So encourage each other and help each other grow stronger in faith, just as you are already doing—1 Thessalonians 5:11 (ERV)
The benefit of encouragement is for both the giver and the receiver, because it is not just a feeling, but a choice. We all need more encouragement in these challenging times, where all around us there is discouragement. We can hardly go through a day without someone complaining about, or us hearing about what is wrong in the world.
Whether we realise it or not, our words are powerful. Therefore, we should ask ourselves how are we using them. Are we using them to lift up others, or to pull them down? Our words can have a negative or a positive effect, they can bring joy or hurt, discouragement or encouragement. The apostle Paul says: “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Ephesians 4:29).
Encouragement simply means: to come along side. So because each of us needs encouragement, it can help us and others to get through our daily struggles. It can also go a long way to make a situation easier to handle when someone makes a choice to come along side another. It is necessary in good and bad times; therefore we should not just wait until something bad happens. Even if a person looks like they are okay, they still need encouragement to know they are on the right track, and to keep moving forward. “Anxiety in the heart of man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad.” (Proverbs 12:25).
Despite Moses’ disobedience to God, and being forbidden to enter the Promised Land, He was commanded by God to: “command, Joshua, and encourage him, for he shall go over before this people…” (Deuteronomy 3:28). God knew that Joshua, like us would need encouragement from someone else, in order to move forward, and complete the task ahead of him.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in our daily lives, and think only about what we need, or are going through or want, that we forget to look around to see what’s going on in someone else’s life. The ‘should haves’, the ‘would haves’, and the ‘could haves’, which take up so much energy, that can instead be used to give encouragement. A day should not go by that we don’t give encouragement, because we all need it.
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