“Encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11). But what does it mean to encourage? To encourage means to impart courage or confidence and to admonish or urge forward. It is the opposite of discourage, which means to deprive of courage, hope, or confidence. Imagine the power that you have to be able to do that for someone in your life that you care about! Yet in our difficult relationships, we do things that discourage those that we love.

Here are some ways that you can bring discouragement:

• Conditional love given only when the person acts a certain way.
• Conveying the message that the person is not good enough.
• Constant criticism.
• Attacking who the person is, rather than what was done (shaming).
• Judging without understanding what the person is going through.
• Disciplining too harshly.
• Being overly demanding.
• Making the person feel excessively guilty and overly-responsible.

You can see how those things would deprive someone of courage, hope, and confidence. Consider now the opposite.

Here are some ways that you can bring encouragement to people in your life:

• Unconditional love with a commitment regardless of what the person does.
• Acceptance of who the person is.
• Offering empathy and understanding when the person is struggling.
• Helping in ways that will spur forward.
• Believing the best about the person (when warranted).
• Pointing out wrongs in a way that offers an opportunity to change.
• Walking beside the person when struggling.
• Complimenting and appreciating the good.

Encouragement is powerful because it spurs people on to do better. It builds them up rather than tearing them down. The difficult people in your life may not act like they need your encouragement, but they do. Our natural tendency is to want to tear them down in order to get them to want to change, but our tearing down only makes them feel worse about themselves and makes them less motivated to change.

By Karla Downing

Relationship Devotional Prayer

 
God,

Help me to be an encourager rather than a discourager to the people you have put in my life. Help me to be aware of the words and actions that tear people down rather than build them up.

Relationship Devotional Challenge

• Purpose to be an encourager rather than a discourager.

Scripture Meditation

 
1 Thessalonians 5:11,14

“Encourage one another and build each other up. Encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone” (NIV).

Hebrews 10:24

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (NIV).

Hebrews 12:12-13

“Strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. ‘Make level paths for your feet,’ so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed” (NIV).