn’t.

Taking our faith in Jesus to work or out with our friends is an intimidating thing. We are considered wimps or worse for believing in Jesus, and we get confronted with tough questions. People want to know why a “loving” God allows starvation in Africa or massive earthquakes in poor countries or a gunman killing six-year-old kids at school. They

When we discover something for the first time and like what we’ve learned, we usually get excited about it. We can remember the excitement of skateboarding, fly fishing or putting on makeup for the first time. Similarly, many of us recall our excitement when we first came to Christ. We experienced His forgiveness and acceptance. We wanted to shout it