Tag Archives: encouragement

With us is God

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And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:20b, NLT*

Sometimes hearing the familiar re-worded or presented in a different way helps us take a fresh look—or listen.

A devotional in the Names of God Bible translates Immanuel as “with us is God.”

I’m used to “God with us.” It’s familiar. Maybe I take it too much for granted.

“With us is God.”

It has me thinking.

We can be encouraged, be reassured, comforted. Wherever we are, we’re not alone or abandoned. Even if it’s a hard place.

We can also be motivated: don’t slack off, because He’s here. We can’t hide anything. Yes, He understands and forgives, but because we love Him we don’t want to disappoint Him.

God our Maker and our Saviour, ever-present with us, help us remember You are near. Help us take courage, and help us live alert and obediently. Teach us a healthy fear of You, and deliver us from that unhealthy fear that would ruin us. Help us love and serve You, and let others see Your love in us.

∞

A good reminder song is Jeremy Camp’s “Right Here.”

*New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Words of Comfort

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butterflyI’ve been collecting words of comfort from writers I respect. Here are a few:

At Other Food: Daily Devos, Violet Nesdoly asks “Have you ever thought of your griefs and disappointments as seed?”

At Hearing the Heartbeat, Carolyn Watts offers insight for “When Words Fail.”

At (in)courage, Lysa TerKeurst reminds us “Don’t Despise the Small.”

At Meet Me in the Meadow, Roy Lessin reminds us that “Peace is Yours.”

And Mary De Muth reassures us that “God Sees When You Feel Small.”

Bonus link added after the original post: Paula Vince’s “To Get Rid of the Reproach of Egypt.”

Words of Power

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In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Ephesians 6:16-17, NLT*

Last week had a few not-so-fun-or-glowing days. Things weren’t going the way I wanted. Unvoiced expectations were not being met. And my lingering writer’s identity crisis flared up again.

I spent a lot of time saying “I have a good Shepherd. It’ll be okay.” And as long as I kept saying it, things weren’t so bad. Forget for very long, or go back to thinking about whatever grievance or glum thing was flavour-of-the-moment, and the gloom descended. My poor family!

Words make a huge difference, if we listen and believe them. We know that about negative comments and self-fulfilling prophecies, but sometimes we forget the positive side of our words. Not in the speak-what-you-want-and-it’ll-be-yours way, but in the remind-yourself-of-God’s-truth way.

Creator God who spoke us into being, thank You for words of truth and healing. What You speak is true. Give us faith and help us remember to use Your Word as our shield of faith and our sword to fight.

∞

The song “Everything Falls,” by Fee, helps us hold onto truth whether our struggle is life-shaking or the day-to-day “things” that wear at us.

* New Living Translation (NLT) Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

“It’s All in Your Head”

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“It’s all in your head.” Doctors say this, maybe family too, and whether or not they intend it, you hear a dismissive tone. A put-down. A message that says “it’s your fault, you caused it, and it won’t go away until you decide to stop it.”

In all fairness, what a good doctor probably means is, “It’s outside my expertise to help you with something that’s generated in your mind.” The tone is probably genuine regret that s/he can’t help.

Let’s not get into the debate over whether it truly is generated in your mind. Doctors have been known to write off tangible physical responses to environmental and food sensitivities because the tests don’t show any proof. And other things actually are products of the mind.

The fact is, we’re still stuck with the problem until we get help. If a medical doctor can’t help, perhaps a naturopath or counsellor can—or a prayer warrior.

Today I’m thinking of the kind of thing that actually is all in the head: the lies or worldviews that we internalize and believe that limit and damage us. The garbage that needs taking out.

Cover of "Battlefield of the Mind: Winnin...

Cover via Amazon

For me some of that is self-pity, self-focus and just plain self. I found Joyce Meyer’s Battlefield of the Mind a very effective removal tool, and I need to read it again.

It’s important to recognize the mental crud, agree with Jesus that it doesn’t belong there, and then cooperate with Him to replace it with wholesome, holy, healthy thoughts.

If it’s all in my head… that means it’s not a tangible disease or limitation. Real, but it doesn’t need a scalpel, drugs or a prosthesis to fix. It just needs realigning my mind to God and cooperating with Him.

I find that liberating and encouraging.

God bless Peter Furler for his song, “All in Your Head,” where I first heard the encouraging tone and the assurance that “it’s all in your head” means “nothing’s really holding you back” and I could push through the blockage.

