About

You love the Lord. You want to know and enjoy him through his Word. You know that in the Bible are the words of life, and an abundant, hope-filled life is what you want more than anything.

But life is hard. The Bible can be confusing. It’s difficult to find time to spend in God’s Word and in prayer. And when you do find the time, it’s hard to make sense of what you’re reading, let alone understand how the words can and should transform your heart. Stress, pain, and heartache keep piling up, and hope seems elusive.

I’ve been there too.

My journey of learning to encourage my hope in Jesus through God’s Word began with the birth of two little boys.

Despite being a Christian all my life, I did not know how to study my Bible until the age of 30, when I became a mom.

I knew how to read it. I had parts of it memorized. I knew how to have a fairly effective “quiet time.”

But I had never read the whole Bible. I didn’t realize there was one big story that connected all sixty-six books. I was intimidated by books like Leviticus, Jeremiah, and Revelation and steered clear of them during my personal devotions. Reading my Bible was a duty I was happy to comply with, but it wasn’t always a delight.

And then I became a mom. Maybe it’s the difficulty of parenting or the desperate desire to raise these precious people well…but bringing these two sweet little lives into our family made me seek God in a way I had never done before.

I began to understand how the gospel transforms not just my eternal life, but every aspect of my daily life as well. I began to see that the only place to get the wisdom needed to live a transformed life was in the Bible.

I started to realize that if I wanted to live life well, for myself, my husband, my little boys, and for the watching world, I needed to start measuring all of my life against the truth of Scripture. And to do that, I needed to know Scripture—all of it.

And so, by God’s grace and impeccable timing, I learned how to really study my Bible.

My oldest son is currently nine years old. So, I’ve been growing my Bible study skills for over nine years now. And here are some things I’ve learned:

• Devotional Bible reading is not the same thing as personal Bible study, although both are essential for growing in faith
• The whole Bible (all 66 books) tells one big story—and at the center of that story is Jesus
• To really understand the small parts of the Bible, you need to understand the Bible as a whole—which means reading the whole thing
• Personal Bible Study skills are, sadly, not often taught in churches—but people desperately want to learn them
• When your whole world is falling apart, there is only one place you can go to encourage your hope—God’s Word.

So over the last nine years, God has used motherhood, ministry, chronic illness, and even a pandemic to encourage my hope in Jesus by helping me know and enjoy Him through His Word.

Encourage My Hope is for you, if you:

• long to study the Bible for yourself, but are uncertain where to start
• want simple, accessible tools to help you stay consistent in meeting with God in his Word and in prayer
• crave community and encouragement rooted in gospel truth
• love growing in your ability to interpret and apply Scripture faithfully

The teaching and resources at Encourage My Hope aim to be:

• Rooted in Truth - faithful to a trustworthy interpretation of the Bible using the Inductive Bible Study Method
• Accessible and Practical - providing tools to help the average everyday woman read and understand her Bible, no seminary degree required
• Gospel-Centered - focused on the study of Jesus, by the power of Jesus, for the glory of Jesus
• Community-Minded - committed to fostering relationships with other women of the faith online and in-person

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