The lights are starting to come back on in parts of Caracas—Venezuela’s capital. But the extended power outage and ongoing food crisis have sent a tidal wave of humanity fleeing the country to neighboring Brazil and Colombia.

Here in the border town of Cucuta, thugs paid by Venezuelan Dictator Nicholas Maduro’s regime are targeting people for robbery and kidnapping.

As the U.S. Embassy pulled its remaining personnel out of Caracas on Tuesday, this CBN News reporter went back to the border where aid shipments were burned by Venezuelan troops two weeks ago.

The border between Venezuela and Colombia is now officially closed. The bridge that had tens of thousands of people crossing it when I was here two weeks ago is now essentially empty. Now these refugees are finding new ways to cross the border, risking everything to cross in difficult locations. We observed hundreds making a water-crossing.

But crossing illegally is fraught with risk. These people say they are preyed upon by members of criminal biker gangs called Colectivos, who support Nicolas Maduro, and charge a fee or even rob people trying to get across. And they aren’t exaggerating.

As I was filming along the riverbank, I was attacked by three men who tried to drag me into Venezuela. There were several signs that these attackers were tied to the regime—for example, they were smoking cigarettes, which most Venezuelans can’t afford since they’re struggling to survive. And this wasn’t a robbery attempt since they didn’t take my camera, and they were literally trying to drag me across the border.

Click here to read the rest of this story from our content partners at CBN News.

Is abortion moral? Is current U.S. law too permissive? Are there circumstances that make terminating a pregnancy an ethical choice? These are just a few of the loaded questions at the heart of the ever-contentious abortion debate.

They’re also topics that are creatively grappled within filmmaker Ray Comfort’s riveting new film 7 Reasons. The movie, which released on March 15 at , will challenge viewers to think deeper about the abortion debate, as Comfort asks a variety of men and women about their beliefs on abortion—and whether it really is truly a woman’s right to choose.

READ ALSO: 5 Real-Life Stories of Abortion Survivors

“I feel like it’s a woman’s right to choose,” one interviewee responds. “We have rights over our own body.” Others are seen agreeing with this conclusion.

Those featured in 7 Reasons give a variety of justifications for why they believe abortion should be permissible. From the inconvenience of pregnancy to parental incompetence, the circumstances offered up were sweeping.

Some argued that fetuses simply aren’t babies—or that some women seeking abortions are justified in doing so, as they aren’t ready for the responsibility of being a parent.

“People who don’t have money can’t pay for themselves,” one person says, citing financial barriers.

Watch the 7 Reasons trailer:

But Comfort patiently questions each person and, before long, it’s easy to see the house of cards come tumbling down, with hearts and minds changing in the process.

“You’d sacrifice willingly because God’s given you an instinct to love your offspring,” Comfort told one woman, encouraging her to reject abortion as a moral option and turn to God. “God can grant everlasting life as a free gift.”

READ ALSO: “12 Heartwarming Family Movies About Adoption”

As the conversations unfold, something fascinating happens in 7 Reasons: people start to realize the true gravity of their perspectives.

You can watch the film starting March 15 at 7 Reasons. {eoa}

This article was originally published on Pure Flix Insider. Visit Pure Flix for access to thousands of faith and family-friendly movies and TV shows. You can get a free, one-month trial here.

As a prosecutor against human trafficking for the Georgia attorney general’s office, Camila Zolfaghari saw firsthand what happens when evil goes unchecked.

“You have to rely on God for strength,” Zolfaghari tells Charisma News in “The Truth About Human Trafficking” podcast series. “If He has called you into a job or profession that means you see the dark side of the world constantly, you have to really rely on His grace to get you through and to teach you how to set your mind on whatever is true, whatever is lovely, whatever is noble and of good report.”

Zolfaghari is the vice president of policy at Street Grace, a faith-based organization mobilizing faith, business and community leaders to end the sexual trafficking of children throughout the U.S. through awareness, education and action.

“Our trafficking victims tend to be some of the most horrific situations and stories because traffickers purposely prey on the most vulnerable, and that means they are normally recruiting, enticing, preying upon those who have already been abused as children when they were still in their homes,” Zolfaghari says.

How are traffickers recruiting children? Could your teen be in danger because of the apps they use? What about all these social media campaigns; do they actually work? Zolfaghari answers these questions and more in the podcast. Take a listen.

