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Messages of Encouragement - Steve Martin

Inspiration, teaching, and guidance

Available?

I have found over the years (and plenty of them) that one main requirement of the Lord is that we are available.

Got a lot of money? Not needed.

Have a degree from a Bible college or secular college? Most don’t.

Think you are not equipped with the “right skills” or “I can’t do that?” Neither did the apostles.

What does the Lord ask for?Isaiah 6:8 says, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (NASB)

What was the Lord (notice the Trinity, “Us” by the way”) asking of Isaiah or whoever was listening?

“Who was available?”


In context, the Lord was seeking someone who would go and tell; to give the word of the Lord to the people.


When the Lord had in the past spoken to me about doing or going, for the most part I honestly said, “Here I am. Send me.”


With no college degree. No big bank account. Not the best at speaking, or teaching, or leading…but I was available.


As I traveled with the Christian Friends of Israel from Jerusalem team here in Texas June 2026, I am most aware of my past, knowing I am where I am because I said “Yes” when He asked me to go and do. And I continue to do so.


May that be your heart’s response to when the Holy Spirit says to you, “Will you do what I am asking you to do? Are you available?”


I hope you choose wisely to do. We haven’t got our whole lifetime to do otherwise.


Ahava and shalom,

Steve Martin

Place of Encounter

As often as I can I make the long 12 hour plane flight to Israel, then take the high speed rail train the 22 minutes to the capital city of Jerusalem, I am on it.

Riding up the three flights of very steep escalators, then walking out onto Jaffa Street, I sense the Lord’s presence every time. He has met me here before.

I feel like I am home, though I am not a Jew. Another Gentile from the nations.

At times the Lord will take you back to a specific place of encounter, where you distinctly remember, “He met me here.”That place where you had come before, discouraged and beat down, and knowing you needed something more, a shot in the arm (a spiritual jolt, not the drugs stuff). Jacob knew that place when he had the dream of the ladder.

“Then Jacob departed from Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he [f]happened upon a [g]particular place and spent the night there, because the sun had set; and he took one of the stones of the place and made it a support for his head, and lay down in that place. And he had a dream…” Gen. 28:10-12, NASB

(My good friend Morris Ruddick speaks often in his writings of needing “something more” as he knows by experience on his many journeys back to Vietnam and Israel. Thanks Morris!)

It was from Charlotte, North Carolina to Jerusalem where the Lord had instructed me in 1999, to pay the cost, give the time, and go to the place where He promised to meet me. He then indeed gave me the word I needed to hear, which would take me on the adventure lasting the next 20-30 years.

He took me to my “place of encounter” which I now know, looking back, as a major anchor of encouragement and foundational stone for my spiritual walk.

I know you too have a place of encounter, where you did what you had to do to keep going on, facing your own giant(s), overcoming by His Almighty grace and outpoured love He has deeply entrenched in your inner being. And if not, seek Him for it until He does reveal it.

Remember that place and be strong as you continue to fight to do that which is necessary in your walk today.

“When I looked things over, I rose up and said to the nobles, the rulers and the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the great and awesome Lord, and fight on behalf of your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” Nehemiah 4:13-14 Tree of Life version

Ahava and Shalom,

Steve Martin, Love For His People

Be Not Unaware

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of our affliction which occurred in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life.” 2 Corinthians 1:8, NASB

Battles come. Be prepared. Prayed up. Read up. Connected. The believer’s walk is not easy. Whoever sang the song, “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” sometime back may have been reading what Paul went through in his trials. Or what we go through as we seek to walk in the calling the Lord has given us.

In this life we have trials. Promised in the Bible. And yet the best is coming. Eternal life. But as we look to heaven, and the reward that awaits us, we must continue to walk on earth in faith, in assurance of His leading us.

God’s Word says that first the natural comes, and then the spiritual. “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.” 1 Cor. 15:46, NASB

Watch Israel and the Jewish people and you will know what I am talking about.

I often wondered about the verse that speaks about “abundant life” found in John 10:10. “The thief comes only in order to steal, kill and destroy; I have come so that they may have life, life in its fullest measure.” (Complete Jewish Bible)

At times here on earth I don’t find it so abundantly. In fact, there are days I long to be where He is, seated in heavenly places and already there. Be true – so do you.

But until our appointed mission, the one we have been apprehended for has been completed, the grace, strength, willingness, hopefulness found only in the Lord Jesus, must remain strong. For He alone is the Faithful One, the Giver of Life, the One Who carries us on unto the end.

Be not unaware that our enemy continues to war against us. In many trials, temptations, discouragements, and roadblocks. But in the Lord, we have the victory, and He will see us to the end.

Phil Wickman, contemporary worship leader, sings it well. What An Awesome God!

Believe it and keep walking on. Press forward to the finish line!

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Once Rejected But No More

“I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He?…”Romans 11:1, NASB

All of us have felt rejection at some point in our lives. From the days of school, when some received that report card and one line had the “F” on it. Or the time we worked so hard to make the team, be it sports, an educational achievement, or the next position “up the ladder” on the job and the word came back to us, “Not good enough.”

Rejection carries pain that can linger for a long time, pushing people into dark holes, unhealthy lifestyles, or emotional stress that one cannot just rid away and have it gone.

Jesus (Yeshua) knew rejection. His own people, whom He came to save as the first ones on His list, denied He was their Messiah. They rejected His truth He spoke and demonstrated. They said, “This can’t be the One. He is not giving us rule over our enemies, the Romans.” They did not comprehend in their minds, nor in their hearts, that the Savior of the world was to first come as the Lamb, before returning as the Lion.

Walking among the Jews of Israel, as I have done so many times in their rightful Land, has given me a piece of the Father’s heart for His people, the ones whom He called, chosen, and placed in that Land to be His light to the nations, the Gentiles, the “goyim” as we are known in Hebrew.

And yet, while the nations immediately surrounding them, and throughout the world, continue to seek to steal, kill, and destroy, even as “their father” works through them, the Jews of Israel are seeing the mighty hand of the Living God of Israel, protecting, providing, and enabling them to live. He has brought them back to the land of Israel. He has not rejected them.

Though the world rejects them, the Eternal Father, the Living Savior, and the Holy Spirit (Ruach HaKodesh) are constantly revealing Himself to them. As they further call upon the Lord, He is drawing them to Himself.

Paul says in Romans 11:25-27, that Israel, the Jews, will be saved. “For I do not want you, brothers and sisters, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written: “The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will remove ungodliness from Jacob.” “This is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.” (NASB)

Demonstrating the love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit draws the chosen ones to Himself. As believers in Yeshua (Jesus), that too is in our hearts that HaShem, Adonai, Elohim has given us. We seek to love the Jews, even as He has loved us.

And so, we shall. Am Yisrael Chai. “The people of Israel live.”

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