InstaEncouragements Blog

Where is Your Happy Place?

11/13/2020

The doormat in front of our cozy loft apartment declares “This is our happy place.” My husband and I found the quotation fitting because we’re both homebodies—me especially. I take comfort in the feel, smell, and comfort of home. When I walk through the door after a day of talking to patients and concerned parents at work, a sense of peace settles back into my heart.

Lately, between COVID-19 and the election process, our home has felt more like a safe-haven than ever. But even the security of home hasn’t been able to calm my heart lately. Fear of an unknown future creeps into my happy place through our phones, tablets, and computers. It seeps under the cracks and crevices and worms its way into my heart.

Why do I fear the whirlwind of change, uncertainty, germs, and politics swirling outside my door?

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The Gospel According to an Introvert

10/16/2020

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God’s creative design bursts with variety. In the human race, He fashioned a diverse assortment of looks, personalities, and abilities, giving a unique combination to each one of the nearly eight billion people walking around out there.

He created the acrobat, the person who can trip over thin air, the beauty pageant winner, and the self-conscious preteen boy with a bad case of acne. He understands the outgoing church greeter and the quiet accountant. He designed both the orators who always know the right thing to say and the people like me who can manage to give a socially awkward response to a straightforward question.

God didn’t make any mistakes when He made you or when He made me. As the psalmist declares, each one of us is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14a).

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Be Still and Go Forward

9/18/2020

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“Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” Psalm 46:10

"The Lord said to Moses, 'Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward." Exodus 14:15

Do you have any favorite Truths from Scripture? Passages of promise that make your soul sing and direct your heart towards worship and praise?

Recently, after listening to a Sunday message emphasizing the need for rest in the believer’s life, I entered the week meditating on Psalm 46:10a: “Be still, and know that I am God.”

These words of instruction always touch my heart in a special way. They’re God’s reminder to me every day that I let my busy schedule run my life and my heart.

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What Happened to the Good Old Days?

8/14/2020

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A Millennial's Perspective

I am a millennial Christian. Because of my age demographic and the stereotypes that follow it around, older Christians often ask me:

“So, what’s up with your generation?”

“How on earth am I supposed to understand young people these days?”

I never know how to answer these questions, and this inability has bothered me for a while. Part of me feels defensive of my generation. Another part of me genuinely wonders why teenagers and twenty-thirty somethings today are apparently so different from those of decades past. Is my generation and the new “generation Z” filled with worse sinners than our parents’ and grandparents’ generations?

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Free to Love in a World Torn by Fear

7/17/2020

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Exercising Our God-Given Ability
to Love in a World Torn by Fear

In a line of expressionless, masked faces spaced six feet apart, people of all ages, colors, backgrounds, and ethnicities wait. They wait to walk into stores where they will cringe at touching what other fingers have touched and leave quickly to sanitize their hands and stay home where it is safe from:

Germs.
Violence and riots.
Racial tension.

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Embracing Your Past

6/19/2020

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Regret’s Role in Redemption

Thank God we don’t have time machines!

I don’t know about you, but if God had allowed some scientist out there in the world to invent a time machine, I would probably spend the majority of my time inside it, rewinding to countless scenes in my life that I would greatly love to “do over.”

And that’s why the God who exists outside of time and space has seen fit to make us humans here on earth live a very chronological existence.

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The Things We Tell Ourselves

5/15/2020

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How Our Inner Monologue
Determines Our Outward Actions

Whether you’re a dramatic Disney villain ranting about insufferable princesses or a stressed-out mom picking up after your cyclone of children passing through the house, you’ve probably been caught talking to yourself at least once in your life. The truth is, we all find the idea of talking to ourselves rather funny. We have pictures in our minds of those people that usually take the form of absent-minded scientists or psychotic mental patients. Either way, they’re slightly insane.

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