Bible Text: Isaiah 1:17 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | Learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow. Isaiah 1:17

Charles Schwab, the one-time president of Bethlehem Steel, once said, “I have never seen a man who could do real work except under the stimulus of encouragement and the approval of the people for whom he is working.” Encouragement brings out the best in people, yet I’ve noticed that there are so many things—people included—which seem to push you down and discourage you, rather than lift you up. “We are living in a day,” wrote the Anglican Bishop Arthur John Dain, “when the Lord’s people need encouragement—in the world, in the church, and in our own lives. Discouragement is one of the weapons the enemy uses to blunt our effectiveness in Christian service and to hinder our progress in our Christian discipleship.”

Interested in knowing how to be an encourager? Then put the following guidelines into practice in your life.

Guideline #1: Be sure that you have a source of strength great enough to share with someone else. It’s right here that most of us flunk out! How can we encourage someone else when we need somebody to encourage us? I suggest that we need to get our own hearts right. Find God as your total source of encouragement. You must be certain that it is better to lose in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will ultimately fail. To be an encouragement to another person, you must believe in the ultimate outcome of what you are laboring to achieve.

Guideline #2: Look for the best in people and encourage them. Thank God for the largeness of heart that sees beyond skepticism and doubt and looks for genuineness and sincerity. When I think of this attribute, I think of a man who lived almost 20 centuries ago. In his day he was known as Barnabas, or “Son of Consolation.” When Saul, bigoted persecutor of the faith, was converted, most men were skeptical. He was known to be a murderer and a rascal. Who would believe his conversion was genuine? Barnabas was so convinced that he sought out the former enemy of the faith and brought him to the church at Jerusalem.

The reaction of Saul’s conversion was not unlike the modern-day reaction to the conversion of a man whose name was prominently linked with the WATERGATE AFFAIR. Chuck Colson was a man who reportedly would walk over his own grandmother for the cause of a political party. Who would believe that he really could mean business about Jesus Christ? In his book, Born Again, Chuck Colson tells of a similar experience shortly after he met Christ. It was a face-to-face encounter with Harold Hughes, a man considered to be one of his most bitter enemies.

When Colson described his conversion, Hughes threw his arms around him and said, “Chuck, what you’ve said is good enough for me. I believe you!” He accepted him fully as a brother. Two men who had been political enemies were now united by a common faith. In the turbulent days and months that followed, Senator Harold Hughes was a tremendous help to the struggling Christian novice. What a genuine example of seeing the best in others!

Guideline #3: Get your focus off your problems and look for someone who is discouraged, someone you can help. This is perhaps the most important of all! Let’s face it! All of us have our own individual challenges and problems. We can either be engulfed by them, or break through our problems and help another. By encouraging another, you’ll discover that you’ve really lifted yourself. Nothing is as small as your own little world and nothing is as large as being part of lifting another!

The writer of Hebrews says that we are to encourage one another daily as we see the day of Christ approaching. Encouragement isn’t something you practice. It is something that you are! Think about it.

Resource reading: 1 Timothy 3