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Key Bible Verse: Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing (1 Thessalonians:5:11).
Bonus Reading:Acts:20:1-2

A friend of mine from seminary has a bright red scar, a birthmark, across the side of his face. It's like a burn scar. It stretches in an unattractive, obvious fashion down his forehead, across his nose and down across a large section of his mouth and neck.

As far as I can tell, this man has absolutely no difficulty with inferiority. This is, to say the least, unusual.

One day I worked up the courage to ask him how he could be so effective on his feet and trust God to use him without apparent concern about his looks.

"Because of my dad," he said. "My dad taught me, as far back as I can remember, that this part of my face was where an angel must have kissed me before I was born. He said to me, 'Son, this marking was for dad, so that I'd know that you're mine. You've been marked out by God just to remind me that you're my son.'

"All through my growing up days, I was reminded by my dad, 'You're the most important, special fellow on earth.'

"To tell you the truth," he told me, "I got to where I felt sorry for people who didn't have birthmarks across the sides of their faces!"

—Charles R. Swindoll in Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

Have you accepted the way you look? Can you help someone else?

Encouragement is oxygen to the soul.

—George M. Adams (writer, 18th century)

Adapted from Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back (Nelson, 1980).

NOTE: For your convenience, Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back is available in the ChristianityToday.com Shopping Channel.

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Prayer for the Week

My Father, I pray for the gift of being a load-lifter this week.

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