“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up…” 1 Thessalonians 5:11
I have been breezing through 1 Thessalonians again this week. This time around, for some reason (God), the thing that stuck out to me the most has been the concept of encouragement. For Paul this activity of encouragement was absolutely essential to behaving well in the body of Christ. The word encouragement shows up 5 times in 3 chapters of this one particular letter. The concept itself is embedded deeply in everything that Paul did in his ministry to the churches that he planted and worked with. I think the reason this activity jumped out to me in this text is simply because it is not emphasized or practiced much in the American church…at least in my experience.
To me, encouragement has always seemed like a lesser spiritual activity. It is something that women and really emotional guys do. That sounds bad but that has always been my feeling towards this subject. The church has not challenged me on this attitude and it should have. What’s behind my attitude is a false sense of what it means to be a Godly man. After all, Paul was a spiritual giant and encouragement was obviously very important to him. I grew up with the typical American cultural values: We need to be independent, self-made people. Accepting any help or encouragement is weakness. And if I do not need it, then I do not have to give it to others. They should just tough it out. But this whole way of thinking seems so contrary to what I read here in this one single letter of Scripture.
This morning I had a great conversation with a student that needed some encouragement. Even though I do not have any spiritual gift of encouragement, I was actually able to encourage them! I went into the conversation with this as my goal and it actually worked out. And you know what? It felt great. It felt so right. Both of us left the conversation feeling great. What would happen if all of us in the body of Christ started to do this more and more? We might actually start to develop into the joyful people that God meant for us to be in the first place!
So who will you encourage today?
