10 Bible Verses of Encouragement in times of Fear

We all need encouragement and the best place to go is to the Bible.

In this blog Post I have tried to gather some Bible passages or Bible verses which will encourage us all in times of fear.

I do believe that we should not just grab a verse and read it on its own but we should always lift our bibles and read a passage of scripture to make sure that we know the real meaning and context of each of the verses we are putting our trust in. 

I pray that you will do the same and only use this list to guide you as to where you may find help.

So here are 10 Bible verses or short passages for us to turn to in times when we are afraid

1.   Isaiah 41 v 10 & 13     

God truly is the one who wants to encourage us in times when we are afraid or when a fear (just or unjust) comes upon us or in those times when we do not even really know what we fear.

God always knew that we would need reassurance against fears and He prepares us and is ready to help us through the fear.

God also knew that this fear we would face would be very real to us but He also knew that His presence was the answer to our fear and He wants us to know that as we rest in His presence we do not need to fear anything.

We find this in Isaiah 41 v 10

Here His instruction is not to Fear,  

• Why - because He is with us.
• Why - because He is our God.
• Why - because He will strengthen us.
• Why - because He will Help us.
• Why - because He will hold us in His Hand.

Then a few verses later He repeats Himself

We find this in Isaiah 41 v 13

Here His instruction again is not to Fear,  

• Why - because He is our God.
• Why - because He will hold our right Hand.
• Why - because He will Help us.

When God says something we need to listen and take heed to His Words but when He repeats something it makes it all the more important.

2.   Joshua 1 v 9

    

God is gracious to us and knows that we forget what He has told us or lapse in our faith so we need to be reminded of what He has said He will do as this verse states

Not only is God with us now so we should not fear but He is going to always be with us wherever that may be so should never need to fear.

3.   Matthew 10 v 28 

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul

Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Here we have two kinds of fear

Fear of Man and the influence of evil

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul

Fear of God who is Good

Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

Fear of God

 is awe of God,

 respect of God,

 admiration of God

 and

 believing that He is in control of everything

The Fear of God is the right type of fear because it leads us to God.

I previously wrote a Dose of Encouragement about the Right Type of Fear it's called  A Good Kind of Fear

4.   Psalm 23 v 4 

This psalm is a Psalm of great comfort to us because if we read it carefully and thoughtfully we will see that the Psalmist is acknowledging how God is with us in everything.

No matter what situation we are in we need not be afraid.

Even when we feel we may be near death:

 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

He will be with us and we will not need to fear any evil.

You may want to look further into Psalm 23

Here in the series Pondering the Psalms

5.   Psalm 34 v 4    

Oh how good it is to know that God knows all our fears, listens to us and hears us when we are afraid and on top of that is loving towards us in His attitude to us in our fear because He cares enough to bring us through whatever the situation is.

God asks one thing of us when we are afraid - seek Him.

God does two things for us when we are afraid & seek Him - He hears us & He delivers us

6.   Psalm 27 v 1

In this verse God is 3 things to the Psalmist and because of these 3 things the Psalmist has the confidence that he need not be afraid of anyone.

The Lord is his Light

The Lord is his Salvation

The Lord is the Stronghold of his life

Think carefully and consider do we believe like the Psalmist that the Lord is these things to us?

If we do then just like the Psalmist we can say

"Who can we possibly fear?"

7.   Psalm 56 v 3

We are only human and no matter what happens we will act and think in human ways.

So because of this we will often fear when a situation comes upon us but the important thing is not to stay engulfed in that fear but to remember that in that situation we can trust in God and then to act on that knowledge.

8.   1 John 4 v 18

Love is the opposite of fear.

Love is stronger than fear.

Hence where there is Love there can be no fear and God is Love and His Love is the perfect love that cannot be marred by anything even fear

God has love in store for us in which fear can have no stronghold nor cause us any harm.

9.   Deuteronomy 31 v 8

Not only will God not leave us alone when we are afraid but He also will never forsake us.