Read more from “The Truth About Human Trafficking”:

She Was Abused as a Child; Now She’s an Ordained Minister Who Runs a Haven for Prostitutes, Addicts and Trafficking Victims”

Trafficking Survivor Shares What Holy Spirit Told Her While Buyer Negotiated Price for Her Virginity

You can also click here for other episodes.

As a prosecutor against human trafficking for the Georgia attorney general’s office, Camila Zolfaghari saw firsthand what happens when evil goes unchecked.

“You have to rely on God for strength,” Zolfaghari tells Charisma News in “The Truth About Human Trafficking” podcast series. “If He has called you into a job or profession that means you see the dark side of the world constantly, you have to really rely on His grace to get you through and to teach you how to set your mind on whatever is true, whatever is lovely, whatever is noble and of good report.”

Zolfaghari is the vice president of policy at Street Grace, a faith-based organization mobilizing faith, business and community leaders to end the sexual trafficking of children throughout the U.S. through awareness, education and action.

“Our trafficking victims tend to be some of the most horrific situations and stories because traffickers purposely prey on the most vulnerable, and that means they are normally recruiting, enticing, preying upon those who have already been abused as children when they were still in their homes,” Zolfaghari says.

How are traffickers recruiting children? Could your teen be in danger because of the apps they use? What about all these social media campaigns; do they actually work? Zolfaghari answers these questions and more in the podcast. Take a listen.

Read more from “The Truth About Human Trafficking”:

She Was Abused as a Child; Now She’s an Ordained Minister Who Runs a Haven for Prostitutes, Addicts and Trafficking Victims”

Trafficking Survivor Shares What Holy Spirit Told Her While Buyer Negotiated Price for Her Virginity

You can also click here for other episodes.

Many Christians today feel unfulfilled in their walk with God. But they have no idea it’s because of little decisions they make each day that lead them into lives of compromise. That’s why Ron Pratt—affectionately known as “Papa Bear Alaska”—wrote a new book called Navigate Your Faith: A Christian’s Field Guide to Not Getting Lost, which I had the privilege to publish and highly recommend. Pratt’s goal is to expose Satan’s agenda to derail Christians’ lives and slowly turn their hearts away from the Lord.

I had the chance to interview Pratt, who traveled all the way from Alaska to Florida, in our podcast studio recently. We talked about his new book. It teaches readers how to pursue spiritual correctness over political correctness, how to honor God in their engagement with the media, and, ultimately, how to make Jesus the center of their lives. It’s a refreshing read in today’s era, as it addresses the many pitfalls of our society’s nominal Christians. Click here to listen to the podcast or scroll to the end of this article.

“We would probably be amazed at how many people who live or claim to have that banner of ‘Christian’ over their heads—how many are actually walking lost in their Christian walk,” Pratt tells me. “God literally woke me up in the middle of the night … and downloaded the entire storyline, the characters, the whole book. And I knew it was God because, frankly, I’m not that creative.”

Pratt’s wisdom comes from the Holy Spirit as well as from his many years in ministry. In fact, he got the first version of his nickname, “Papa Bear,” when he started a youth ministry in the early 1980s in Southern California. In 1997, though, God told him to sell everything and get ready to move. Pratt didn’t know at first that God would eventually move him to North Pole, Alaska. But after he settled there, he founded This Generation Ministries, which develops ministries and equips leaders in Alaska.

Throughout his time in ministry, Pratt has seen the devil’s schemes over and over again. So how does Satan manage to lead believers away from Jesus? Pratt says he slowly erodes our passion for Jesus by getting us to prioritize our own pleasure, entertainment or career goals over our relationship with Christ. Before we know it, we’re bored with our faith because it has become stale, but we don’t realize we did it to ourselves.

“Often we make it so easy for the enemy to put us in a compromised situation,” Pratt says. “And there’s really no need for us to go through some of these falls that we go through as Christians if we’re just divinely walking through some protocols that have already been set in stone in the Word of God. But we’ve gotten so far away from the Word of God, and we’ve gotten [to the point where] everything is subjective. The culture decides what’s moral or immoral, when really we have a book called the Bible that makes that decision for us.”

Culture seems to prove Pratt’s point. Take a quick glance at the state of our culture today, and you’ll see that people think they can simply choose what truth is. America has fallen for the lie that we can decide whether killing babies is actually murder and whether homosexuality is actually sexual immorality. I asked Pratt why he thinks this has happened in our culture.

