ENCOURAGED in Every Season: Encourage Others as You are Encouraged (Part 2 of 12)
In this ENCOURAGED series, I am passionate about you knowing your Faithful God in every season of your life. As you seek Jesus daily, I desire you to grow in your faith and relationship with Him so you can joyfully embrace Him as your true Encourager and proclaim His faithfulness to others. I pray that you would hold on to the hope and peace found only in Christ and learn how to embrace whatever season you are presently in your life, bringing glory to Him.
Beginning with the ENCOURAGED acrostic, the first practical way to be encouraged is to:
E~ENCOURAGE OTHERS AS YOU ARE ENCOURAGED
“Encourage one another and build each other up.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11
In our life’s seasons, God has gifted us with the privilege and ability of speaking life, truth, courage, and hope into lives of others. This grace gift of communication enables us to encourage and build others up in the faith by giving us countless opportunities to point others to Him. Therefore, we should look for open moments to encourage and strengthen those whom God has placed in our lives.
God sovereignly positions people in our paths who share similar seasons that we can encourage and build up, as well as be encouraged by. God’s Word shares that we are to “Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today” (Hebrews 3:13). Additionally, in 2 Thessalonians 2:16, God assures us with His promise that He will “encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word,” which will in turn enable you to be an encouragement to others.
Think about the seasons in your own life when you were overwhelmed and challenged by your present circumstances. Remember God’s past faithfulness in providing for you in those moments. In your most difficult of circumstances, what did others do for you that spoke love, encouragement, and hope to your heart and spirit?
In His unfailing love, God brings others alongside us to provide us with the much-needed support and encouragement that we truly need in every season. As we step into new experiences with unknown challenges, we are so blessed to have those who have traveled a little ahead of us to comfort our hearts by offering faith-filled words of wisdom and insight. The Lord Himself always faithfully provides the support and encouragement we need to graciously carry us through our most difficult of times.
Not only do we need encouragers in every season of our lives, but we are also called to be encouragers to others. The Lord often uses the most difficult seasons of our pain and suffering to prepare us to be genuine encouragers. As the God of all comfort and encouragement, He sovereignly uses every trial, every disappointment, and every difficulty to shape us into His authentic encouragers. As we seek to serve others, God’s reassuring promise of an overarching purpose behind our pain can bring comfort to our own hearts, which we can then share with others. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
After having endured various trials and life experiences, God gives weight to the words we speak as one who has been there and has come out on the other side to proclaim His faithfulness, His deliverance, and His provision through the storms of life. We can offer a perspective of hope to someone still in the middle of her sufferings who truly needs a word of encouragement. This is our calling as Christ-followers, to “Live and proclaim what the Lord has done” (Psalm 118:17).
The very comfort and encouragement that the Lord has blessed me with in my most difficult trials has been the basis for the encouragement which I have shared and passed on to others facing similar circumstances in their own lives. As we let others into our life stories by being transparent in sharing our past experiences, they can be encouraged to persevere by pressing on. As He comforts us with the promises in His Word and through the care and compassion of others, we also can learn how to be a comfort and encouragement to others.
Oftentimes, we can become so immersed in our own circumstances that we forget to look up and out to see the acute needs of those around us who need encouraged. We can be so distracted by our own needs in our difficult places that we can neglect the joy and privilege of ministering to others. However, as we do choose to set our cares and concerns aside for a moment and become others-focused, we can actually become encouraged ourselves as we look to encourage others and meet them in their present season of suffering. Even as we are struggling and hurting, we can still serve and help others. This is God’s beautiful plan for healing and encouragement. A true, essential part of healing springs forth from helping others amidst your own seasons of pain and hurting.
God beautifully designed us, His dearly loved children, to be compassionate and “rooted and established in Christ’s love” (Ephesians 3:17). As we abide in Christ and keep our eyes and thoughts on Him, we will begin to look for ways to inspire courage, joy, and the love of Christ into others’ lives, even amidst our own suffering. Jesus shares His beautiful example of how to love on, encourage and give hope to others by humbly extending mercy and compassion as we lay down our lives for others.
Jesus is our model example of a true Encourager!
Jesus spoke life-giving words of hope and healing into the life of every person He met. Even amidst His seasons of suffering, He encouraged and served others. He did not wait to encourage and care for others until his season of suffering was over, but instead He served even as He was hurting and wounded. He always sought others out and looked for ways to build up, encourage, teach, love, support, and heal, which He presently continues to do today with His spoken Word! As we remember how mercifully and graciously He has cared for us, may Christ’s love compel us to give that same mercy and grace to others as well.
Who can you encourage and be a blessing to in this present season of life? Are you using your words to speak life, courage, and hope into the lives of others? As you look to find purpose in your own suffering, who can you help and seek to encourage? Look to the promises in God’s Word to encourage your heart, so that you can encourage those around you.