We are the ones who run away from God yet He is always there going in front of us and walking beside us.  He is prepared for what is going to happen because He knows everything.

10.   2 Timothy 1:7

Where does our feelings of fear come from?

They certainly do not come from God because His Word is clear to tell us this.

Not only is God not the author of fear He is instead the one who cares so much that He wants to give us His Spirit which is the Spirit of Power and the Spirit of Love and the Spirit of a sound mind.

God never adds to our Fear - He adds better qualities to our life.

God gives us the opposite of fear.

When we keep close to Him and trust in Him we will look at things in the right way and witness His Power and His Love and His right thought for us.

Organising a Gift Wrapping Cart / Station

I like having a selection of wrapping paper and bags in our house ready for when I have to organize a gift for someone or my daughter or son need to wrap items when they are staying with us .

However for quite some time I've been complaining that I couldn't find the items I was sure I had already bought and I seemed to be wasting a lot of time searching around trying to remember where I had put them.

So when I saw a wooden kitchen cart for sale on Facebook marketplace and I knew it was a really good price I had the idea of creating a Gift wrapping Cart or Station as our American friends would call it.

I know I am not the only person who buys things in advance.

I know I am not the only person who puts them away somewhere which seems to be logical.

I know I am not the only person who hunts around frantically looking for the items I bought and put away in a logical place but now I can't find them.

Obviously I am not as organised as I would like to be or need to be.

So I really needed to organise my wrapping paper and gift bags

I had made a first attempt at getting everything together some months before I saw the kitchen cart advertised but it was not a great success.

The bags had been gathered up and put into this plastic 3 drawer container and it did hold many bags that were not too big

BUT

there were a few reasons why this was not a success

1.   There was a piece broken off at the bottom corner of one of the drawers and was quite rough so I had to remember not to grab the drawer at the corner.

2.   It was reasonably fine for holding bags which were not not large - I still need somewhere to put the really large bags I had.   (you know the bargains we buy when we see them)


3.   I do like to use gift bags as much as I can but the younger kids within the family tend to prefer paper wrapping on their presents so that they can tear it off as quickly and roughly as possible and the only way to keep paper in this set of drawers would be to have sheets folded up and although I do have sheets like this I do hate folds in the paper on presents.

    So Mostly I buy rolls of paper and they would just be too long to fit in the drawers so they were still in a green bag I had bought some years ago however each time I took out a roll even though I would put it back into the bag (eventually) I would often leave the bag down somewhere and then forget exactly where I had left it the next time I needed it.

4.   I also have tissue paper to use in the gift bags and it is always folded so it will in the drawers okay but when I hunt through a drawer for a suitable bag or paper or tissue I found that the tissue paper got rather messed about.

5.   Then I needed to keep gift tags somewhere plus sellotape and string and ribbon and bows and scissors.

6.    The main reason that I disliked my choice of the plastic drawers was not the actual drawers but the difficulty in moving the set of drawers as they were not on castors and the fact that castors could not be attached because of the style of the bottom of them and also that it was too low to do wrap anything on top of it.

So a sturdy wooden cart on castors with shelves 

and a rail

and a drawer

and has a top that could be used for wrapping

was looking great to me.

I am a great lover of baskets for storage and have in the past grabbed up some bargains when I have seen them so I knew I had baskets which could work with this cart.


I had 3 sets of these 3 baskets which were in 3 sizes.

I also had a lovely box which had come with Gin Sing as a gift from our in-laws in South Korea and it could be put to use with the cart too.

So how would I go about using the box & baskets?


Would I put a basket on each of the 3 shelves?

Would I put 2 baskets and the box on the shelves?

It would really depend on what was in the baskets and how they would fit into the shelves once they had the contents filling them.


So what I had would have to be sorted into types and sizes starting with the gift bags.


A lot of my gift bags were of the same size and I started to place them in the largest of my baskets

but there were many others as well

so they had to be grouped into 2 lots to be put in the other two smaller baskets.



