A minor league baseball player whose wife, 14-month-old son and mother-in-law were tragically killed last year, shared how God is comforting him during the hardest experience of his life and how he’s overcoming Satan’s attempt to destroy him. 

Blake Bivens, a 24-year-old pitcher in the Tampa Bay Rays farm system, sat down with Pastor Travis Gore from the River Church in Danville, Virginia, last Sunday for a lengthy interview to finish out the pastor’s sermon series titled “Storms.” 

Last August, Bivens entered the toughest storm of his life when he found out while on the road in Tennessee for an away game that three of the most important people in his life were taken from him in a triple homicide committed by his brother-in-law. 

“I think the greatest comfort for me has been knowing without a shadow of a doubt where my family is,” said Bivens, who has attended River Church since his childhood.  “I know they are in the arms of Jesus. They are waiting for me to be there with them. Knowing that in our hearts has been the greatest comfort to us. It’s been amazing how the Lord has helped and gave us peace through everything.”

Bivens said the hardest moment for him during the ordeal was after he returned home following the news that his…

For Kirsten Watson, wife of NFL champion Benjamin Watson, Mother’s Day is a bittersweet holiday.

Together, Ben and Kirsten Watson have seven children, ages 11, 10, 8, 7, 4, and 1-year-old twins: “They’re our greatest blessings,” she told The Christian Post.

But in 2018, Watson experienced what she remembers as “an incredibly isolating and painful time.”

In the span of just four months, she had two miscarriages.

“Even as a mother with seven kids, I still cry on Mother’s Day because there are two that I will never meet on this side of Heaven,” she said. “For so many women, Mother’s Day can be a time of sorrow, anger, and maybe even jealousy. This day is hard for many women. Reach out to someone who has experienced loss; the feeling of not being alone can help get us through a hard time. While we’re rejoicing in motherhood, we’re also mournful for those who desire to be mothers and can’t for whatever reason.”

Oftentimes, women who struggle with infertility or have experienced a miscarriage “don’t talk about it because we don’t know what to say, and when we do talk about it, we’re afraid of crying; we don’t want the extra attention,” Watson said, adding: “I didn’t know how to reach out and talk about it. I was so angry.”

“Those two miscarriages marked a very lonely time for…

Pastor and author Beth Jones says the biblical story of a widowed mother with two boys who went from being desperate to completely reinvented by God is an example women can look to for inspiration today. 

Jones, whose television show “The Basics With Beth” airs on several networks internationally, founded Valley Family Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband, Jeff. The mother of four adult children hopes her new book, Reinvent, will serve to help women of all ages uncover their “new you!”

The following is an edited transcript of Jones’ interview with The Christian Post where she talks about her own upbringing and how mothers everywhere can find transformation in God — heart, mind, body and soul.

CP: Mother’s Day is a time where everyone seems to appreciate their mom. Your new book is dedicated to your own mother, tell us a little bit about your experience of growing up in a single-parent home?

Jones: My mom was my hero! When I was 8 years old we sat in a Kroger [supermarket] parking lot and she told me things weren’t working out with her and my dad. Everything changed that day and I remember walking around school in a daze as I didn’t know any other kids whose parents had split up.

I am the oldest of four girls and somehow, as a…

A study of the well-being of healthcare workers in the United States found that those who regularly attend worship services are at a lower risk of deaths related to alcohol, drugs, or suicide, collectively known as “deaths from despair.”

Researchers with the T. H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University had a study published last week in the journal JAMA Psychiatry titled “Religious Service Attendance and Deaths Related to Drugs, Alcohol, and Suicide Among US Health Care Professionals.”

The research drew from a sample of 66,492 female registered nurses via the Nurses’ Health Study II of 2001-2017 and 43,141 male healthcare professionals drawn from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study from 1988-2014.

According to the researchers, women who attended religious services at least once per week had a 68% lower hazard of death from despair compared to peers who did not, while men who attended worship at least once a week had a 33% lower hazard compared to men who never attended.

“… this study suggests that religious service attendance was associated with lower risk of deaths from despair among both men and women, accounting for a wide range of potential confounders (including other aspects of social integration),” stated the Discussion section of the study.

“Findings of this study were congruent with previous evidence suggesting that religious…