Encouragement Topic

An old Yiddish proverb says, “God gave burdens, also shoulders.” But have you ever felt that your shoulders were too weak to bear your burdens? This is one reason God has made the church a family—that we might bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2).

If you are a Christian worker of any kind, you have faced discouraging times. I remember when we were starting the Good News Baptist Church in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Several times when it was time for our evening service, I had the church cleaned, the chairs set up, hymnbooks laid out, music playing, my sermon tucked away neatly in my Bible, and threw open the door ready to quickly step out of the way lest I be trampled by the surging throngs of people hungry to hear God’s Word!

I’ve had five conversations that went almost exactly the same in recent days. A battle-worn college student says, “I’m not even sure what I’m doing here. I feel like I’m doing nothing and headed nowhere.”

I explained to our teens that when we returned home each of them should give a testimony in a special testimony service as to what God had done in their heart and what decisions they had made.