Discover resources that will encourage and equip you to engage with the Bible with the loved ones in your home.
What questions do you have?
Contact us and one of our team
members will personally respond
to you by email.
Have questions about your relationship
with God? Start a conversation with one
of our responders who is ready and
willing to answer your questions.
All things work together….
Count it all joy……
For I know the plans…
The Lord is my shepherd…
Do not be conformed…
I can do all things…
Do not be anxious…
Seek first…
Cast all your anxiety…
Fear not, for I am with you…
Be strong and courageous…
Whoever dwells in the shelter…
Overcoming sin in the Christian life is a work of God (Matthew 1:21). When we believe in Jesus, he breaks sin’s power in our hearts (1 John 3:8). By his death and resurrection, the punishment we deserved is taken away and we’re given a new heart that can love and serve and know God.
One day when we reach eternity or Jesus’ returns, he will remove sin’s presence entirely from our hearts and our world.
Until then, we join God’s work in warring against and overcoming sin in the Christian life (Philippians 2:12). By the help of his Spirit, we obey God rather than the sinful passions that used to drive us, and we engage our will in forsaking the habits and attitudes that used to rule us (Romans 6:12).
We do this not just to become better people, but because we have been redeemed from our old life and now love our Lord so much that we flee all that grieves him and desire to be increasingly like him (Ephesians 5:10; 4:30; 1 Peter 1:17-19).
It is only through the help and strength of God that anyone is able to turn away from sin in their lives. We are not capable of doing it on our own. Ask God for that help and strength today!
Do you ever find yourself feeling like you wish life would end? Are you discouraged, depressed, without hope? Do you ever have thoughts of taking your own life? Or do you have a close friend feeling like this? We understand your heart is heavy, and ours is heavy for you—heavy with hope and haste.
If you are having those thoughts then you, more than others, are being honest about life. At times, it hurts, it’s hard, and it’s dark. The Bible paints our world and the human condition as dimly and grimly as you might. But the answer to the sorrow, sin, and suffering of life is not to end your life. The hope the Bible paints on the horizon of our dark world is the hope of new life. God offers you new life and a new heart. He went on a rescue mission to deliver you from the darkness of the world and plant his own presence inside you as the light you so desperately need. He wrote the Bible to tell you the story of how he broke into the pain of this life to deliver you from crumbling under it (Ezekiel 36:26). He offers you eternal hope (2 Corinthians 5:17).
We are praying that you discover what the Bible says to those who are downcast, and we are praying that you will meet Jesus Christ, the light of the world, the one who came to earth to carry our sins and our sorrows, and to bear the darkness that seeks to crush us (Isaiah 53). He alone can ignite true hope in your heart, give you new life, and show you the way forward (Acts 4:12; John 14:6; John 17:3). Choose life today, and open your ear to God’s voice as he calls you to believe in Jesus Christ.
In your darkness, we urge you to cry out to the Lord Jesus for help. For God promised in Scripture that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13 ESV).
Have you ever wished that life would end?
That experience is not foreign to God’s people. There is company to be found in your wrestling within the pages of Scripture. There are several people in the Bible like Jonah, Job, and Elijah, who cried out to God wanting death more than life when life became too much to bear.
God’s Holy Spirit recorded their stories to give you hope.
God himself has also felt your distress. Jesus, God’s Son, knelt one midnight, so deep in anguish that he sweat blood, anticipating the emotional and physical pain that lay ahead (Luke 22:44). He bore immeasurable pain for you, and by experience he bore it with you. He was God-forsaken on the cross, so you might know God’s nearness (Ephesians 2:12-13).
He waded through anguish so that anguish might not have the last word in your life if you will believe in him. Jesus suffered for your sins so that through believing in him, you might have hope and new life—a reconciled relationship with God filled with purpose and meaning.
Jesus deeply understands your pain and wants to walk with you through it if you’ll only ask him. God doesn’t just sympathize with your feelings (Hebrews 2:17; Hebrews 4:15). He also wants you to talk to him about them. He welcomes you to come cry out to him—to direct your voice to him, where you have kept your feelings silenced (Psalm 62:8).
Today, you can deal with your suicidal thoughts, instead of letting them deal with you. You can open the Bible and hear how God answered many others in their distress. You can cry out to Jesus, asking for his hand to hold through these dark days, and for him to light up your heart and your way (2 Corinthians 4:6; John 8:12).
Finally, listen to what God has said to those who trust in him: Isaiah 43:1-4a. Call upon the LORD for his help today and believe that this promise belongs to you (Acts 2:21).
But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you…” (Isaiah 43:1-4 ESV)
We all want help with something. But we seldom like to ask for it.
Imagine you are walking to your house from the grocery store. You’re carrying two bulging bags of groceries, arms aching while the bags you hold, threaten to rip and spill. Your friend sees you and offers to help you carry the load. Say no, and you stay uncomfortable and might drop your goods. Say yes, and you have to admit that you can’t do it yourself.
Receiving help takes humility—the humility to utter two words we try hard to avoid: I can’t.
We all need help with a lot of things. And maybe life would be a little sweeter if we could share our load with a friend.
As we look for someone to help us both with trivial tasks and soul-deep questions, we realize that there are many anxieties we carry with us that nobody can help with—from crises at work and school to cares at home. Except, there is one Person. He is the one who “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3 ESV). He can help. And he already has.
He saw your deepest need—to know God personally, to be free of selfishness, to be unshackled from regret and your past—and he said, “I will help you.” He, Jesus, bore God’s punishment for you as he carried to the cross every offense you have committed against God and neighbor. But receiving this favor from Jesus requires admitting you have sins that need carrying away.
Jesus let your sin and failures crush him, but he did not let them win. He rose from the grave, throwing off the power of sin and death from all who believe in him. Receiving the new life Jesus offers requires understanding you’re dead without him.
God daily carries the world. He sent his Son Jesus to earth to carry the sins of his children into the grave, and then carry his children out of it. Surely whatever is on your heart is not too heavy for Christ to carry. But it’s certainly too heavy for you. Would you humble yourself and say, “I can’t”? Tell God your cares, for he can handle them.
God commands us in the Bible in 1 Peter 5:6-7 to humble ourselves. He tells us to assess our situation honestly—we have hurts we can’t handle, situations we can’t solve, needs we can’t meet. Yet we have a God who asks us, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14).
Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:6-7 ESV)
“Let me help,” he says. And when we say to God, “Please carry this,” we are also saying, “because I can’t.” This verse tells us that the One who upholds the universe not only can carry your anxieties, he wants to, because he cares for you. He can start right now, if you’ll just humble yourself and ask.
Christ went more willingly
to the cross—
than we do to
the throne of grace.
A man who confesses
his sins in the presence
of a brother knows
that he is no longer
alone with himself;
he experiences
the presence of God
in the reality of the
other person… in the
presence of a brother,
the sin has to be
brought into the light.
For I am the Lord your God
who takes hold of your right hand
and says to you, Do not fear;
I will help you.
Do not be afraid, you worm Jacob,
little Israel, do not fear,
for I myself will help you,” declares the Lord,
your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.
God comforts his people who are trembling under the threat of Assyrian invasion with the prophecy we find in Isaiah 41, which includes the famous verse, “Do not fear, for I am with you.”
This video was originally published on Vimeo by Bibles.net.
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.