Then the papers

and the tissue papers

Because of the more flimsy nature of the paper and especially the tissue paper I decided they should probably be all in the Box and I knew they would all fit well in there.

The box was able to sit on the top of the cart or it could go on the top shelf so a choice had to be made about that.

But before that I had that other paper to cope with - the rolls of paper but I knew exactly how I was going to store them and yes it was on the cart okay.

In fact those rolls were one of the reasons I was really drawn to using that cart because I knew they could sit upright resting on on of the shelves and held on by the side rail or handle.

So that after they were put on the cart I had to decide about the final placing of the box and the baskets.

Would it be box on top with baskets on the shelves

except that the top shelf would not hold the basket due to height so I had to take the gift bags out and lay them flat on the shelf.


Or

Would it be box on the top shelf with largest basket on the top and other two baskets on the bottom 2 shelves?

However 2 things were left to finish off

1.  How would the drawer be used?

2.  What about the really large bags I also had that never fit into anything?


Well

The drawer will hold all the gift tags, scissors, sellotape, pens etc. that we also need to have a fully working wrapping cart / station but at the moment I do need to go out and buy some more gift tags or make some as I only have about 2 left.

and as for the very large bags this picture of the finished project will explain about them

Now if anyone has any ideas what I could use the long ties (see pic below) that came around the sets of baskets for I would be grateful for your suggestions just let me know in the comments because I hate to not use something and hate to throw something out when it might be useful later.

Marie & Mr Bee Kids Book - Book Review

It's time for another Children's Book Review.

Today it is a book for young children about a girl and a friend she makes.

We have always felt that books are very special to our family and share a love of reading but now that Fred and I have got to the "grandparent stage" we are once again looking at, buying and reading books that are suitable for young children.


So when I heard about this book and the fact that the main character is a girl in a wheelchair I was quick to get a copy but unfortunately very slow to review it.


I did buy this book and I am not being compensated in any way for this review.


So let's have a look at

Marie & Mr Bee

As with another Children's Book I reviewed

SSHH Don't Wake The Baby! - Christmas Children's Book Review

We got our grandchildren involved and here is a short taster of how we did that:

If a book is meant for that young age group then it should be tested with children of that age.

We have 3 grandchildren Matthew 4 years and , Ruby almost 3 yrs now and Sarah the baby, all of whom fall in this age group.

Unfortunately Sarah was having a nap during this part of our facetime with the kids and this time we did not have the pleasure of cuddling with the other two on the couch as we would normally do to read a story book to them - well we are in lockdown at the moment so all our time with them is spent online.

You can see how we manage this in 10 Easy Ideas for Facetime with Kids



Well back to testing out the book.

You can see from that brief video above that this book is very bright and colourful with beautiful illustrations and very clearly presented with a lot of detail which means that the children will enjoy coming back to the book for further readings as they will not have remembered all the fine details of the pictures on each page even after several readings.

Look at the concentration on those faces below as they listen to Grandpa read the story.

Here is the front cover of the book

Here you can see the back cover of the book

There is also a pancake recipe included in the book - for the children to help the grownups to make and them and then everyone can enjoy eating them.

Now that I have told you about this beautifully illustrated book which I believe would be a great book for all children especially to make them more aware of the similarities between themselves and children with disabilities because they all have imaginations. 

I want to say that I believe it would make a great gift for any family to read together.



The book actually comes in two versions although the difference is very slight.

Zooming in closer to the front cover you can see that my version is the Scripture version denoted by this symbol on the front cover.

So you can choose between one which has a Bible verse included on the last page or one which does not.

This book is written by Margaret Welwood  and illustrated by Coralie Rycroft and you can check out  Grandmasbookshelf.net  for more info on this and other books by Margaret.




You can also watch this longer video of reading Marie & Mr Bee together. 







So Deciding thought on this book?


Yes it's a big Tick from me and Fred and the grandkids.

Disclaimer:
I have NOT been offered a free product to write this blog post nor any other compensation. 

I bought this book myself. 
The views expressed here are completely my own.