Practical Tips on How to Encourage Others

The other day my wife Ruthie and I were talking about our struggles against sin. In the course of our conversation, Ruthie came up with a helpful analogy. She said it's like pushing a shopping cart with a defective wheel.  Naturally it pulls to one side, and you have to force it to go straight. Likewise, our bodies have a natural bent toward sin. Unless we purposely steer them in the right direction by the power of the Holy Spirit, they will veer off in the wrong direction.

This principle is never more true than when it comes to our tongue. Our natural tendency is not to encourage but to criticize, argue, and complain.

Yet Scripture explicitly says, "Do all things without complaining and arguing" (Phil. 2:14). Rather, the Bible tells us to "encourage one another and build each other up" (1 Thes. 5:11). Doing this requires deliberate effort on our part. What specific measures can we take to make this happen? Garrett Kell, Lead Pastor of Del Ray Baptist Church in Virginia, offers some helpful suggestions, which I have reprinted below. (For the original article, click here.)

HOW DO I GROW IN BEING AN ENCOURAGEMENT TO OTHERS?

There isn’t only one “right way” to encourage each other, but here are a few ideas to help you get started.

1.    Pray for God to make you an encourager. Ask him to give you a heart that loves others and creativity to know how to show it. Ask him to help you die to self-centeredness and grow in a desire to build others up. Because God delights in helping his people obey his commands, we can trust that his Spirit will teach us how to bless others for his glory and their spiritual good.

2.    Study Barnabas and ask God to make you like him. Barnabas was nicknamed the “son of encouragement” by the early church (Acts 4:36). He was the kind of guy you wanted to have around as you were serving the Lord. He wasn’t just a spiritual cheerleader, but he was a man of great conviction who wanted to see the church flourish and did all he could to make it happen. Ask God to give you and your church a heart like Barnabas.

3.    Make encouragement a daily discipline. For some of us encouragement comes naturally, for others, not so much. I have a reminder in my calendar each day to send someone an encouraging note, email, text, or phone call. I need this reminder to pause, pray, and then intentionally try to spur someone on in Christ.

4.    Pray for God to show you who to encourage. Ask God to bring someone to mind that you should reach out to. One way to do this is by praying through your church’s membership directory. Check out this article to learn more about that.

5.    Use Scripture if you’re able. Nothing encourages us like promises from God’s Word. Make a list of Scriptures that God has used to bless you personally or an excerpt from something you read in your daily devotional. Mine the Psalms, Romans 8, and the Gospels. Find and share riches of God’s grace with others.

6.    Be specific in what you say. The note I received from my friend included two very specific ways he had seen evidences of grace in my life. When I read them, I was humbled and reminded of the fact that God does actually work in and though me. I needed that.

7.    Regularly encourage your pastor. If your pastor says something that God uses, tell him about it. Don’t expect him to write you back, but just send a few lines in a card or an email. Nothing encourages a pastor like hearing specific ways God used a sermon or counseling session to work in your life.

8.    Pray that God would create a culture of encouragement in your church. Ask God to make your church a community that loves each other in specific, tangible ways like encouragement. Ask God to use you to help fan that flame. Don’t get discouraged if people don’t return your encouragement (Matt. 6:3-4; Eph. 6:3-8) or if you don’t see fruit from it (Gal. 6:9-10). Creating a church culture that glorifies God takes a long time, lots of prayer, and abundant grace. I encourage you to keep at it.

9.    Be wise. If you want to encourage someone of the opposite sex, use discernment in how best to do it. If I’m going to encourage a single sister in the congregation, I will tell my wife and copy her on the email. If I were encouraging a married sister, I would again tell my wife and copy her and the husband of the person I’m encouraging. You can also use that as an opportunity to encourage both the husband and wife.

10. Get started. Who can you encourage right now? Who has blessed you recently that you can thank? What verse can you share with them? How might God use it?

May the Lord do more than we can imagine through just a little encouragement (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Plum Pits

Our guest blogger for today is David Francisco, one of my fellow elders at Webster Bible Church.

My daughter Ellie had just finished a plum and she told me that she wanted to keep the pit and plant it in the hopes of growing a tree.  Interested, I did a google search and found out some interesting stuff.

Have you ever eaten the last of the most deliciously juicy plum and with the pit as the only memento wondered “Can I plant a plum pit?” The answer to planting plums from a pit is a resounding yes! Keep in mind, however, that the resulting tree may or may not fruit and, if it does fruit, the plum from the new tree may be nothing like the glorious, succulent fruit the pit is reminiscent of.

Most fruit trees are propagated from compatible rootstock or the mother plant onto which the desired variety is grafted to obtain a “true” copy of the fruit. Planting plums from a pit may result in a very different variety of the original; the fruit may be inedible, or you may produce an even better variety. Either way, it is fairly easy and super fun growing plums from pits.

Isn't this amazing?  The parallel with how God saves us is incredible.  We too are not grown from seeds but rather "grafted" on to the "mother plant" to obtain a "true" copy.  I just love how God works!

