Therefore encourage one another and build each other up.
—1 THESSALONIANS 5:11 NIV
My big brother used to pick on me. For Dee no day was complete unless he had made mine miserable. He’d trip me as I entered the room. He’d yank back the covers on my just-made bed. He’d wrestle me to the floor and sit on my chest until I couldn’t breathe. When his bike had a flat tire, he’d steal mine. He’d kick me beneath the dinner table, and when I kicked back, he’d feign innocence, and I’d get caught. Thanks to him I learned the meaning of the word wedgie. He stole my allowance. He called me a sissy. He threw grass burs at me. His waking thought was How can I pick on Max?
But all his cruel antics were offset by one great act of grace. He picked me to play on his baseball team.
Mom had given him baby-brother duty that summer day. He could go to the park if he let me tag along. He groaned but relented. He wasn’t about to miss the daily baseball game. We grabbed our bats, hats, and Spalding gloves. We jumped on our bikes and raced to the baseball diamond. By the time we arrived, the place was swarming with kids.
When it came time to pick teams, I took my place behind the others and braced for the worst.
Squad selection is enough to scar the psyche of a young boy. It works like this. Two players, presumably the best athletes, begin calling out names. “I get Johnny.” “I get Tommy.” “I want Jason.” “I’ll take Eric.”
Johnny, Tommy, Jason, and Eric strut and swagger in the direction of their respective captains and strike the cool-kid pose. They deserve to. They were chosen first.
The winnowing process continues, one by one, until the last kid is standing. That day that kid, I just knew, would have freckles and red hair. On the social ladder of summer baseball, I dangled from the lowest rung.
Everyone else was a middle schooler; I was a third grader. Everyone else could handle a baseball bat. I never got a hit. Everyone else could pitch, catch, and steal bases. I had a rag arm, slow glove, and bricks for feet.
But a miracle happened. When angels discuss mighty acts of divine intervention, this moment makes the list. Along with the stories of the Red Sea opening and the was-dead Lazarus walking is the day my brother chose me. Not first, mind you. But far from last. He still had plenty of good guys from whom to pick. But for a reason known only to him and God above, he chose me.
“I take Max,” he announced.
A murmur rippled through the crowd. “Max?” “Max?” Had the event been part of a movie, the gaggle would have parted, and the camera would have focused on the little fellow wearing the red hat. My eyes opened watermelon wide.
“Who, me?”
“Yeah, you!” my brother barked as if to downplay his largesse.
I tilted my head to the side, smiled an Elvis smile, swaggered through the sad, pitiful lot of unpicked players, and took my place next to my unexpected hero. In the time it took to say my name, I went from the back of the pack to the front of the line, all because he picked me.
Dee didn’t pick me because I was good. He didn’t select me for my skill or baseball savvy. He called my name for one reason and one reason only. He was my big brother. And on that day he decided to be a good big brother.
The New Testament has a word for such activity: encouragement. “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thess. 5:11 NIV).
God does this. He is “the God who gives endurance and encouragement” (Rom. 15:5 NIV).
So does Jesus. “We pray that our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father will encourage you and help you always to do and say the right thing” (2 Thess. 2:16–17 CEV).
When Jesus introduced the Holy Spirit to us in John 14–16, he called him the paraklétos, the noun form of the very word for encouragement.1
Scripture encourages us. “The Scriptures were written to teach and encourage us by giving us hope” (Rom. 15:4 CEV).
The saints in heaven encourage us. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us” (Heb. 12:1 NLT). A multitude of God’s children is urging us on. Like spectators in the stands, a “crowd of witnesses” applauds from the heavens, calling on us to finish strong.
The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the holy Scriptures, the saints. God places a premium on encouragement.
Encouragement occurs when we “come alongside and call out.” At least that is the impression we get from its Greek definition. The noun paraklēsis is the combination of para (by the side) and kaleō (to call).2
Jesus modeled this.
