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Daily Encouragement | Hebrews 3:12-14

Encourage one another daily - Hebrews 3

Saturday Scripture

Hebrews 3:12-14

12 See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.

Prayer

Papa God,
Thank you for the gift of community with believers. May I not take my church family for granted, but be an active part of the body. May my words and actions build up fellow believers. What a great reminder that you are the common bond that holds us together and gives us strength. I am so grateful I don’t have to walk through life alone. You are always there and you’ve surrounded me with brothers and sisters in Christ.

Encourage one another daily! Hebrews 3:12-14 #faith

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Love & Good Deeds | Hebrews 10:24

hebrews 10

Saturday Scripture

 

Hebrews 10:24

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds

 

Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you for your Word and guidance. And thank you for fellow believers to encourage and challenge each other. Help me think of real and practical ways to spur my brothers and sisters toward things that honor you and put them into action this week.

How can you spur others on toward love & good deeds? #Hebrews 10:24 @TriciaGoyer

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Are you new here? You might want to subscribe to my email updates, or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, or Instagram.


Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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Can You Fall in Love with God?

Can you Fall in Love with God? I did and it changed my life. Let me share with you how falling in love with my savior has made all the difference.

Fall in love with god

Fall in Love with God

I grew up going to church for the most part. It started when I was eight years old and my mother and grandmother gave their hearts to the Lord. They attended a church where people attended together, yet they also reached out to each other outside of the church building. I remember picnics and dinners out. I remember a new community of people who surrounded our family with love. There was a Sunday school teacher who shared God’s love through flannel graph stories and films (not the VCR tapes movies, but rather the old reel-to-reel films that showed the parables of Jesus) and told what it meant to be faithful, honest, and true.
I loved my Sunday School class, children’s church, and the prizes I got for memorizing Scripture., singing songs about God, and the wonderful summer VBS camps, and memorizing the books of the Bible to win a board game.

The problem was that while all those things made me think about God (and I loved Him in a way), I didn’t understand what a personal relationship God meant.

I didn’t know how it applied to my everyday life.

Do you know what a real, personal relationship with God looks like? @TriciaGoyer #faith

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fall in love with god

Fall in Love with God

After that, instead of continuing my relationship with God, and continuing to spend time with others, I walked away from that in my teen years. I wanted to do things my own way. I was looking for love, and I thought I could find it in boys.

Instead, I found myself pregnant and without a boyfriend when I was only seventeen.

For many, many months I didn’t want to think about what God thought about me. I tried to push all thoughts of Him out of my mind. I didn’t want to think about all the memory verses I’d memorized as a child. Instead, I wallowed in everything I had lost—my youth, my teen years, my boyfriend who was with someone else. I felt more and more depressed as the days passed.

Then one day about noon I was watching soap operas and I started to remember those good moments when a church family loved me. I didn’t dwell on everything that had gone wrong. This day, I thought about a time in my life when things used to be right, when I was happy. When I believed in God, and when I had joy.
And that is the day I gave my heart to the Lord—my whole heart.

I wrapped my arms around my stomach and I said, “God, I have messed up big time. If you can do anything with my life, please do.”

It was at that moment that I felt HOPE spring into my heart. Hope in God. Hope in my future.  And I had hope in eternity because I knew Christ had forgiven me for all my sins.

Fall in Love with God

That was the moment I fell in love with God. I had loved him before like I loved peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and loved watching CHIPS on TV. Not potato chips, but those cute highway patrolmen who rode around on motorcycles and stopped crime.

Have you fallen in love with God and allowed yourself to get swept up in His #love? @TriciaGoyer

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Once I realized the depth of my sin and understood had God had washed me and made me are pure and white as snow, that’s when I truly fell in love with him.

We can have knowledge of God and spend time in His house and with His people, but until we understand who we are without Him—understand the truth of our sin—that’s when the true love relationship begins.

By accepting my sin and the pain it caused, I truly fell in love with Jesus for taking that sin away through His death on the cross.

Fall In Love with God

Do you know a young woman who needs to fall in love with God? Using the metaphor of screenwriting, My Life, Unscripted explores relationships in every teenage girl’s life-with herself, her friends and enemies, her parents, guys, and with God.

Real-life scripts, screenwriting terms, and timely topics, make this an interesting read for teen girls as they delve into their own inner struggles and outward relationships. They’ll also learn the importance of “scripting” their own responses BEFORE challenging life-situations arise so they are able to think about, pray about, and consider how to face these situations before the scene begins. By contrasting real-life with TV or movies, teens will understand they don’t have to get caught up in the drama.

 My Life Unscripted: Who’s Writing Your Life?

Here are more posts to help you Fall in Love with God

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Podcast: Living Inspired: Peyton Jones | Ginger Ciminello

Living Inspired ~ Thursday 3CT (10/17/13)

To listen to the interview: go here and click on the player in the upper right corner of the screen.

 This week on Living Inspired, please welcome Peyton Jones, author of book Church Zero (David C. Cook, 2013) and Ginger Ciminello, author of book Forget the Corsage (Westbow Press, 2013). 

If you’re reading this after 10/17/13 you’ll be able to find this show . . . and all my shows in the archive section.