We Are Loved

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Years ago, back when we had to watch television without fast-forwarding through the commercials, there was an ad where people would tell about various hardships they were going through (job loss, health issues etc) and they’d always end with a big grin and “But I’m loved!”

I don’t remember if it was sponsored by a Christian group or by another religious organization, but my reaction was a sarcastic “yeah, right—that makes everything okay, then”.

These were painful struggles, but the glowing smiles implied happiness and laughter, puppies and flowers, all’s right in the world.

Sometimes life hurts. A lot. Denying the pain makes it worse, and that’s what I sensed in the ads: denial.

Yet, we are loved. And that assurance means more to me each year, each speedbump that rocks my life or those of my friends. The heavier the burden, the more we need to rely on God’s loving, strengthening grace.

Nothing can separate us from His love. If everything crumbles around us, if the very worst happens,  He’ll still be there to sustain us. And somehow He’ll make something beautiful, even if it can only be seen from the far side of eternity.

When fear or discouragement jab me these days, I’ve surprised myself by retorting “But I’m loved”.

It doesn’t numb me or give me a sappy grin, but it resonates in my spirit. It stirs my confidence in the God I’m learning to trust, the God who promised never to leave nor forsake me.

Maybe it’s because I’m learning that His staying has nothing to do with me and everything to do with His character. I can’t earn His love. It was never about that.

He loves me because He formed me. He gave His own Son to save me. He sent His Spirit to live in me. And He never goes back on His word.

Because of who He is, I can say, whatever my circumstances, through smiles or through tears, “I am loved.”

And I will trust Him.

Review: Abundant Rain, by Marcia Lee Laycock

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Abundant Rain, by Marcia Lee Laycock (Smashwords, 2011)

The subtitle of this ebook is “Inspiring words for writers of faith.” It’s an 110-page collection of short pieces designed to encourage and sustain writers (and perhaps to help their loved ones understand them).

The articles in this collection have appeared as Marcia’s weekly devotional posts on the popular Novel Journey blog.

Topics cover perseverance, pride, writing about life’s ugly bits and hard questions, self-promotion versus bragging, art and perfectionism, praising God, and what happens when we compare ourselves with other writers.

One of the selections, “Little Songs,” particularly warmed my heart. In it, Marcia describes a string of emails in an online writing group, all on the theme of “whatever our circumstances, bless the Lord.” I’m part of the same group—InScribe Christian Writers’ Fellowship—and I remember that conversation thread well. In fact, one of the quoted prayers may well be mine.

Writers, like any other group of people following a particular passion, are a misunderstood lot. It takes one of our own to know which words will encourage us. Abundant Rain is a book designed to bless writers. It’s one to read and then read again, in small sections, as needed.

Look for the free ebook, “A Small Patch of Blue,” on the author’s Smashwords profile page if you’d like to preview an excerpt from Abundant Rain. Abundant Rain is available from Smashwords in various ebook formats.

Marcia Lee Laycock is an award-winning Canadian author of non-fiction and fiction. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies (most recently in A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider) and she has written two devotional compilations, Spur of the Moment and Focused Reflections, as well as the novel One Smooth Stone. A Tumbled Stone, the novel’s sequel, is due to release soon.

Marcia can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and on her website, which also has links to her various blog presences.

[Review copy from my personal library.]

InScribe Christian Writers’ Fellowship

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I joined a writing group because my husband squealed on me. “Janet writes,” he told a new friend at church.

Well… I used to write little stories, until university papers killed them. By this point in my life I’d flitted near burnout in the workplace and found my purpose as an at-home mom to a toddler. Now there was a second child on the way, and the last thing on my mind was writing.

But our friend wanted to start a writing group, so I went along in support. We were a small gathering of published and wanna-bes, interested in poetry, articles and fiction. Eventually I started writing personal experience pieces, and one day the fiction drive kicked back in.

Public use of the Internet was just beginning. Our group learned about magazine markets by sending away for samples and writers’ guidelines. Compared to now with almost everything online, we were really isolated.

And it felt isolated, although we didn’t know what we were missing. Nova Scotia is home to a lot of writers, and the Writers’ Federation of NS has a large base of members. Some are Christians, but the only writers I knew, of faith or otherwise, were the handful in my group.

