Encouragement

When facing the uncertainties of life, insecurity sometimes wraps its ugly tentacles around our hearts. It whispers in our ear, “Yea, hath God said?” God is never the author of confusion. Confusion is a major weapon of the believer’s enemy. It brings relentless fear and must be defeated by the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Your tomorrow is already well-planned by your loving Heavenly Father, and His provision is there if you will only be still and know that He is God.

Perhaps you’ve heard the suggested praise/correction ratio of 10/1. And perhaps, like me, you’ve found it easy to forget to be regular on the praise side of the ratio. Last summer at our annual staff training, my friend, Ken McCoy, was reminding our staff leaders to regularly praise team members. He shared a simple idea with us that he used when his children were small.

There’s nothing like a hospital room to condense your thoughts into the truly important. Something about the tubes, monitors, hoses, gloves, gowns, and even the smell all serve to rivet your mind on the eternal. During a recent visit to a hospital bedside, I read Psalm 34 with the family gathered in the room. As I read, several key truths—truths that really matter when you’re in the hospital—spoke to me:

I have been reading 1 Samuel lately and meditating on the story of David. His life was certainly one filled with “ups and downs.” And, frankly, many of them were brought on by his own sin and mistakes.

Proverbs 12:25 says, “Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad.” Over and over in the Bible we see examples and read exhortations about how words can be used for righteous and relevance or for ruin and rebellion. In Proverbs 12, we read about what words can be:

An old Yiddish proverb says, “God gave burdens, also shoulders.” But have you ever felt that your shoulders were too weak to bear your burdens? This is one reason God has made the church a family—that we might bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).

One of my favorite passages in the Old Testament deals with David and his band of men living in a place called Ziklag. Ziklag was a village or town that was under Philistine control. David had become weary of running from Saul and thought that it might be better to hang out in this outpost city.

If you are a Christian worker of any kind, you have faced discouraging times. I remember when we were starting the Good News Baptist Church in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Several times when it was time for our evening service, I had the church cleaned, the chairs set up, hymnbooks laid out, music playing, my sermon tucked away neatly in my Bible, and threw open the door ready to quickly step out of the way lest I be trampled by the surging throngs of people hungry to hear God’s Word!

One of the most frustrating things to watch is a sports team in which one individual wants to be the star—even at the expense of the team’s success.

I explained to our teens that when we returned home each of them should give a testimony in a special testimony service as to what God had done in their heart and what decisions they had made.

Sermon outline: This is an abbreviated outline with the complete sermon downloadable at the bottom of the post.

David was in the wilderness of Ziph, a rugged terrain near Carmel that was removed from any true settlement. He had no bed to sleep in, no table or chairs, no recliner, no comforts of home

Recently, one of the missionaries sent from our church laboring in Europe contacted me. He was discouraged because there was a recent decline in the attendance of his work.

As I write this, I am sitting with my wife at her mother’s bedside in a skilled nursing facility. Having been in the ministry for more than thirty years, I have seen dying people, and it is obvious that my mother-in-law will not be in this world much longer.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome about their relationships with others. He assured them they could have godly, Christ-honoring relationships...

I think most of us would have to admit that last year was in some ways a disappointing one. I certainly do not mean to be a discouragement with this article, and I am not discouraged as I write it. In fact, in many ways I think we are living and ministering in one of the greatest periods of Church history.

I am constantly reminded of how much new Christians need encouragement in their spiritual journey. I heard someone once say, “People grow the best when . . .