Encourage-[en-kur-ij] to inspire with courage, spirit, or confidence.
The enCourage Blog is weekly dose of encouragement in a world that is often filled with bad news. We offer life-giving entries each Monday and Thursday written by gifted women from across our denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). You can subscribe below to have them delivered to your inbox. With hundreds of blog pieces, you can search on a variety of topics in the search bar above to read and share with friends. Christina Fox, a gifted author, serves as our enCourage General Editor. If you are interested in submitting a piece, you can contact her at cfox@pcanet.org.
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The Lord Set His Heart in Love on You
Editor’s Note: the following is an excerpt from Sarah Ivill’s new book, Heart Matters: Teaching with Purity and Purpose, used by permission. The book of Deuteronomy mentions the heart often. Perhaps most striking is the truth that “to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on . . . you” (Deut. 10:14-15). Ponder that for a moment. We are “a people holy to the LORD . . . his treasured possession” (Deut. 7:6). Such status is not because of anything good in us, but “because the LORD loves you” and is “the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments” (Deut. 7:8-9). This status with God is an important truth for us to hold to not only for ourselves, but also to share with others. There will be times when we are tempted to fall into the performance trap. We may think we have to be perfect to be approved, by God or by others. We may be tempted to envy another’s capabilities or opportunities. We might compete with or compare ourselves to others. So, it does our hearts good to return often to the truth that the Lord set His love upon us, even when we were His enemies (Rom. 5:10; Eph. 2:4-5). Even if we do not measure up to our own expectations—and we seldom do—or even the expectations of others, the Lord is faithful to love us...
Honoring a Spiritual Mother
STEPHANIE HUBACH | CONTRIBUTOR March is International Women’s Month, so in honor of one of the most influential women in my life—Jane Patete—I’d like to share with you a letter I wrote to her son and daughter. For those who don’t know her, Jane was the Coordinator for Women’s Ministries in the PCA. I sent this several weeks after Jane’s memorial service. I hope you “meet her” in some small way through reading this. Actually, I hope you see Jesus by reading this. (That’s how Jane would want this to go.) Here is an excerpt of the letter I sent to Jane’s daughter Amy and her son Rob. Oh. My. Word. How she touched my life. Apart from my own mother, Jane was the most influential woman in my spiritual life. Ever. And I’ve been a Christian for a long time, and run in a lot of Christian circles. Words don’t do justice to the level at which she impacted my life, just by doing what she always did: connecting, praying and encouraging, and embodying her “fun factor.” Connecting Jane’s fingerprints—in one fashion or another—are all over every doorknob to every major ministry door that opened in my life in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). As Susan Hunt’s assistant, she was willing to engage in an email friendship with me 25 years ago. I had contacted the Women in the Church (WIC) office with the question, “Have you ever had an idea that just wouldn’t go away?” That was the early calling on my heart to make the gospel accessible to people with disabilities in the PCA. Your mom and I built a friendship over email. Then, she did what she did so well: she connected me to everyone she knew who could help advance the vision of disability ministry in the PCA....
God’s Faithful Sovereignty When Things Don’t go as Planned
HANNAH HAGARTY | GUEST My husband and I have two failed adoptions, chronic illness, and an unexpected mission field exodus to our names. Things not going as planned? I may be an unwilling expert on the subject. But it turns out, being an expert on disappointment can mean possessing a deep appreciation for the goodness of God’s sovereignty. We readily said yes when asked to adopt the two little sisters in our home. As foster parents for nearly half of our married lives, Mali had come to us at eighteen months old. When her sister Ziva was born, we picked her up from the hospital. Birthdays and holidays flew by with our biological children and the little girls until they had been with us nearly two years. And then, with one phone call, we were told the case plan had changed from adoption to reunification. The girls were to be handed over to a biological relative investigated for crimes against a child. It didn’t matter which way anyone turned that fact about - sense was found nowhere in it. Years later, my husband and I and seven of our children were living in West Asia, sent out by the church to do mission work, never intending to live in the States again. For thirteen months, we worked our assigned jobs, learned the culture, and did the difficult work of progressing in the local language. Our kids flourished. And then, with another phone call, devastating news from the States immediately put me on the thirty-one hour flight back....
Weak at Work: How God Supplies Our Strength
JENNIFER WHITE |GUEST Editor’s Note: this article contains stories of infancy and pregnancy loss. My husband, a newly elected church elder, put the car in park. We locked eyes. “Wait,” I said. “Before we go in, let’s think through what we are going to say.” We agreed to tell the young couple that we loved them. We wanted to remind them of God’s great love for them. We planned to pray and offer various resources available through our church. As we entered the hospital room, we both froze. The mom sat in bed quietly crying. The teary father held their baby boy wrapped in a crinkly cooling blanket, protecting his body and skin so his siblings could meet him. He had died unexpectedly the day before in an emergency c-section. As we looked in the parents’ eyes, we crumbled, grieving and crying with this family. We prayed the truths of God’s word over their lives: that He is near to the brokenhearted, that He loves little children, that He is our shepherd and our rock. Even in the newness of grief and shock of pain, they rehearsed God’s truths along with us. Then, we left them to hold their baby boy, to grieve and cry together. As we exited, I felt overwhelmed and helpless. “Lord,” I prayed, “are you sure? Am I the right person for this job? Was I capable or strong enough? Did we say the right things? Did we stay long enough? Too long? Did our visit make things easier or harder for these grieving parents?” When We Are Inadequate This hospital visit happened during my third week serving as Women’s Ministry Director at my church....
Fences Don’t Make Healthy Churches
LAURA PATTERSON | GUEST I sat in her lap with tears in my eyes. I was four and she was in her 50s. I had mixed the play rice into the Play-Doh and Mrs. Cummings gently corrected me for my likely innocent but possibly mischievous mixture. As an anxious child, striving to earn affection through a good performance, this left an imprint. What was probably a mundane moment for Mrs. Cummings was a monumental one for me. I wouldn’t have put words to it at the time, but I was implicitly learning the value of gospel community through this relational experience. She clearly explained that the rice and Play-Doh were not meant to be mixed, and I understood the error in my “curiosity”. But redemption followed as she scooped me up and held me in my tears. Her love for me was undiminished....
Weakness in Ministry
JULIANNE ATKINSON |GUEST It’s easy to proclaim the gospel with our words. It’s not as easy to follow Christ’s path, embodying the gospel as we inevitably fail, embracing our sins, frailties, weaknesses, and limits. Can you remember a time you felt weak as a ministry leader? I once talked with a prospective volunteer about her background and quickly found that I disagreed on biblical grounds with her father’s profession. It wasn’t a controversial field that he worked in, but an illegal one. Knowing her father wasn’t a Christian, I assumed that she agreed with me. I was wrong. I tried to convince her using Scripture to no avail. Unsurprisingly, this was not what she wanted to hear. It didn’t change her heart about her father’s profession. She couldn’t believe a ministry leader would speak out against how her father provided for her family. Needless to say, she decided not to volunteer with the ministry. This encounter was humbling for me as a ministry leader. It revealed to me the complexities of working with people with different life experiences than mine and my need to have patience as God works in people's lives. Weakness Before Strength We want to look like we have a glazed clay pot among the rest of the basic ones....
