Learning to Encourage

If we want to grow the fellowship of the church, then we need to learn to encourage.

He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

1 Thess 5:10-11

We have had many people come to stay with us, people from all over our country and the world. When other people stay in our house – it’s actually quite difficult. Sure it’s awesome to have people staying with us, but it means adapting to them in our house. They put things away differently in the kitchen, they leave toothpaste on the inside of the basin, they leave their clothes lying in the lounge, they don’t wash the bath out properly. And my biggest one, they use dirty coffee spoons in the sugar… ever had that! Living with other people is not always so easy.

But you know what, John 1:14 reminds us that The Word (Jesus Christ) became flesh and made His dwelling amongst us. Jesus chose to come and live together with us. So when the author wrote to the Thessalonians and encouraged them to live together with Christ, it was because Christ first chose to live together with us. What bigger statement could He have made when choosing to come and live amongst us?

When I look at Christ, to live in His footsteps, I see Him doing these three things. Stopping. Listening. Loving. There’s the incident with the children, the adulteress woman, the haemorrhaging woman, the Soldier, the hungry crowds, the paralysed man lowered through the roof, the intimate moments with His followers on the hilltops and in the gardens, the blind man on the side of the street. Jesus knew how to stop, listen and love. I believe encouragement needs all three of these.

If we just stop and don’t listen, or love – we will not encourage others. If we don’t stop, but try to listen, we will miss what they’re saying and won’t be able to react in love. We cannot truly love if we don’t stop and listen first.

If we are going to learn to encourage, we need to learn to Stop, Listen and Love. I'll be expanding on this soon - keep watching the blog for more!!