“I think we as Christian leaders have allowed it,” he says. “In Alaska, we’ve got some pretty rough roads. … I’ve been on roads where after I drove over the road, it collapsed because there was undermining that happened. Undermining is something you don’t see; it happens underground. And it happens slowly; it doesn’t happen overnight. It happens where there’s seepage, and there’s a crack in the foundation. Water starts to wash out the foundation. Then eventually, all you have is the crust of the pavement, and it will cave through. I believe that we’ve allowed undermining to happen in our churches. We’ve allowed it to happen in our families. We’ve allowed it to happen in our individual lives, this slow deterioration of our foundation.”

Pratt says it’s even worse nowadays, as if Satan is giving one final effort to undermine God’s church before Jesus returns.

“As you study Revelation, you see that it’s going to get worse as we’re in the last days,” he says. “And now people are saying we’re in the last of the last days. That might be correct, and so I think because we’re in the last of the last days, the enemy is doing some overtime. I don’t know if I can back that with theology, but it seems like he’s doing that last-ditch effort to grab as many as he can because he knows he’s running out of time.”

Pratt believes this book will pave the way for many personal miracles in people’s lives. He’s praying the Holy Spirit will use this book to convict His people to seek Him with all their hearts again. That’s why I want to do everything I can to get this book in as many people’s hands as possible. Just visit to order your own copy of Navigate Your Faith, and click on the podcast below to hear more spiritual insights from Pratt!

On a Sunday morning at Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, N.J., a bearded pastor named Jonathan Cahn stood on an elevated platform, gazing over a full house. Stage lights shifted from blue to white as the backing band played a drifting melody. Two men hoisted curled rams’ horns and let out long blasts.

“Some of you have been saying you want to live in biblical times,” Mr. Cahn said, pacing behind a lectern. Then he spread his hands wide. “Well, you are.”

Sitting at the end of a sleepy drive an hour from Manhattan, Beth Israel may look like any common suburban church. But the center has a highly unusual draw. Every weekend, some 1,000 congregants gather for the idiosyncratic teachings of the church’s celebrity pastor, an entrepreneurial doomsday prophet who claims that President Trump’s rise to power was foretold in the Bible. {eoa}

Click here to read the rest of the story in The New York Times.

“He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake” (Ps. 23:3b).

In the book of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were miraculously protected from the fiery furnace by God—and the sign God was with them was a fourth man appearing in the furnace with them, who “is like the Son of God” (Dan. 3:25). On Thursday night, Hillsong United released a new music video for the song “Another in the Fire,” which features a hook inspired by the story of the fiery furnace: “There was another in the fire, standing next to me.”

Watch the video, recorded live at the Hillsong Worship & Creative Conference in Sydney, Australia, here.

A Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Florida in the 1990s, Danny Wuerffel believed one day he would look back and reflect upon the glory of a great career in the National Football League. And though he played a handful of seasons at football’s highest level, he didn’t reach the level of success he anticipated.

But God had other plans for Wuerffel—kingdom plans for His glory—that the former quarterback never envisioned.

Upon his retirement from the NFL in 2004, God directed Wuerffel to Desire Street Ministries, an organization in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to revitalizing under-sourced neighborhoods throughout the Southeast. In 2006, Wuerrffel became executive director of the organization, which believes when ministry leaders thrive, they can reach hundreds of kids and families with the gospel of Christ.

“Sometimes we become so centered in our own experiences, but God is always doing something new,” says Wuerrffel, the keynote speaker at the Seminole County Prayer Breakfast Friday in Altamonte Springs, Florida. “The question is, are we open for what God has for us? What is it that’s happening in your life that God sees differently than you do?

“You have to train yourself to see more than what’s obvious, what is normal. Like it says in 2 Corinthians [4:18], we need to fix our eyes on what is unseen instead of the things which are seen. Those are the things that are eternal.”

In 2011, God walked Wuerffel through the unexpected. Without warning, he suddenly contracted Guillian-Barre Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks part of its peripheral nervous system—the network of nerves located outside of the brain and spinal cord. He has since recovered from the disease.

Two years later, in 2013, a fully recovered Wuerffel was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.

But it’s his work with Desire Street Ministries that has brought him the most satisfaction in his storied life.

“What you have to realize is that your life is not all about you. You are a supporting character in the greatest story ever told, and that’s the redemption we have through Jesus’ suffering on the cross,” Wuerrffel says. “We cannot do this on our own. It’s not us who is really making a difference, it’s God. And it’s all for God’s glory anyway.”

