Encouraging You to Be Defined by Jesus, Not by Trauma

Give us five minutes, we’ll give you encouragement!

Transcript

0:00:03 - Eric

All right, here we go. Welcome to you to your encouraging five-minute podcast. My name's Eric. This is my friend Heather. Hi, If you would just allow us five minutes of your time, we're going to give you some encouragement here today. 

0:00:16 - Heather

We are indeed, and we're honored to be able to encourage you, especially if you've ever been through some stuff. 

0:00:21 - Eric

Hey, listen. After you've listened, remember? If you need more encouragement, we'd invite you to listen to WPER Virginia's home for encouragement, and if you haven't downloaded the app, you can do that. Your favorite app store. Wherever you get your apps, just search WPER. 

0:00:36 - Heather

I really don't know anybody that hasn't been through a bunch of stuff in their life and you know people always go well, it's building character. Try really hard not to slap them right, yeah, well it does build character. 

0:00:50 - Eric

Sure, you know, god shapes us through the pain. Cs Lewis wrote a lot about it, but it's true, it's hard, though really hard. 

0:01:00 - Heather

You know, especially when you're going through it or you're right in the middle of it. I think we struggle so often as humans we don't know what to say, so we say something and it accidentally sounds trite. You know about like, oh well, this is building character or whatever. And my friend's son, about six years ago he was 15. She went to the store and when she came back he had taken his own life and their youngest child was there when it happened. So now she's about 10. And of course this has affected her very, very much. It affected the whole family, I mean-. 

0:01:36 - Eric

It changes life forever. 

0:01:37 - Heather

Absolutely. And my friend posted a picture of her son with their youngest child and she said you know, sometimes I forget that she's been through so much in just 10 years of life. She said loss has taught her to be strong and press into Jesus when she's afraid, because she loves big, she hugs tight, you know. But here's the thing whether it's your children, someone, you know, you, we don't have to be defined by the trauma. Yes, have we been victimized by trauma? Absolutely, do we deserve to grieve and mourn and be angry? Absolutely, but we don't have to live as victims. Our children are traumatized by things they see either at school or online. They're not victims. That's not the label God wanted any of us to wear. 

And because of what Christ did on the throne, we are able to declare over our lives and the lives of people that we love our children, that we belong to Jesus and he is going to be able to prevent us from being destroyed with fear of trauma and loss. And there are so many times gosh different scriptures that will talk about how suffering and problems will help us grow, either with endurance or strength or faith. With endurance or strength or faith. But 2 Corinthians 10, we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. So sometimes people will say, oh, god's punishing me because I did this, or God did this because I didn't obey. No, he is not an abusive parent, he's not going to cause trauma to you. 

And that's why, when bad things are happening, you can look at that and go okay, wait a second, Is this of God or does it speak against God? The enemy is going to try to take you down with trauma and fear and everything else, but we have strength. We have hope in our God that he stands against that and he's going to help us defend against that. 

0:03:53 - Eric

Heather. 8 billion people in the world give or take a few. 

0:03:57 - Heather

Oh, is that all. 

0:03:58 - Eric

Yeah, Set out to meet more of them. Today Somebody posted this get excited about life. There are bridges you have yet to walk across. I love perspectives like this. There are mountains you have yet to look up to or even try to climb. All the mountains God's created Airports you've yet to depart from or arrive at. That's such a great perspective. Life is meant to be experienced to its fullest potential, and I think a lot of days, at least for me, go by where I'm like did I really get the most out of this day that I could have. 

Oh my goodness, yes, you know this is the day the Lord's made. We rejoice and be glad in it, and when you do that, your faith builds day to day and you realize more of God's potential in your life. Hand to hand, face to face, airport to airport, mountain to mountain, heart to heart. 

0:04:47 - Heather

Hey, we're Eric and Heather. We hope you have been encouraged today, and if you want a little bit more encouragement, we would encourage you to download the WPER app, virginia's home for encouragement. You can find more about the app at your favorite app store. Just search WPER.