10 Encouraging Bible Verses for When You Need a Pick-Me-Up

Do you ever feel knocked down and in need of encouragement?

Maybe you need a few encouraging Bible verses to get you through the day?

You open your Bible hoping to find just the right motivating words to help you go on, but you aren’t sure where to look exactly.

I have a few I’ve collected over the years I’d like to share with you today.

When my husband Alan went to Iraq the second time, I was left with a two-year-old and a one-year-old boy to bring up on my own for fifteen months. And by the way, I’m a stress ball. What was I to do?

Well, first, Alan and I bought a house and moved the boys and me to my home town where I could be twenty minutes from my parents. I was not at all alone that year. Dad and Mom were promoted to first string members of our parenting team.

Second, I started myself a Bible journal.

And believe me, I was always on the hunt for encouraging Bible verses, which I recorded in my Bible journal.

I did not write down prayers or thoughts in this particular journal. Instead, I bought several packs of notebook dividers and started collecting Bible verses.

My Bible verse collection was a joy to me. I worked on it for many years. I collected Bible verses on things like encouragement, faith, angels, prayer, hard times, and eventually about fifty other topics.

Every collection has a favorite. My favorites were the encouraging words I found in my Bible.

Some people can spit out Bible verses and their exact locations in the Bible. My brain strongly dislikes trifling with road maps, both in a car and in the Bible. I can memorize a Bible verse for you, but don’t ask me to remember the book and verse.

It’s not that I don’t care. I see the usefulness in knowing where to find the quotes and reading the context. Memorizing the chapter and verse location is just not something that I focus on much.

With my Bible journal, I felt like I have a cheat binder for knowing where to find certain Bible verses. I may not remember if a particular verse is in James or 2 Samuel. Instead, I can look it up for you on Google or in my Bible journal.

I can record these things, just not always remember them.

Anyway, I have found life to be a brutally challenging obstacle course, and these verses are a small sampling of the many Bible verses that have helped me run this course without irreversibly losing my mind.

How do people do life without God? I’d be a mess without Him.

I’m making each one of these verses their own pretty picture too. It helps me reach more people with these encouraging thoughts from the Bible if you pin them on Pinterest.

Instead of putting them in list format, I thought I’d scatter them throughout this story for you to enjoy. Maybe you will find a few of these encouraging too.

I have one set of verses in my collection that will always hold a special place in my heart. I used to chant it to myself every morning to help me get out of bed during Alan’s Afghanistan deployment.

That one is Matthew 11:28, below.

The next verse was equally important and helpful.

Y’all, with Alan overseas and being home alone with three children, ages six months to six years, I lived on these verses. It was in those three months before my parents came and carried us all home to stay with them that I grew so much in my faith. (To read more about that, see this post.)

My Bible journal also has a tab labeled joy, which I hold near and dear to my heart.

Remember how in the movie Inside Out, the golden happy memories turned a little blue after Riley moved because there was sadness as she looked back on happy times at her old home?

Well, now some of my blue, sad memories are mixed with gold as I look back on them because of how I got through it.

I can look back on when I was sad, and I feel joy over the way those encouraging Bible verses helped me overcome that circumstance. God’s Word ministers to us in a way we cannot even explain. It is supernatural.

Mostly the over arching theme for these encouraging verses is that we are never alone.

Another day will dawn. God is with you. He has a plan. You are going to be okay, not every second, but eventually you will be okay.

That is the beauty of having faith in God. No one can take it from you.

Like that song says, “What I’ve got, the world didn’t give me, and the world can’t take it away.” Such an uplifting song.

There is such peace than can be drawn from resting in faith in God for your life.

I love how James 1:17 reminds us that the good things that happen to us come from God. He cares about our lives, what we do, and he sends us perfect gifts.

Jesus is that ultimate perfect gift, as Jesus reconciled us to the Father. Now even we lowly Gentiles can pray straight to the Lord, knowing Jesus has washed us clean and we can talk to Him.

These words are my heart beat for how I truly “get my act together.” I hope they help you too.

I talk more about how these verses have encouraged me through Alan’s second deployment in this new video.

If you have time, give it a watch. I have a few practical tips on getting through challenges in the video.

Y’all have a great week. Thanks for stopping by!