Encouragement Means Going First
Encouragement. It literally means to put courage into people. But how does that happen?
At the most basic level you can encourage someone by cheering them on. For those who are simply tired, this is helpful. And it’s pretty easy to encourage someone to not give up by simply telling them to keep going. Cheerleaders and the people who hold cups of water on the sides of marathons fall into this category.
But at a certain point a different kind of encouragement is needed. This isn’t point where I’ve simply become tired in doing something I know how to do. This is where I’ve never done the thing that I’m trying and it seems hard. Maybe I’ve never seen anyone else do the thing I’m trying and it looks impossible. Cheerleaders and uninvested spectators can warm your heart but aren’t super helpful at this stage.
What’s needed here is a different kind of encouragement: Someone who has traveled this path (or a similar one) and tells you that what you are attempting is possible. It’s happened before. I’ve seen it happen. You can do this. This is the mountain climber above you that is shouting down from the top that you can make it, too.
It’s not even so important that the person gives you advice about how to do things. That’s helpful. But just the simple fact that a person has been where you are and done what you are attempting is enough to add courage to the human heart.
What becomes essential, then, for this higher level of encouragement, is for you to be farther down a path than the next person in order to encourage them. And what this means for all of us, friends, is that we shouldn’t be content just to remain where we are, but find more ways for us to push boundaries in our lives. It becomes critical to step out in the areas we are called to in our lives and let our light shine.
It imparts courage to others.
And then in all of the places where we’ve got experience, we turn and encourage those who have less. It’s important for them. It’s also important for us.
“But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called ‘Today’….” (Hebrews 3:13).
How To Feed Yourself (Spiritually Speaking)
Yesterday I shared some thoughts about how “not being fed spiritually” isn’t why we participate in a church. My primary argument (in case you hate clicking links) is that we weren’t primarily designed be fed by another person, but by the Lord Himself. But I realize that because of the state of the church today, that could leave many of you asking, “How do I do that?”
Because of that, I want to look at four different ways the Bible encourages us to fuel our spiritual man. God actually has ways for you to feed your heart and soul yourself as you encounter Him. My encouragement to you is to look at the four different ways listed below and pick one (or more) that you aren’t doing, but to also do it daily for ninety days before you give up on it. There are many, many days where the disciplines I practice don’t feel like they are accomplishing anything. But the overall effect of doing them consistently over the years has had a tremendous impact on my life.
So, to feed your spiritual man, you should try the following:
- Pray. I know what you’re thinking. You pray. But I’m not talking about the short “Help me, God,” sort of prayers we pray throughout hectic days. I’m talking about a kind of prayer where your mind is focused, your heart is attentive, and you and the Father are dialoguing back and forth. Part of the problem we experience with prayer is much of the church has taught us not to expect God to talk back to us. But prayer is a communion of our spirit with God’s Holy Spirit where real relationship happens. If you have problems praying I have a few suggestions: 1) Get alone. 2) Leave behind all of your electronic devices. 3) Bring a pen and some paper. Write your part of the conversation out on paper and then wait. And as God brings truth to your spirit or brings up a Bible verse, or shows you a picture write those things down. Over time as you practice this, you’ll begin to get good at hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit as you wait for Him.
- Read the Bible. Again, this can seem so elementary, but we so don’t do the simple things and it hurts us. Can we put away our books, our blogs (even this one?), our Christian programs, and truly begin to understand what God is saying? Jesus (and Moses) said “People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” (Matthew 4:4). We have to get to our place in our walk where we understand we are dependent on God’s word to feed our spirit on a daily basis. This encounter with the word has to go beyond just dull, repetitive reading, though, to ushering us into an encounter with Jesus (John 5:39). In our network, I encourage believers to get in groups of two or three and read 20 to 30 chapters of the Bible in context every week. Consuming a large amount of Scripture in context has helped us grow in understanding of God’s will for our lives. Not only that, but we’ve met God in the process.
- Do the will of the Father. “I have a kind of food you know nothing about…My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, who sent me, and from finishing his work,” (John 4:32-34). Jesus, as a human being, had learned to become dependent, not on natural food, but a spiritual food that came from the Father. This wasn’t just because Jesus was God. Jesus had to lay aside His divine nature and become like us in all things (Philippians 2:6-8). So His entire life was an example of how redeemed humanity can live in relationship to the Father. Friends, this means you can be fed spiritually when you participate in God’s will! That can be as simple as encouraging someone or responding to a truth from the Bible or as unique as Jesus prophesying to the Samaritan woman about her various scandals and leading her to repentance. Regardless, every time we do God’s will, it strengthens who we are on the inside. Many of my friends who understand spiritual disciplines miss this reality because it can’t be done alone in a closet. But some of my most spiritually dynamic mentors and friends are people who were people who received from God and obeyed when He asked them to act. Don’t miss this powerful step!