For your chance to win a copy of Peyton’s Church Zero or Ginger’s Forget the Corsage leave a comment below. Winner will be announced on Friday on the winner page.

**Due to shipping cost, giveaway open to US residents only**

PicMonkey Collage

More about Peyton: Peyton Jones is founding coach of New Breed Church Planting UK/USA. A serial church planter, Jones is currently planting multiple churches stateside starting in urban Long Beach, California. Involved in international planting since age 24, he’s engaged in tentmaking mission work as a firefighter, factory worker, and psychiatric nurse, bringing all of these experiences to the table. Jones received his MA Theology Pastoral Studies from Wales Evangelical School of Theology and served as the evangelist for Lloyd-Jones’s legendary Sandfields church, Aberavon.

Connect with Peyton: Twitter Website

More about Church Zero: A radical call to reform, Church Zero is a punk-rock approach to the pressing issue of gaining ground as rapidly as the early church.

With a fresh perspective forged in the dirty trenches of international post-Christian societies, Peyton Jones pulls no punches as he brings this message to the American Church: We have lost our way.

The church is losing ground fast: losing the generation under age 30 and drawing few nonbelievers toward Christ.

Christ gave us a leadership model for commando outreach, and the church has ignored it for too long. Will we continue down the path of self-preservation, defending our stalled church structures? Or will we follow the blueprint Jesus lays out?

Church Zero challenges readers to once again become a radical, dangerous people who cannot be ignored. It’s time to break out!

Purchase your copy here.

PicMonkey Collage

More about Ginger: Texas-born Ginger Ciminello is a passionate writer and speaker who communicates through story-telling and dramatic narrative. Her awkward middle school phase lasted almost ten years, allowing her to connect with students in a humorous and personal way. Ginger holds a deep desire to reach her audiences and encourage them to laugh, learn from her mistakes, and look up to the Father. Her own story contains embarrassing moments, a two-year bout with an eating disorder, being abandoned at the prom, and finally finding contentment in knowing whom God has made her to be. In September of 2013 she released her first book, Forget the Corsage. Ginger holds a bachelor’s degree in theatre ministry from Abilene Christian University and has over ten years of speaking experience at various churches, camps, and educational groups. She worked for six years in camping ministry with Pine Cove Christian Camps in Tyler, Texas before making her way to the desert of Arizona. Ginger is currently lives in Phoenix, Arizona with her eHarmony matched husband, David, and their daughter. Ginger writes a weekly blog to continue the conversations that start every time she walks into an auditorium, classroom, or sanctuary.

Connect with Ginger: Twitter Website Facebook

The story behind Forget the Corsage: July 13th I delivered my firstborn daughter. She was exactly one week past her due date, but God’s timing was of course, perfect. Everyone is right. This is the hardest yet most joy-inducing adventure of my life. Norah was the first labor of the summer. Forget the Corsage was the second. I’ve been working on a manuscript for almost three years. Who knew it would take so long? I’ve been thinking about writing a book since I was maybe 23 years old. I’ve always known it would be addressed to young women, a sort of spiritual memoir, and a way to greater connect with the audiences that I speak to. The title comes from my unique prom story. I lived my entire high school journey in expectation of my senior prom. I had the dress, the heels, and the perfect hair but I didn’t have the date. At the last-minute, I recruited a friend to accompany me. He was to pick me up at the house, escort me to dinner, and drive me to the dance. He was supposed to bring me a corsage. Instead my date arrived to the dance after 10:30pm. (He had a good reason.) He rushed in to find me standing at the bottom of the escalator that had already delivered my entire senior class to their “Night to Remember.” (I did not have a good reason.) I had waited by myself for over an hour because I was convinced that I couldn’t enter the dance until I had my date and my corsage. I danced to only three songs that night and spent most of my prom thinking, “No one will ever want me.” Since that time God has laid those words heavily upon my heart. If I truly am a daughter of the King, then I know the response to my own lament. Not only does Christ want me, but also He has given me an abundant and exciting life. His love provides the courage to live adventurously regardless of any dating status. Forget the Corsage is a reminder to stop waiting for life to happen to us, but instead to go and live life to the full right now. It can be tempting to buy into the lie that real living starts when we graduate, get the perfect body, find Mr. Right, and land our dream job. But the truth is that we are waiting for something that has already been given to us from God: life to the full. The target audience of this little book is young women. Each chapter begins with a letter to myself at different stages of my life. “Dear fifteen year old Ginger …” “Dear eighteen year old Ginger …” “Dear twenty-seven year old Ginger …” (You get the idea.) The letters span from 12 years of age until 27. That’s about the target. If I could go back in time and give myself a pep talk or kick in the pants, this book is what I would say. So which labor was harder? Giving birth to Norah was definitely quicker! I don’t know. It’s going to be a while before I consider repeating either again, but I am so, so proud of both. And lest you think this was just one delightful day after another, let me tell you that more tears have been shed from May through September than you can imagine. My husband gets the Red Badge of Courage, the Purple Heart, and THE BEST OF ALL THE THINGS EVER Award for going through these two labors with me. Really, who decides to do both of these things at the same time? If nothing else, I’ve learned to let my friends and family see my tears. I am REALLY getting good at apologizing, and slightly better at asking for help.

Purchase your copy here.

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