Peter was the disciple with the foot-shaped mouth. He was prone to speak too soon and boast too much. Yet Jesus saw something in the heart of this crusty fisherman worth calling forth.
When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”
So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matt. 16:13–16)
Caesarea Philippi sat squarely on the boundary between Israel and the Gentile world. It attracted caravans and pilgrims from as far south as Ethiopia and as far north as modern-day Turkey. As much as any city in ancient Palestine, this was a melting pot of people.
The homespun followers of Jesus might well have gulped at the city’s cosmopolitan flair. They would have heard the lure of women and the sounds of taverns and smelled the foreign delicacies. But most of all they would have seen the temples. Religion was to Caesarea Philippi what produce is to a street market. Every type of deity was worshiped there.
It was in this maelstrom of religions and cultures that Jesus asked his followers, “Who do you say that I am?” I hear silence from the disciples. A throat being cleared. A sigh or two or ten. I see eyes lower and shoulders slump and heads duck.
Finally Peter spoke up. We can imagine a long, lingering pause after which he said the most audacious words he, and perhaps anyone, had ever spoken. He looked at the penniless rabbi from Galilee and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16).
Christ, by definition, means the anointed or chosen one. The Christ, in the Hebrew mind-set, wasn’t just head of the class; he was his own class. He wasn’t the final word; he was the only Word. Jesus, Peter dared to declare, was the Christ.
Jesus all but jumped for joy at the confession. “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah” (Matt. 16:17). In modern-day parlance, “Way to go! You’re the man! Give me five! You nailed it!” Jesus gave Peter the equivalent of a standing ovation, maybe a chest bump. It’s as if he threw both arms around the burly fisherman and squeezed any lingering hesitation out of him.
He even changed the apostle’s name. Simon would now be called Peter, a name that is next of kin to petros or Rocky. Simon, the man who expressed rock-solid faith, needed a rock-solid name. So Jesus gave it to him.
How do you suppose this burst of affirmation made Peter feel? When his friends began calling him Rocky, when Jesus put an arm around his shoulders and said, “Love you, Rocky,” when he dozed off to sleep at night thinking of his new name, Rocky, do you suppose he felt encouraged? Of course he did.
Jesus did to Peter what encouragers do. He summoned the best. He built Peter up. With the skill of rock masons, encouragers stack stones of affirmation and inspiration.
Their efforts pay high dividends. Decades of marriage research led Dr. John Gottman to identify an interesting characteristic of happy couples. Healthy homes enjoy a positive-to-negative ratio of five to one. In other words, for every negative comment or criticism, there are five acts or words of encouragement.3
Similar results were found among business teams. One study of effective leadership styles revealed that high-performing teams experienced a positive-to-negative ratio of nearly six positive comments for every negative one. Low-performing teams, conversely, had an average of three negative comments for every positive one.4
Intentional encouragement has affected my life. Three years into my role as senior minister of our church, a former senior minister returned, not only to live in our city, but also to serve on our staff. Charles Prince was thirty years my senior, Harvard educated, and a member of the Mensa society. I was in my midthirties, a rookie, and a charter member of the Dense society. The relationship could have been awkward and intimidating, but Charles preempted any stress with a visit to my office, during which he said, “There will be no tension in our relationship. I’m going to be your biggest cheerleader.”
He was! For twenty-five years, right until the day he died, I could count on a postsermon pat on the back. “You’re getting better every week!” I found that hard to believe, but I always appreciated it.
Such encouragement has a Michelangelo impact on people. The sculptor saw the figure of David within the marble and carved it out. The encourager sees your best self and calls it out, not with a chisel, but with words of affirmation.
Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, author of Positivity and a social psychologist in North Carolina, asserts that positive emotions increase our awareness, allowing us to see the bigger picture and expand our peripheral vision. By opening up the mind, positive emotions help us strengthen our relationships and even improve our physical health because they increase our energy. In contrast, neutral states tend to limit our mind-sets, and negative emotions contract our mind-sets even more so.5
Stated differently, if a soccer coach wants to increase the odds of a player missing another goal, he should get angry and shout at her. If the coach wants the player to return to the game with better vision, he should give her a word of affirmation. “People have a way of becoming what you encourage them to be—not what you nag them to be.”6
A little boy said these words to his father: “Dad, let’s play darts. I’ll throw, and you say ‘Wonderful!’”
