Get Encouraged is the kind of site that meets you in the cave before it hands you the canteen — and this week, Chris Miller brought both.
The posts this week move through some real human territory — rebuilding trust after betrayal, finding peace and strength when life feels unstable, and what it means to stop for someone who needs help.
Let’s start with the hardest one first — what it actually takes to trust again after you’ve been hurt.
Trust Rebuilds on an Unshakable Foundation
The post on rebuilding trust after heartbreak opens with a direct question: how do you trust again when the pain runs deep — whether from a relationship, a friendship, or even the church?
And the answer it lands on isn’t “try harder with people.” It points somewhere else entirely. The post quotes Isaiah 26:4 directly: “Trust in the LORD always, for the LORD GOD is the eternal Rock.”
That verse does real work in the piece. The argument is that human beings — even well-meaning ones — can disappoint, abandon, or break their promises. God’s character, by contrast, is not determined by what others do. He remains faithful regardless.
So trusting God isn’t a workaround for trusting people. It’s a different category of foundation altogether.
Right. And the post is careful to say this isn’t about pretending the hurt never happened. Choosing forgiveness is named as one practical step — not to excuse wrongdoing, but to free your own heart from carrying bitterness forward.
That distinction matters more than it might sound. Now, if trust is the foundation, the next question is what you build on top of it — peace, strength, and hope when life won’t hold still.
Peace, Strength, and Hope When Nothing Holds Still
“Finding Hope in Hopeless Moments” opens with the Psalmist in Psalm 77 asking raw, honest questions — and the post quotes them in full: “Has the Lord rejected me forever? Will he never again be kind to me? Is his unfailing love gone forever? Have his promises permanently failed?”
That’s not polished Sunday-morning language. Those are the questions people carry quietly.
Exactly — and the post names that directly. The turning point comes in verse 11: “But then I recall all you have done, O LORD.” The Psalmist doesn’t find hope by feeling better. He finds it by remembering — God’s deeds, His character, His power. The post even suggests keeping a written record of moments when God provided or guided, to revisit during hard seasons.
Memory as a spiritual practice. That’s less abstract than it sounds.
“When Life is Uncertain, Where Do You Find Peace and Strength?” builds on the same ground. It draws from Psalm 29:11 — “The Lord gives his people strength. The Lord blesses them with peace” — and anchors that promise in who is making it: the God who commands storms and spoke creation into existence.
The comfort is proportional to the source. A promise from someone powerless doesn’t carry much weight.
“An Unstable Life” follows David through seasons of running — from Saul, then from his own son’s rebellion — and shows how his confidence wasn’t rooted in stable circumstances but in the conviction that God still reigns. And “Tell Yourself the Truth” brings in George Washington Carver, who credited God for every discovery and said he’d be helpless without Him — as a frame for how honest self-talk grounded in Scripture can quiet fear without denying it.
All four posts are essentially asking the same question from different angles: where do you put your weight when the ground moves? Which brings us somewhere more outward-facing — not just what steadies you, but what you do for someone else who’s been knocked down.
Remembering Who Stopped — and Whether You Will
“Who Will Stop?” works through the parable of the Good Samaritan, and it opens the question from an unexpected angle — not “who is my neighbor” but whether you’ve ever been the wounded man on the road.
Which reframes the whole thing. You’re not just evaluating your generosity; you’re remembering what it felt like to need someone to stop.
The post puts it plainly: “A neighbor is anyone whose need crosses your path.” It traces the priest and the Levite — both of whom had reasons to keep moving — and names the Samaritan’s response as costly compassion, not convenient compassion. He used his own resources, stayed involved, and promised to return.
The post also reaches into history — Franz Stigler escorting a damaged enemy bomber to safety, Richard Kirkland carrying water to wounded soldiers on the opposite side at Fredericksburg. Mercy interrupting what hatred expects.
And the piece closes with a small story: a little girl who sat beside a man on the sidewalk and held his hand. When her father asked what she did, she said, “I helped him feel less alone.” That’s the scale most of it actually operates at.
“There’s Something Powerful about Remembering” connects this outward attention to Memorial Day — drawing on Joshua 4, where stones carried from the Jordan River became a memorial so future generations could ask what they meant. Remembering sacrifice, the post argues, is itself a biblical instinct: it keeps gratitude alive and reminds us we didn’t arrive where we are on our own.
Romans 13:7 ties it together: “Give to each one what you owe. If honor, give honor. If respect, give respect.” Stopping for someone, honoring someone — both are forms of the same refusal to look away.
Trust, peace, memory, mercy — it’s a pretty complete map of what it takes to stay human when things get hard.
And all of it starts with honesty — about the hurt, the fear, and the people on the road in front of you. More of that next time.
Get Encouraged 