Being an encourager has not come naturally to me. I was raised in a family where criticism flowed freely. This left me with a heightened awareness of my flaws and a propensity toward fault-finding.
Not long after I got married and started having children, I felt convicted that I needed to change. How that change might happen was not obvious.
Prompted by the Holy Spirit, I made a counter-intuitive decision to intentionally give away the very thing I longed to receive: words of affirmation and encouragement. Today, more than twenty-five years later, I’m still writing notes of affirmation and encouragement to friends and sometimes people I’ve never met.
Regardless of whether we’re twenty or eighty, we all need to be affirmed and encouraged. This is particularly true in today’s culture where, thanks in part to social media, critiquing and putting others down seem to be one of our favorite past-times.
Even without the dross that gets dished out on social media, life is often overwhelming and difficult. An unexpected diagnosis turns your world upside down. The college tuition payment comes due the same week the furnace dies. One too many run-ins with a misogynistic boss leaves you angry and shaken.
The writers of the New Testament repeatedly exhorts believers to encourage one another. Peter ends his first letter with, “My purpose in writing is to encourage you and assure you that what you are experiencing is truly part of God’s grace for you. Stand firm in this grace.” (1 Peter 5:12) And the Apostle Paul, no stranger to discouragement, wrote, “Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.” (2 Cor. 13:11)
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