Encouragement: Lost teaching of the Bible, Part 1

Are you encouraged today?

Stop and think about your answer for a moment. What does it mean to be encouraged?

For that matter, what’s it mean to encourage someone else?

What, after all, is encouragement?

One big reason we can’t really answer that is because it’s not all that important to most of us. We know a lot more about things that matter to us. But did you know that encouragement is supposed to be really really important to you and I?

In the New Testament – depending on your translation, which we’ll talk about in a later post – we are told more often to encourage others than we are told to pray.

Let me say that another way: The New Testament tells us to encourage others more often than it tells us to pray.

Do you think that means encouragement is important? I sure do.

I don’t think that means encouragement is more important than prayer. But I think it’s far more important than we usually act like it is. I mean, we all know we should be praying daily – and more than once each day – even if we don’t do it. We know that when we face difficulties or decisions, we ought to pray. We know that we should pray for others, especially when they’ve shared something and asked us to pray.

But how many of us ever think, “I ought to encourage someone today?” We’ve all heard – I hope – that there’s a verse somewhere in the Bible that says, “Encourage one another.” (It’s 1 Thessalonians 5:11 and Hebrews 3:13, by the way.) But how many of us take that seriously?

If I asked you, “When’s the last time you prayed?” you could probably answer me – even though you might not really want to answer me because it was longer ago than you would care to admit.

But if I asked you, “When’s the last time you encouraged someone?” most of us would have to admit it was so long ago that we consciously, deliberately encouraged someone, that we can’t remember when that was.

So if the Bible tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5:11 and Hebrews 3:13 to encourage one another, then we have a problem, don’t we?

But it gets worse.

Stay tuned for more …