79 results for author: Support
Hope Group Testimonies: “A life-changer”
Spring Hope Group registration is currently open. This semester only in-person groups will be offered. We will resume online groups in Fall 2018 with the launch of a new study! Learn more about Spring 2018 groups and locations >> HERE. Are you on the fence about joining an in-person group near you? Read the testimonies below of other Hope Moms and their encouraging experiences with Hope Groups! We praise God for the comfort He gives us that we can in turn share with each other (2 Cor. 1:3-5).
"I participated in the I am study with leaders Paige and Chelsea in the Brenham/College Station chapter. I joined because I wanted to get more ...
Grappling with the Grander Biblical View of Mercy
[Post credit: Unlocking the Bible]
From the pits of grief and suffering, the human heart and soul can yearn to know the cause of earthly pain. Did a particular sin bring this suffering upon me, or did I need discipline?
Tender answers might pour into the soul from Scripture—Job was a noble man who suffered and grieved (Job 1:8). And the man born blind in John’s gospel was not provided by Jesus with a personal sin corresponding to his pain (John 9:2-3). We cannot always draw straight lines between cause and effect for our individual suffering (Isaiah 55:9). In How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil, D. A. Carson ...
Heaven: What Will Eternity Be Like? (After Jesus’ Second Coming)
Q: So what does the Bible say heaven will be like after Jesus' second coming?
After Jesus' second-coming, our souls will be united with physical, glorious, eternal bodies that no longer experience weakness, pain, sorrow, or death.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:51-53).
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what ...
Hope Mommies Publication Release: “I AM,” by Ashlee Schmidt
Editor's Note: This is the first half of an interview continued in the 2018 Hope Mommies e-book.
“Everyone will experience suffering; it is the effect of living in a fallen world where imperfection and sin have touched everything we see and experience. The grief of losing a beloved child is among the most painful and crippling of sorrows. Yet in your darkest moments, God, who suffered the loss of His own Son, longs to strengthen and sustain you. He calls you to draw near as He offers you the hope that your grieving heart so desperately needs. As you learn more about the character of God that is revealed throughout the pages of Script...
Heaven: What Will It Be Like? (Before Jesus’ Second Coming)
Q: So what does the Bible say heaven will be like before Jesus' second coming?
Before Jesus' second-coming, believers will likely be in a spiritual, temporary state in God’s presence where our souls will go until they are given new bodies on the New Earth at Christ’s second-coming (emphasis has been added throughout verses below):
After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne stood in heaven, with one seated on the throne ...
Heaven: Does Purgatory Exist?
Purgatory is the belief widely held by the Catholic church (but characteristically rejected by Protestants) that a Christian will first go to purgatory “after death [to] undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.”[1] The Catholic church also encourages undertaking ways of helping those who have passed away: “The Church also commends almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead.”[1] The word “purgatory” simply means to have the quality of cleansing or purging—and it is never used in the Bible.[2]
Instead, Scripture gives reason to ...
Crying Out To The Lord
Editor's Note: This devotional is an excerpt from the 2018 Hope Mommies e-book.
In May of 2012, I walked down the aisle to the song “How Great Is Our God.” I was 33, my husband 34, and it had felt like we had waited an eternity for each other. Perhaps it didn’t feel like that to my now husband, Kevin. He’s much less dramatic than me. I knew that I wanted our wedding to be a taste of the wedding we’re really created for. The one where we meet our Savior, face to face, where we sit at the great wedding feast that will go down as the one for the ages, and praise the One who was faithful to us in the midst of ...
Heaven: Is My Baby There? {Part 2}
Editor's Note: This is the continuation of a two-part article. Part one can be found here.
[Continued]
My husband brought me the food in bed during my Scriptural search; he also listened to the thoughts that brought me tears of happiness through tears of sorrow. We made new, sink-worthy dishes that would need to be washed, and I spoke as one caught between the sight of two worlds—the world where I lived in mourning and the world I could see ahead.
The pages of Scripture growing to feel thick between my fingers with this beautifully weighty news, I questioned further: How would God—the God who tells us all that we are sinners from ...
Heaven: Is My Baby There? {Part 1}
Editor's Note: This is the first of a two-part article. Part two will be posted tomorrow.
[This article was written in the months after my daughter's home-going in 2013.]
In the days after coming home from the hospital where my daughter was stillborn, I sat in bed before the Bible for many hours, searching. I would need to either trust God in the unknown or see Scriptural reason to believe that my daughter resided with Him. Humanly speaking, my most natural belief would have been that she somehow reached heaven.
Looking as a mother at the vacant body of a new, precious child could stir no other desire in me than to believe that she was ...
