Every Friday I join a community of bloggers for Five Minute Friday. One word prompt, five minutes. Unedited. The prompt this week is \u2026 T<\/strong>oward.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s been a week. Depending on your opinion and vote, you are either feeling elated or disappointed.<\/p>\n

And now we each have a choice to make – will we let the outcome continue to be divisive and cause arguments; or will we let it bring us toward one another to encourage one another?<\/p>\n

May we choose to come toward God first and then toward one another.<\/p>\n

“Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, <\/span> <\/em>that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”<\/em> (Romans 15:5-6, NKJV)
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Hidden in the word encouragement, we find the word we all need – courage. Encouragement brings us the courage to keep on, to press on, to not give up. Encouragement makes us stronger, braver, persistent. Encouragement keeps us from falling apart, keeps us focused on the important, builds us up and binds us together.<\/p>\n

“I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.<\/span>“<\/em>
\n(Philippians 3:14, NKJV)<\/p>\n

May we choose to move toward God,
\nand toward one another,
\nas we press on toward the goal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Image by Claudio Ermanni<\/a> from Pixabay<\/a>
\nToday I may be joining \u2026 Five Minute Friday<\/a> and Grace and Truth<\/a> .<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every Friday I join a community of bloggers for Five Minute Friday. One word prompt, five minutes. Unedited. The prompt this week is \u2026 Toward. It’s been a week. Depending on your opinion and vote, you are either feeling elated or disappointed. And now we each have a choice to make – will we let […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","wds_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[888,7420,2850,7419],"class_list":["post-51897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-encouragement-2","category-uncategorized","tag-encouragement","tag-philippians-314","tag-romans-155-6","tag-toward"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Toward.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51897"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51906,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51897\/revisions\/51906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joanneviola.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}