Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. — 1 Thessalonians 5:11
It takes some effort, even for Christians, and especially in a world that is brimming with discouragement, but with the Lord’s help, we can cultivate an atmosphere of edification in our church. Here are just 3 simple ways you and I can build a culture of encouragement at Liberty Baptist Church.
Pray for your brothers and sisters.
If you are struggling with loving someone, pray for them. It is difficult to hold discouragement in your heart about someone when you are bringing them before the Lord in prayer. Pray for your pastors. They carry invisible burdens. Interceding for them can deepen your appreciation for them. Praying in your community groups deepens your fellowship with each other. And because prayer first and foremost deepens your intimacy with God, it is a chief means by which the Lord shapes our hearts after his own. When we pray for our church, we will gradually come to see her with fresher eyes and kinder spirits. Praying for one another deepens our love for another, which (super)naturally leads to interacting with each other in more encouraging, life-giving ways.
Advocate for your brothers and sisters.
Even if just in your own imaginations, do you find yourself given more to assumptions and suspicions about others? Do you feel slights and disappointments more keenly than affection and sympathy? “Taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” often means thinking about each other as Christ does. How does Jesus see you, despite your flaws and failings? If the holy and perfect Lord loves you as you are, we can draw great strength from his grace to love others in a similar way. As Paul reflects on love in 1 Corinthians 13, he tells us to hope and believe “all things.” This means, in part, having a spirit of forgiveness and grace with our brothers and sisters, foregoing the impulse to nitpick or hold grudges and suspicions. Instead, we learn with the Sprit’s counsel to be for our brothers and sisters. When we continually advocate for the brethren, we will gradually grow to be encouragements to them.
“Drip” encouragement.
Here’s what I mean: it may be difficult to think about encouraging each other if we only think this can happen in big, demonstrable ways. But it doesn’t take much effort at all to send a simple text or email saying, “I’m praying for you today.” It doesn’t take much effort at all to tell a brother or sister after Equipping Group that you appreciated their insight or question. Tell people thank you. Tell people you’re glad to see them. Shake hands. Give hugs. If you want to do it, you can start small and spread tiny doses of encouragement around. After a while, what you’ll discover is that the momentum to bigger and more widespread encouragement will grow. You don’t have to be an extrovert to do this. Just a noticer and practicer of small things. If we all assumed responsibility to encourage even in tiny ways, the impact would be big. We can leave the grand gestures to those with the official spiritual gift of encouragement. ;-) But all of us can encourage in small ways over time.
[B]ut encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. — Hebrews 10:25b
Pastor Jared