Every person needs to hear a “wonderful.” Here is why. A discouragement conspiracy is afoot. Companies spend billions of dollars to convince us that we are deficient and inadequate. To sell face cream, they tell us that our faces are wrinkled. To sell new clothes, they pronounce that our clothes are out of fashion. To sell hair color, they must persuade us that our hair is dingy. Marketing companies deploy the brightest minds and deepest pockets of our generation to convince us that we are chubby, smelly, ugly, and out-of-date. We are under attack!
We can relate to the two cows grazing in a pasture when a milk truck drove by. On the side of the truck were the words “pasteurized, homogenized, standardized, vitamin A added.” Noticing this, one cow said to the other, “Makes you kind of feel inadequate, doesn’t it?”
Inadequacy indwells a billion hearts.
Who is going to tell people the truth? Will you? Will you distribute encouragement to the world? Will you make some happiness happen? Will you call the forgotten kid from the back of the pack to the front? Will you remind humanity that we are made in God’s image? That we are chosen, destined, and loved? That God is for us, not against us? That we are in God’s hand, in God’s plan? Will you go face-to-face with the tidal wave of inadequacy that sucks people out to sea?
Will you reach out to the Tim Scotts of the world? Tim was dealt a bad hand of cards. His parents divorced when he was seven years old. His mother, an African American nursing assistant, worked sixteen hours a day but still couldn’t lift her family out of poverty. As a teenager, when many of his friends were discovering video games and girls, Tim served popcorn at the local movie theater. During his break he would hurry across the street to a fast-food restaurant and get fries and water. John Moniz owned the facility. He noticed the repeat customer and asked him why he wasn’t buying more food. Tim told him he couldn’t afford it.
Moniz considered the plight of this teenage boy. He decided to encourage him. One evening he took a bag of sandwiches across the street. The two struck up a conversation that led to a friendship that led to a mentorship. Moniz learned that Tim was failing several classes at school, so Moniz shared with him life lessons about discipline and responsibility. He conveyed the biblical business principles he was using at his workplace. Most important, Moniz taught his young friend about Jesus.
Tim began eating up all the sandwiches and wisdom that Moniz had to give. The seventeen-year-old began to feel life coming together for him. Then tragedy struck. Moniz, age thirty-seven, died of a pulmonary embolism. Tim was left standing at the graveside of his friend and at a crossroads. Much to his credit he chose to put the lessons Moniz had taught him to good use. He wrote a new purpose statement for his life. His mission? To have a positive effect on one billion people.
Pretty ambitious goal. Yet he appears to be well on his way to reaching it. Tim was sworn in to the US Senate in 2013, the first African American senator from the South since Reconstruction.7
It all started with a sandwich and a fellow who was willing to walk across the street and offer some encouragement. Maybe we could do something similar?
Look the Simon Peters of your world in the eye, and call forth the Rocky within them by . . .
Listening intently. A desperate woman once came to see Jesus. She was out of doctors, money, and hope. But worst of all she was out of friends. Her sickness rendered her ceremonially unclean, cut off from her family and any house of worship. For more than a decade she’d been ostracized from people. Then Jesus came to town. He was on his way to treat the daughter of the synagogue leader. The crowd was thick, and people were pushing, but she was desperate. Threading her arm through the crowd, she reached the hem of his garment. And when she touched the hem of him, the bleeding stopped. “‘Who touched me?’ Jesus asked” (Luke 8:45 NIV). The woman shrank back. A dozen years of rejections had made her wary of attention. But Jesus said again that someone had touched him. And this time she spoke up. “She came shaking with fear and knelt down in front of Jesus. Then she told him the whole story” (Mark 5:33 CEV).
