Therefore encourage one another and build one another up (1 Thessalonians 5:11, ESV).
A high school teacher once told me, “Grant, you can do anything that you want.” I can’t remember anything else that teacher said. Nor can I remember much of anything said by other high school teachers.
But with that one teacher, I remember her name, her face, and her specific words of encouragement.
The Apostle Paul says that we are to encourage one another. In the Greek, the word translated “encourage” is similar to the word “comforter” that Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit (John 14:16).
The literal definition of the Greek word translated as “encourage” is “walk alongside.” That’s what we do when we encourage one another. We walk alongside. As it says in Proverbs 18:24…
There are “friends” who destroy each other, but a real friend sticks closer than a brother (NLT).
The Book of Acts describes Barnabas as a “son of encouragement.”
For instance, there was Joseph, the one the apostles nicknamed Barnabas (which means “Son of Encouragement”). He was from the tribe of Levi and came from the island of Cyprus. He sold a field he owned and brought the money to the apostles (Acts 4:36-37).
Following Barnabas’s example, we know we practice Biblical “encouragement” when even our possessions are easily dispensed to help others. Let’s encourage one another this week—whatever it takes.
Discouragement and a spirit of defeat are too prevalent today.
Focusing on our problems, we turn inward and enlarge our difficulties. But by encouraging others, we yank our internal discouragement outward to become…
A Son or Daughter of Encouragement!
When we encourage, we both help others and heal our souls.
Corrie Ten Boom (please read her book The Hiding Place) lost her family in the prison camps of World War II. To help herself and others, she started a type of re-hab farm after the war. Survivors of atrocity would come, live, and plant small gardens.
Corrie writes that she could tell healing had begun when those living at the farm would begin to share the vegetables they had grown with others.
This week, let’s look for opportunities to encourage one another—whatever it takes!