One night someone in our group brought a little newsletter called Exchange, put out by Audrey Dorsch. I recognized a good thing and subscribed. Exchange was discontinued a few years ago, but I owe Audrey a huge debt for the nuggets of information, market news and encouragement that she shared four times a year. She even published me once or twice in the later years.

One issue included a pamphlet about a group called Alberta Christian Writers’ Fellowship—Canada Wide. Wow! This body of Christian writers in Alberta were willing to accept members from as far away as Nova Scotia, and farther!

I joined.

Before long, the organization changed its name to InScribe Christian Writers’ Fellowship. And fellowship is what meant the most to me. For the price of my membership I received a quarterly, magazine-length newsletter called FellowScript to teach and encourage me.

More than that, I stumbled into email and the Internet around that time, and connected with InScribe’s member listserv. Suddenly I could communicate with Christian writers from all across Canada.

The lights went on, colour flooded black-and-white, and I was connected.

InScribe was my writing lifeline for a long time. In 2000 I had the privilege of attending the Fall Conference in Edmonton and meeting some of my friends face to face.

I’ve entered InScribe contests over the years, even won a few, and learned from the judges’ comments. One year I gathered courage to apply for the Barnabas Fellowship (“enabling a member of InScribe to further his or her progress in writing”) and my name was chosen. The money let me take an online course on developing characters and gave a good kick-start to my second novel manuscript.

Along the way I’ve added memberships with The Word Guild, the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and American Christian Fiction Writers, and my online “writing family” has expanded. But InScribe will always be special as my first connection with the wider writing world.

The InScribe listserv and FellowScript newsletter are well worth the price of membership. You can learn a lot more about InScribe and browse its members’ links at the InScribe website.

This month various Inscribers are posting some of their thoughts and stories about ICWF on their blogs.  The tour kicked off on July 4 with a stop at ICWF President Jack Popjes’ blog, INsights & OUTbursts, and will wind up on July 27 at Janice Keats’ blog, The Master’s Path. I’ve had a great time following the tour and getting to know some of my fellow InScribers a bit better.

You can see the full tour schedule on the InScribe blog. The most recent post was at Violet Nesdoly’s Line Upon Line and the next one will be July 25th at Laureen Guenther’s Reenie’s Resources.

Leave a comment here and on the other blog tour posts to be entered in the grand prize draw: an InScribe book bag with a free annual membership and a copy of InScribed: 30 Years of Inspiring Writing. The more blogs you comment on, the more entries you’ll get in the draw—so if you comment on 10 blogs, you’ll get 10 entries in the draw (but one comment per blog, please). Contest is open only to non-InScribe-members (members are encouraged to comment but will not be entered in the draw).

Our Identity in Christ

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Here are three bloggers’ posts that have encouraged me recently. They’re all on the theme of our identity in Christ, and I’d encourage you to take five minutes, follow the links to the original posts, and refresh your spirit.

Lysa TerKeurst’s post “Because Sometimes we Forget” reminds us that “we must stand moment-by-moment in the reality of our identity before we resume our activity…. ‘You are my daughter, whom I love; with whom I am well pleased.’”

At inCourage.me Joy Dombrow’s post, “Like a One and Only,” declares, “Joy may be the name by which the world has known me, but when you pass me by, know that deep inside I am the ‘girl whom Jesus loves’…like a one and only.” 

In “A Life Beyond,” Heather Boersma writes, “God is our Father and our identity is found in being one of his children.  So often we find our value in the earthly roles we play….“

Review: One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp

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One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully, Right Where You Are, by Ann Voskamp (Zondervan, 2011)

One Thousand Gifts is a rare book: at once a very personal story of one woman’s journey, and yet it’s everywoman and everyman’s story. It’s a journey we can all join.

Which of us hasn’t struggled with ingratitude? It is, after all, Satan’s oldest lie. It can root so deeply that we don’t even see it anymore.

Listen to how Ann Voskamp describes it, describes the too-familiar wretched state and the haunting questions that lured her out of it:

“If I’m ruthlessly honest, I may have said yes to God, yes to Christianity, but really, I have lived the no. I have. Infected by the Eden mouthful, the retina of my soul develops macular holes of blackness…. One life-loss can infect the whole of a life…. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn’t: holes, lack, deficiency.” (p. 16)

“How do we choose to allow the holes to become seeing-through-to-God places? To more-God places?

