People need encouragement. There is always someone who needs encouragement. There is always someone who needs to be build up, reassured, or have help picking up the pieces when they need to move on. Everyone needs encouragement when the odds are against them.
Everyone needs encouragement.
It is not about appearances. People may appear to be influential, secure, or mature. They still need encouragement and expression of encouragement never fails to help.
Everyone needs it.
Encouraging someone is more than a quick pat on the back. It is a deliberate commitment to lifting up and building up one another.
When Christians begin to realize the value of mutual encouragement from Scripture, the promises of Scripture are brought to bear upon the problems, burdens, and griefs of life. It is thrilling to realize that God has "called us alongside to help" others who are in need. How much better to be engaged in actions that build up others rather than actions that tear them down!
Anyone can do it. Anyone can come along side another when their heart is heavy. Christians dry up when there is a lack of encouragement. Those who are lonely, those in military service far away from home, the sick and the dying, the divorced and the grieving, and those who serve faithfully behind the scenes.
How do we prepare to encourage others?
Turn your interest from your self to others. Be other-oriented.
Change you attitude to one of giving to others rather than getting from others.
Don’t create more burdens for those you wish to encourage. Help bear their burdens.
Reciprocal expectations are guilt-giving, not encouraging actions. Do what you do with no expectation of being noticed or paid back.
Cultivate a positive, reassuring attitude. Encouragement cannot thrive in a negative atmosphere.
Be sensitive to the timing of your actions; a well-timed expression of encouragement is seldom forgotten.
Maybe a few ideas will help spark an interest in putting our encouragement into action:
Correspond with thank-you notes or small gifts with a handwritten note attached.
Look for the person on the outside of friendship groups and bring them inside.
Talk to people and learn about them rather than filling their ears about you.
Express appreciation for someone's extra effort that you appreciate.
Notice a job well done and say so.
Pick up the tab in a restaurant.
Be supportive of someone you know who is really hurting.
Make your family different by being encouragers. Start taking whatever steps that are necessary to cultivate a spirit of positive, reinforcing, consistent encouragement in your home. Your family will be forever grateful. And you will experience joy in the process.
Let me end where encouragement begins. The desire to encourage is developed first in one's home. It is here that this vital virtue is cultivated. Children pick it up from their parents, as they become the recipients of their parents' words of delight, affirmation, and approval. Numerous surveys document the sad fact, however, that homes tend to be far more negative than positive, much less affirming than critical.
Make your family different by taking whatever steps that are necessary to cultivate a spirit of positive, reinforcing, consistent encouragement in your home. Believe me, your family will be forever grateful. In the church, taking whatever steps that are necessary to cultivate consistent encouragement. Your church will be forever grateful.
-Pastor Seboe