The Encouragement Blog

Many of us believe that because of the sinful we have done, God could never love us. The devil whispers to us, “God could never love YOU. You’ve had an abortion!” Or, he spits, “You’re a drug user, c’mon, get real, dude, you’ve blown it…God has thrown you aside” As usual, the devil’s got it wrong! One of the amazing

In Part 1, we discussed creating the right Climate for the Fruit of the Spirit to take root and grow successfully. We talked about how we must avoid the super-storms of pornography, greed, anger, lust and other besetting sins from sending a “killer frost” over our tender Fruit of the Spirit vines and killing them. Today we discuss the long

The Fruit of the Spirit, i.e., Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness (Generosity), Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control, are things we all hope, trust and pray become apart of our everyday lives. Yet, so many of us are at a loss to figure out how to get the Fruit of the Spirit to grow in our lives. Let’s look at two

We will all find ourselves in the S-L-O-W lane of life at some point. Whether it is being in-between jobs, staying home with the young children (not always so slow there!!) or when we are taken ill or find ourselves being care-givers to someone else, maybe our elderly parents, for example. When God has us in the far-right lane of

Easter 2020 will be remembered mostly for the Corona virus and how it will keep almost all of us in our homes and away from our places of worship. In spite of the quarantines and lockdowns, we still celebrate the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in our own quiet ways. Let us remember why the grace of God, expressed through

Most of us do not look forward to times of pain and sorrow or discomfort. We try to avoid all of these things by living careful lives and praying steadily for God’s blessings on all that we try to do and say. We pray for our businesses and our children. We pray for safety for our grandchildren. We offer “traveling

We wonder sometime why things happen in our lives and if God is really listening or paying attention. Why am I not married? Why doesn’t God answer my prayers in this vein? How come I am stuck in this dead end job? Why can’t I get that promotion? I need more money. Our health is not so good. My marriage

Why do we feel anxious about the future? Why are we waking up at 3:30 A.M. worrying about the kids, the job, the bills, our marriage or the fact that we are not married? We obsess about the future and fret about things we cannot control. And, we do these things in the face of Paul’s assurances that God has

To paraphrase author Stephen Covey “Nothing is worse than climbing the ladder of success, only at the top to find it is leaning against the wrong building.” What this aphorism means is that many of us go through life trying to amass the biggest piles of sand in hope of finding our identity and significance through stuff! This is a

In our last blog post we wrote about The Power of the Cross. We detailed that God was a Holy God that cannot abide sin in any form. That being the case, we as sinful human beings were in a lot of trouble in the eternal destiny department. We were going to have to pay for our sins somehow if we