A Better Encouragement: Trading Self-Help for True Hope

Drop the Self-Help and Look to God Who Speaks a Better Word

Women thrive on encouragement, connection, and support. And yet, this desire leads many to be culturally catechized by a multibillion dollar self-help industry. Because foolish motivational messages flow freely from the world like a dripping faucet and are repeated by the person in the mirror, women remain discouraged, disconnected, and alone. If women believe happiness and success are their responsibility, they will assume discouragement must be too.

Women need better news. In this hope-filled book, Lindsey Carlson leads weak and weary women to the well to find better refreshment in the living water of Christ, who speaks a better word of encouragement than the world. As women are connected to God's promises and God's people, they will be better encouraged to endure with their hope fixed on Christ.

• Hope for Women Bruised by Self-Help: Written for discouraged Christian women who need better encouragement they can't provide themselves, but who are hesitant to trust good encouragement exists
• Practical and Approachable: Offers relatable stories and counsel to teach women how to biblically discern truth from worldly philosophy in messages of encouragement and to provide confident assurance in God's promises of power, strength, comfort, and hope
• For the Building Up of the Church: Challenges Christians to become better encouragers within their family, the local church, and their communities
• Published in Partnership with the Gospel Coalition

Read Chapter 1

Author:

Lindsey Carlson is a pastor's wife, a mother of five, and a native Texan. She enjoys writing, speaking, teaching women the Bible, and making disciples that grow by God's grace. She is the author of Growing in Godliness: A Teen Girl's Guide to Maturing in Christ.

Endorsements:

"Our world is a mixed bag when it comes to encouragement. Often, words meant to inspire overwhelm us with burdensome demands: be better, work harder, do more. We need a better encouragement. Thankfully, Lindsey Carlson's book offers the remedy we need by speaking life-giving truths from God's word to God's people."
--Melissa B. Kruger, Vice President of Discipleship Programming, The Gospel Coalition; author, Growing Together

"We live in a paradoxical time: it seems women are more discouraged than ever, but at the same time, peppy self-help talk abounds, printed on every throw pillow and journal cover in the home decor section. Our steady diet of 'you've got this' does not actually fill us up. In A Better Encouragement, Lindsey Carlson shows us how we were made to find hope, comfort, and strength in the much deeper and richer promises of God. This book offers a timeless truth especially poignant for this cultural moment: the deepest need of discouraged women is not self-confidence but the confident assurance of our identity in Christ. I commend this book to any weary woman and all her friends."
--Jen Oshman, author, Enough about Me and Cultural Counterfeits

"'I'm so discouraged' is a sentence that comes out of my mouth more often than I would like. And, as a pastor's wife, it's one I also hear frequently-Christian women everywhere, weighed down by the trials of life, are struggling to take heart. Thankfully, in this book, Lindsey Carlson establishes weak hearts by pointing us to the source of true courage: God himself. With clarity, biblical depth, and a refreshing sprinkle of wry humor, A Better Encouragement reveals our God to be the hope, comfort, and strength we desperately need. Whether you are enduring a day or a decade of fainthearted weariness, I'd encourage you to find help in these pages."
--Megan Hill, pastor's wife; author, A Place to Belong; Managing Editor, The Gospel Coalition

"Lindsey Carlson gives us a compelling biblical vision for the encouragement we long for and offer to others. Ultimately the courage, confidence, and hope that we all desperately need won't be found in the self-help aisle but in God himself. A Better Encouragement rebooted a passion in me to be a better encourager."
--Kathy Litton, Director of Planter Spouse Development, North American Mission Board

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