A Challenge to the Church

(this is the final post in our series STOP LISTEN LOVE)

If you've been following all these posts on encouragement, we hope that you've been motivated by GOD to change and grow in certain areas of your life, just as we have... if so... then here are two steps to encorporating these principles into your life and church!

1. When people need your time, help, and gifts, STOP. LISTEN. LOVE. You are equipped AND called by God to meet the needs of others, and by doing this, you will become involved in this beautiful thing called the fellowship of believers.

Doing as Christ did - LISTEN

LISTEN (part of the series Stop. Listen. Love.)

1. Listening helps us to get it right.

My wife and I attended the Alpha Marriage course a few years ago and I will never forget what they had to say about listening. We listen, so that we can know what is going on with the other person. We listen so that we can get it right! It sounds obvious, but how often do we listen before trying to encourage?

If you are in trouble and go to a lawyer, if you are sick and go to a doctor, if your car breaks down and you go to the mechanic – what do they do? Well, hopefully, they listen first. If they just try to fix something without knowing what to fix, they may spend a whole lot of energy, money and time, and not even get to the thing that’s not working.

2. Prepare to heal.

Once you have stopped, focussed and know what’s wrong, you can now prepare to heal. Healing is a process, it doesn’t happen quickly. When I was 12, we went on a family holiday to the Carmel Christian Guest Farm in George. It was over Christmas and we’d spent the day swimming down at Vic Bay and that night, I woke up with intense ear-ache. I lay in bed in with tears in my eyes, hoping the pain would go away, but it didn’t, it got worse, to the point that I began throwing up. The next day was Christmas… so you can imagine how many doctors work in a sea-side town on Christmas day! 

Somehow my parents managed to find an emergency doctor and we rushed off to see him. I sat on his examination bed whilst he listened to my parents explain and then he examined my ears, only to find that I had a massive inner-ear infection. I was expecting him to poke something in and fix the problem. I could feel the pressure and thought, “well if you just relieve the pressure, I’ll be fine.”

But he didn’t, he prepared for healing by giving my parents antibiotics to clear up the infection. There was no quick fix, I just had to wait whilst the healing took its course. Of course, because the doctor had listened and prepared, the infection went away and the pain was gone within a few hours. If we are going to encourage others, we need to know that we must prepare to be a part of the healing process.

3. When we listen, we can be USED BY GOD. If we don’t listen, we will miss out on an opportunity to encourage that person in the way that God wants them to be encouraged. I believe that part of God’s plan for allowing suffering is that it allows us to become a part of His divine plan to heal and encourage. 

God could quite easily fix all our problems by Himself, but He chooses to include us in the journey, because He knows how awesome it is to encourage someone, either through being there or by sending a miracle. We miss so many miracles in life purely because we ignore, resist or just don’t listen.

Let us learn to Stop AND Listen, that’s the only way that we’ll start to become better encouragers for CHRIST!

Doing as Christ did - STOP

STOP (Part of the Stop. Listen. Love. series)

1. We are saying, by our choice to stop what we are doing, that someone else is more important. When Jesus knelt in the dirt with the woman accused of adultery, He said nothing to her, but everyone knew that she had His full attention, His full priority at that moment. What an awesome moment that must have been for her!

Can you picture it, as the buzzing of voices moves to the ringing of silence in your ears, the people poised in prosecution hold their tongues and watch in awe and trepidation and the Messiah, Christ of Creation, ignores them and communicates in silence just how important that lady was! That brings prickles to my skin! What an amazing moment, what a life changing point for her and those watching – never underestimate the importance of stopping to listen and love.

2. When we stop, we are not distracted by what’s going on around us. The world keeps going, but we are stepping back to take note of something more important. Let’s think of that woman, thrown and Jesus feet, no doubt, there was a commotion, but Jesus was not distracted by the instigators around Him, He wants to absorb fully the situation at hand. Everyday we let life distract us, do we always realize how much we’re missing?

3. You can now focus all of your God given Spiritual gifts, heart attitude, your abilities, your personality and your experience to help this person. Your unique shape to minister, to meet the needs of this person.

As we seek to be better encouragers in Christ, let us take time to stop, listen and love.