So there I am, sitting at Starbucks ...

Monday for me is "Staff Development" Day.  We kick things off with our pastoral staff meeting first thing in the morning.  Then I meet individually with staff members for the rest of the morning and afternoon.

It was such a beautiful day that I suggested to one of my associates that we go sit somewhere outside.  We opted for Starbucks.  Since I only go there a few times a year, I treated myself to a "tall" (small) a Pumpkin Spice Latte.  Man, was it good - although my pleasure was diminished somewhat by my awareness that this beverage cost fifty cents a sip.  But I digress.

As we sat enjoying our drinks and engaged in conversation, a young man approached us from the far side of the patio.  He walked toward us with a big smile and a pointed index finger, indicating that he recognized us and was very glad to see us.  However, I did not recognize him and therefore was not automatically glad to see him.

Seeing my hesitancy, he said his name.  As soon as he said it, I recognized him as a fellow pastor in the area that I had only met once or twice previously.  Since our last encounter, he had grown a bushy beard, which had made it harder for me to recognize him.  (My associate recognized him right off the bat and gave him a bro hug, thus indicating that he is both faster on the draw than I am, and much friendlier.)

Accompanying our pastor-friend was another young gentleman.  I introduced myself, and he responded, "Hi, I'm Jacob."  He said he was a missionary to Turkey.  That immediately caught my attention, and I replied enthusiastically, "That's so cool!  I visited Turkey about ten years ago to visit some missionary friends of mine.  Loved it!"

Jacob inquired, "What are their names?"  I told him (can't mention them here on the blog for security reasons), and with a big smile he said, "Oh, yeah - they're great friends of mine!"  He proceeded to tell me when and how they met.  From that point on in our conversation, Jacob and I talked as if we had known each other for years.

Why?  Because we had a connection.  That connection was a mutual friend of ours. 

Has that ever happened to you?  Have you ever met someone that you previously didn't know and perhaps had little to nothing in common with them?  But then you found out that you had a mutual friend, and suddenly there was an instant connection with that person?

That's how it is when we come to Christ.  When we, by faith, are brought into union with Jesus Christ, we have an instant connection with other Christians.  If you're a believer, you know what I'm talking about.  You encounter someone in a restaurant, checkout line, or Barnes & Noble, and upon finding out that he or she is a Christian, a whole new dynamic enters your conversation.

In the opening verses of his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul thanks God for their "partnership in the gospel."  He goes on to say, "I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace."  You see, the gospel is the glue that binds believers together.  In making this point in last Sunday's sermon, I told our congregation, "To increase your joy, invest in gospel-centered relationships."  

I've made a point to make some more relational investments these past few weeks, and my investment is already paying off.  That's how God's grace works.

That $4 latte was definitely worth it.

Battling Lust? Be Encouraged!

As a supplement to my daily Scripture reading, I've been working my way through Kevin DeYoung's book, The Hole in Our Holiness. This morning I was in chapter six, which is entitled "Spirit-Powered, Gospel-Driven, Faith-Fueled Effort." In this part of the book, DeYoung reminds us, "God is constantly making promises in the Bible, and these promises are meant to fuel our engine of obedience."

This statement immediately caught my eye, because so often in our struggle against sin, we focus on the warnings and prohibitions. You know, the negative stuff. And those do serve a purpose in that they help to deter us from sin. But God's promises also provide the positive motivation we need to pursue holiness.

To illustrate his point, DeYoung points to the Beatitudes at the outset of Matthew 5, saying, "They all promise blessing of one kind or another." (Read them for yourself, and you'll see it's true.) Kevin then goes on to share one example in particular that should encourage all of us in our struggle against sexual sin:

In my experience, Matthew 5:8--"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God"--has been the most helpful verse in the Bible in battling the temptation to lust. The key is that Jesus fights pleasure with pleasure. Sexual impurity can be pleasing (in the moment), but Jesus promises a greater blessing for the pure of heart: they will see God. Years ago, there was a house in our neighborhood I often went past on my way to work. I don't know who lived there and never met anyone from the house. But frequently in the summer a young lady in an immodest bathing suit would wash the car in the driveway. Matthew 5:8 was the sword I used to slay my temptation to turn my head and take a look. I thought to myself, "I want to see God. I want to know God. I don't want to feel distant from him the rest of the day. I know fellowship with God is better than a three-second glance." I was pursuing holiness by faith in the promises of God.

To be sure, Jesus also shares promises of judgment in addition to promises of reward. Both kinds of promises work together to motivate us to kill sin and to pursue holiness. Still, sometimes we get fixated on the negative without getting fueled by the positive. Trust God for future grace and his promise to give good things to those who ask him (Matt. 7:11).

Be encouraged as you battle lust! Remember: "The holy life is always a life of faith, believing with all our hearts that God will do what he has promised." Amen, Kevin. Preach it!