Encourage One Another
I surveyed hundreds of people about encouragement and followed that up with in-person interviews and conversations with a couple of dozen other people. My goal was to gather information and insights that would guide me as I developed workshops that teach participants how to better encourage the people around them. The surveys revealed some interesting things. For example, I discovered that if you ask people what encouragement is, most will think about it for a few seconds, start to answer but then stop, re-think, start and stop a few more times and finally conclude that it’s hard to define. Yet, when you ask people to talk about a time or place when they were encouraged by something or someone, almost everyone can come up with examples of encouragement
The examples of encouragement I heard from people varied widely in terms of context, from life-changing to mundane. They also varied in terms of the relationship between the people involved, all the way from very close to total strangers. And, they varied greatly in the means used to convey the encouragement, including casual conversation, a written card or letter or even a carefully chosen gift. And yet, through all of the variety I found three common elements:
first, someone cared enough to reach out;
second, they took concrete action to communicate their caring;
third, the specific action they took lifted up the receiver in their own eyes.
In the first book of Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 11 the apostle Paul tells us to:
“Encourage one another and build each other up”
So, let’s get real … today, make it a point to care enough to act in a way that lifts someone up. The person could be someone you know well, or it could be a total stranger. There are lots of ways to deliver encouragement – a simple word of praise, a post-it note stuck where they’ll see it, or perhaps a quick email with a word of thanks. And you don’t have to stop with one. After all, Paul’s instruction to encourage one another didn’t come with a daily quota. Nor did it come with a time limit … so consider making a deliberate effort everyday day to EncourageSomeone!
Check out the books section of this site for information on “The Sound of God’s Love”, a book of 52 encouraging, thought-provoking and insightful reflections.