Romans 12:8 If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging.
Now we come to perhaps one of the most amazing gifts – encouraging! Why is it amazing? Because of the impact it can have on the receivers of encouragement! This could mean anything from encouraging to exhorting to comforting to counselling to rebuking gently. The encourager is to build people up in their faith and life with words of warning, comforting words or a sign or gift of appreciation. The gift of encouraging can be done in the gifts so far in this lift: prophecy, preaching, serving, or teaching as well as the gift in this list to come: giving!
Encouragement can be done from the platform to many people at the same time. However more often than not, it is as one person interacts with another person, individual to individual. Encouragers urge people to respond rightly to God. Encouragers strengthen the weak and comfort those who are in sorrow. Paul himself had a great encourager on his ministry team – Barnabus (Acts 4:36; Acts 9:26ff)! If you are a counsellor in your church, you are exhibiting your gift of encouragement. Are you aware of that? WOW!
Oh how the church needs encouragers! A quiet encouraging word to that teacher or preacher you just heard in your church, or the music leaders – anybody! Your pastor or church leader would appreciate a kind word or a gift from you.
I can tell you from personal experience, that I get more verbal encouragement from those who are not Christian than I do from those who are self-professed Christians. But it should not be that way! Again, every Christian can encourage somebody else – even without the specific gift of encouragement. As we looked at in verse 5, as Christians, we belong to each other, so let each of us be practical in our encouragement of each other! Perhaps the next person you speak to will need a word of encouragement! What will you do? Encourage that person or simply ignore them? Who are your encouragers? Have you made sure they know how much you appreciate their encouragement of you?
Of course, God the Holy Spirit is also the great encourager – always urging us and encouraging us to live obedient lives worth of Jesus Christ whom we follow. Will you listen to His encouragement of you, as He urges you to go encourage somebody else? Or will you ignore His encouraging voice to do so?
Let each of us encourage at least one person a day.