The obstacles in your life are God’s opportunities to reveal Himself to you. He turns your mess into a message and your test into a testimony. God never wastes a hurt. Psalm 56:8 (NLT) says, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in a bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”

God is sensitive to your pain and desires your wholeness. Your wound might not be your fault, but your healing is your responsibility. What you deem as failure, God uses to promote you into your next season.

When David wrote Psalm 56, he was held captive by the Philistines and knew that only God would be his strength. He trusted God, knowing He understood every sorrow and fear and would take care of him, no matter how deep his despair was. I’m not sure how David saw his tears being collected in a bottle, but those tears resulted from pain, so his insight was very personal. David could not help sharing how God made sure none of his tears went to waste. We talk about accepting Jesus as our personal Savior; what an example David was of having a personal relationship with God!

God loves us intensely. In Ephesians 5:2 Paul said that Jesus’ death on the cross was a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. I am amazed that our heavenly Father gave His only begotten Son to walk this earth as a sacrifice, to be our pattern in life and to die in our stead. I don’t know how I could have lived so many years in selfishness, not even considering what Jesus Christ did for me. My only consolation is knowing that when God saw the mess my life had become, He also saw the chance to make it amazing.

For God to elevate you to your next level sometimes requires separation from the things that have kept you stuck. It can be your busy lifestyle that puts everything before God. Even your friends may influence you to look in every direction before you seek God’s will. After his conversion, Paul could have allowed doubt and fear to distract him from God’s will. The fear of what others might think could easily have defined his direction. He could have gone straight to Jerusalem to learn from the apostles who had walked with Jesus and to seek their approval. He could also have gotten ahead of God by immediately building a ministry platform, traveling, and sharing his testimony.

Paul did none of those things. Instead, he spent three years in Arabia, realizing that he needed to separate himself even from religious circles. Galatians 1:12 suggests that Paul spent that time studying the teachings of Christ. His time was obviously fruitful because when Paul went to Jerusalem 14 years after his conversion and met privately with church leaders, they found that “there was absolutely no difference between what he had been teaching for 11 years in Antioch and what the apostles had been teaching in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.”

Paul did not allow his past to determine his future. He released himself from the guilt of his cruelty to others. He walked in forgiveness, even forgiving himself. He also allowed the Lord Jesus to instruct and prepare him for his next season.

I doubt the devil was happy about Paul’s conversion and ministry. Scripture tells us to be “strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” (Josh. 1:9, NIV). The enemy can see who you are, even in your premature state. He is not trying to kill you. He is trying to kill the deliverer in you. He’s not after who you are but who you are going to be.

If I had known at 18 about the international call on my life, I might not have created the storms that kept me in crisis. I had no idea that my decisions at 18 would hinder my life for another 18 years. Yet God knew every decision I would make before I made it, and still He decided to be there when I called.

If you knew what God purposed when He wrote your name in His book, you would disconnect from people who are trying to steal your dreams. Scripture says, “Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in your book, they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them” (Ps. 139:16). When you discover that you have been chosen by God to fulfill a purpose, you know you have to make decisions for your future. Paul’s decision for Christ changed everything. Before that, he was revered by the Jews as one of the most learned men of the day. After that, he spread the gospel everywhere he went.

I have seen many people’s prophetic words go unfulfilled because they lacked character or were too lazy to pursue God and begin to walk out the plans He spoke through those words. I have learned in my journey that God does not answer your list of wants with a bagful of goodies. He took time to give you your unique attributes, gifts and abilities for His own good pleasure and yours. However, you have to prepare yourself to use them.

Adapted from When Your Bad Meets His Good by Kimberly Jones-Pothier, © 2018, published by Charisma House. Motivated by her personal testimony, the author shares how God turned her mess into a message and how He can do the same for you. To order your copy, click on this link.

Prayer Power for the Week Beginning March 17, 2019

Remind yourself this week that God can take your mess and turn it into a message that brings Him glory. Increase your faith by seeking Him daily through Scripture and prayer. Thank Him that He already has a plan for you and trust Him to direct your steps. Continue to pray for the nation and our allies (including Israel). Remember those in authority over us and ask for divine intervention where needed. Read: Joshua 1:9; Psalm 56:8, 139:16; Ephesians 5:2.

Listen to the podcast to hear more of Kim’s story.