- Pray in the Spirit. Paul had a very particular type of prayer that he stressed was important for building up our inner man. This was praying in tongues or praying in the Spirit and it was designed as form of communion between our spirit and God’s Spirit. When Paul talks about this type of prayer, he says that a believer “…will be speaking by the power of the Spirit…[and] is strengthened personally,” (1 Corinthians 14:2-4). And because of this, Paul says about himself “I thank God that I speak in tongues more than any of you,” (1 Corinthians 14:18). I think many times, we under-emphasize the role this gift has in strengthening our spiritual lives. Much could be written about this gift, but let’s start here: If you have this ability, put it into practice daily. If you don’t have this gift, ask the Lord for it. He loves to give more of the Spirit to those who ask.
Daily…
The Old Testament has a story that we can learn from in regard to these disciplines. During their time in the wilderness, God would rain down manna from heaven for the Israelites to eat and told them to gather what they needed for that day. If they tried to gather more than what they needed for that day, when they went to eat it the next day, what was left over had rotted and was covered in maggots. They couldn’t live off the previous day’s manna.
So too, we can’t live off of one good day with the Lord or three good days in a week, let alone one day a week when we gather as a church. Again, much of the church is weaker than it needs to be because they aren’t daily engaging the Lord in these ways.
My encouragement to you if you read yesterday’s post and didn’t know where to start is to pick one of these disciplines that you aren’t strong in and practice it for the next seven days. Take stock on what you’ve noticed as far as a change in your walk. I want you to spend 90 days trying a discipline, but even at one solid week, my guess is you will start to see a dynamic change in your walk with the Lord.
Remember, this is important. You were created for relationship with God. Don’t miss these avenues to encountering Him and growing by feeding yourself on God and His word.
Being Fed
For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature…
One of the strong deciding factors I frequently hear people talk about in their decision to leave their church and attend another is the phrase “I just wasn’t being fed.”
And this has become a difficult phrase for me, because Scripture doesn’t refer to the church in those terms. The Bible very clearly affirms being part of a group devoted to following Jesus (church). However, Jesus and the apostles’ teaching on how we get fed would probably surprise many contemporary Christians.
Let’s start with the writer of Hebrews. We quote Hebrews 5:13 and 14 quite frequently to encourage immature believers to move on to the deeper truths of the Bible. We emphasize the elements of these verses that refer to salvation truths as milk and “the deeper truths” as meat.
But these verses have another light to look at them in: Who feeds milk to a baby? Someone else. Who feeds solid food to the mature? Well, sometimes someone else. But usually the person feeding solid food to a mature person is the person himself. In fact, I would argue that while some food can be prepared for a mature person by someone else, if the mature person isn’t feeding himself with the food, there’s probably something wrong!
My point is this: You weren’t designed to be fed by another spiritually. You were designed to have a direct relationship with God where you grow by feeding yourself. You were meant to dig into the Scriptures and find the truth for yourself. You were designed to have a living and alive relationship with the resurrected Jesus that fills your hungry heart.
So what good is a church family? Well a church family is designed to encourage you when the going gets tough. A church family is designed to equip you to be more like Christ. A church family helps you see you blind spots and protects you from self-deception. Most of all, a church family is where you put into practice many of the things you’ve been learning from Christ: patience, service, love, humility, etc.
And that may happen through teaching, it may happen through the use of spiritual gifts, it may happen through a prophetic word. But there is a world of difference between starving yourself all week and gorging yourself on food on Sunday morning, and eating many times a week but still needing a pick me up if you’re tired or discouraged on Sunday.
But don’t give up on the people of God who you’ve committed yourself to because “you’re not getting fed.” Don’t abandon your important post of encouraging others because the teaching isn’t the flavor you’d hoped for. Instead, go find the spiritual food yourself. Share what you have with others in a way that encourages them to find food for themselves. It will change you.
So how do we feed ourselves? Is there a method? How do you go from living on the food others have prepared to finding your own? We’ll look at that some tomorrow.
Cluster Map
Pursuing Glory 