Encourage One Another (and build each other up!)

-By Tony   The year 2025 has been a very interesting year. At the beginning of the year, I was still out of the job since the layoff in August 2024. It had been almost 6 months. Each day, I tried to bring myself back up and send in applications, oftentimes with no response or interview. Things were pretty discouraging to say the least. Fortunately, in late February, a recruiter reached out to me for a position and the company was willing to hire me after a few rounds of interviews. But the role paid less, and wasn’t as shiny on the resume as my last job.  Right out of college, I landed a position at Deloitte, one of the “Big 4” accounting firms, serving almost 90% of Fortune 500 companies. At the time I thought , I really did it! But in just a year, I was laid off. So, after 6 discouraging months of job searching, all I could find was a role that I was not entirely interested in, nor very fond of. I thought, Well, that’s it. I’ve shot my shot. My career will never come back ...

    "As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust." -Psalm 103:12-13

-By Adara Growing up, all that came out of the speakers of our family mini-van was “Positive, encouraging K-LOoooVE”. As you would imagine, Church and my local AWANA club played worship songs exclusively. I even had my very own collection of early 2000’s “WOW” CDs that I listened to on my own time. The point is, I was saturated with Christian music - and I loved it! Songs like Jeremy Camp's “There Will Be A Day” gave me great hope in the midst of the pain and chaos I experienced from the mental illnesses of my parents. I could say that God met me in my pain, but it would be more accurate to say that the Spirit of the Living God sang songs over me, with such melodies that wove through my soul, hemming in the suffering along with the joy, holding it all together, and strumming my whole being into a new song of worship for Him.  The Lord your God is in your midst,     a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness;     he wi...

-By DC The Sleeping Heart “I sleep, but my heart is awake.” (Song 5:2) A large bulk of my Christian faith has/is lukewarm. From being the occasional CEO (Christmas  and Easter Only), to wrestling with spiritual apathy throughout the week after Sunday services.  In a lot of these seasons my heart towards God has been asleep, going through the motions,  being complacent in comfort, and drifting into spiritual dullness. In the seasons of spiritual sleep, my desire and internal longing for God is still present, but how  does one go about awakening their sleeping heart to renew intimacy and trust with God? And  more importantly, how does one sustain that awakened heart in continued faith from collapse  or burn out? Honest Confession “I had put off my garment; how could I put it on? I had bathed my feet; how could  I soil them?” (Song 5:3) In my reflection, the first crack of awakening was the raw honesty of confession of my  passiveness and laziness in...