“How do I give up resentment for gratitude, gnawing anger for spilling joy? Self-focus for God-communion.” (p. 22)

For Ann, the answer started with a Greek word, eucharisteo [yoo-khar-is-teh’-o], which means ‘thanksgiving’ and which contains the root words of ‘grace’ and ‘joy’. From reading her Bible, she discovered “Eucharisteo—thanksgiving—always precedes the miracle” (p. 35). And that’s what God proved in Ann’s own life as she kept her friend’s challenge to list 1,000 blessings—gifts—from God.

She came to this point in her life with more pain than some of us have: the most significant cluster in the form of losing her younger sister as a child. But whether you’ve lost more or less, whether it’s been taken from you or you’ve given it away, you can find healing in these pages.

Read the book slowly, let it encourage your spirit by its message and by the poetry that is Ann Voskamp’s prose. Walk with her as she learns to thank God for the sweet blessings—graces—in her day. Keep walking as she learns to see His grace in the painful moments, to practice what she calls the “hard eucharisteo” by giving thanks even when what He gives doesn’t look like grace to our eyes.

If you like simple, plain language and straightforward sentences, this may not be the book for you. I’ve included some excerpts to give a feel for the flowing language. And be aware that poetic language often uses imagery for a soul’s intimacy with God that strictly-literal thinkers may find difficult.

But if you’re one of the many who choose to read this book, you will be challenged and changed by the example of an ordinary Canadian woman who dares to have a heart like King David’s and to offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving to God in the good and in the bad—not denying the pain, but trusting the Master Designer not to waste it.

This is how Ann describes what she discovered in her list of now well over 1,000 gifts:

“In eucharisteo, I count, count, count, keeping the beat of His song, the love song He can’t stop singing, this long song of longing. That He sings love over me?

“What else can all these gifts mean?” (p. 204)

One Thousand Gifts is a book to read contemplatively, and to keep near to read again. My friends are buying extra copies for their friends rather than lending a copy they might not get back. I can see why. Click here to read an excerpt from One Thousand Gifts. And here’s a link to the book trailer, which is a gift in itself.

Canadian author Ann Voskamp writes a daily encouragement blog at A Holy Experience. She’s also a regular contributor at the DaySpring blog, (in)courage.

Oh… my list? I’m at #33 today. And loving it.

[Review copy source: my personal library]

Review: More Questions than Answers, by Eleanor Shepherd

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More Questions than Answers: Sharing Faith by Listening, by Eleanor Shepherd (Resource Publications (a division of Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2010)

No matter  how secure our faith, we all have questions, issues, things we don’t fully understand.

In More Questions than Answers, Eleanor Shepherd reminds us that honesty about these very things is the beginning of a journey that benefits us as well as the friends with whom we walk.

“When walking with our friends, we encourage them to explore faith with us. We admit that our knowledge of faith is incomplete, but it is growing. We want them to join us as together we test our spirituality and meet for ourselves the ultimate truth, Jesus Christ. We call our journey together spiritual accompaniment.” p. xvii

Spiritual accompaniment is unconditional friendship. Our non-Christian friend is not a project to be discarded if she doesn’t come to believe as we do. Nor is our Christian friend to be set aside if he doesn’t grow as fast as we’d like.

We benefit personally from accompanying others. We learn not to be threatened by questions we can’t answer—God doesn’t vanish in a puff of smoke if we can’t explain Him. Our faith doesn’t vanish either. By honestly and prayerfully facing them, we grow deeper in our faith.

More Questions than Answers is divided into three sections:

The Listening Process addresses the art of listening. It includes basics of psychology, counselling etc, but always at lay-person’s level.

Discovering and Sharing Faith teaches how to go about spiritual accompaniment, illustrated by personal examples. It warns of the obstacles we may face.

Finally, The Source reminds us to listen to and rely on God. There is a short Bible study to develop our spiritual listening skills, and a shorter “Gospel in a nutshell” to help us answer when a friend asks how to become a Christian.

This is a book for Christians who want to be more valuable spiritually in the lives of those around them. It isn’t evangelism-by-the-numbers; it’s investment in the lives of those God gives us.

I appreciate books like this that emphasize faith conversations rather than confrontation, and that teach us to value the whole person.

Canadian author Eleanor Shepherd is a retired Salvation Army Officer now serving with Opportunity International Canada in Quebec. You can catch up with Eleanor at her blog. She also contributes to the Canadian Authors Who are Christian blog.

[Book source: my personal library. A version of this review first appeared in Faith Today Magazine, Jan/Feb 2011.]