The whole story! How long had it been since someone had listened to her story? Jesus took time to hear her speak. He had reason not to do so. The crowd was waiting, the city leaders were standing, a girl was dying, people were pressing, the disciples were questioning, but Jesus? He was listening. He stopped what he was doing, and he listened. He didn’t have to. Healing the affliction would have been enough. Enough for her. Enough for the crowds. But not enough for Jesus. He wanted to do more than heal her body. He wanted to hear her story. The miracle restored her health. The listening restored her dignity. And what he did next, the woman never forgot. He affirmed her. He called her “daughter.” This is the only time in the Gospels that he called a woman by that name. “Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace” (Luke 8:48).
Do this for someone. Ask someone to tell you his—or her—story. Resist the urge to interrupt or correct. Turn off the television. Log off from the internet. Close your laptop; silence your cell phone. Give the rarest of gifts: your full attention.
Praising abundantly. Biblical encouragement is no casual, kind word but rather a premeditated resolve to lift the spirit of another person. “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds” (Heb. 10:24 NIV). The verb consider means “to perceive clearly . . . understand fully, consider closely.”8
John Trent recalls a story about a young father whose daughter was going through the “terrible twos.” She was cute but strong-willed and almost more than he and his wife could handle. The father decided to take the child out for breakfast and tell her how much they valued and loved her. Over pancakes he told her, “Jenny, I want you to know how much I love you, and how special you are to Mom and me. We prayed for you for years, and now that you’re here and growing up to be such a wonderful girl, we couldn’t be more proud of you.”
When he finished, his daughter said, “Longer, Daddy, . . . longer.” The father continued to affirm and encourage her. Once again when he attempted to stop, she pleaded for him to keep going. She did so two more times. “This father never did get much to eat that morning, but his daughter got the emotional nourishment she needed so much. In fact, a few days later, she spontaneously ran up to her mother and said, ‘I’m a really special daughter, Mommy. Daddy told me so.’”9
Do you know someone who needs unbridled encouragement? Of course you do. Everyone needs a cheerleader. So be one. “Look for the best in each other, and always do your best to bring it out” (1 Thess. 5:15 THE MESSAGE).
In the mid-1930s a YMCA instructor pitched an idea for a class to his supervisor. It was based on some principles he had learned while working as a salesman in Warrensburg, Missouri. The directors couldn’t afford to pay him the regular two-dollar-a-night fee, so he agreed to teach it on a commission basis.
Within a couple of years the course was so popular the instructor was earning thirty dollars a night instead of two. A publishing executive heard the messages and encouraged the instructor to compile them in a book. Dale Carnegie did. His book How to Win Friends and Influence People stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for a decade. What is the message of the book? Arguably it can be reduced to one phrase: “Encourage one another.” The chapter “The Big Secret of Dealing with People” urges readers to “be hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.”10
Here is an idea. Call a friend or relative, and begin the conversation with these words: “Can I have 120 seconds to tell you what a great person you are?” Then let it loose. Build him up. Affirm her. Embarrass him. Drench her in words of encouragement. Imitate the apostle Paul, who told his friends in Ephesus, “I didn’t skimp or trim in any way. Every truth and encouragement that could have made a difference to you, you got” (Acts 20:20 THE MESSAGE).
Years ago I became friends with a preacher in Houston. After a wonderful meal together he asked me, “Do you do text messages?” (I’m old enough for him not to make assumptions.) I told him I did, so we swapped phone numbers. A few days later I received a text from him saying, “I am changing your name. You are no longer Max. You are Mighty Max!”
You might think I’d shrug off such a title. I’m a sixty-four-year-old minister. I operate in the formal world of pulpits and Bible study. Mighty Max? That’s the stuff of elementary school playgrounds, right?
Not to me it isn’t. When I see his name on my phone, I hurry to open the text. I love to be encouraged. We all do. So let’s make happiness happen. Let’s encourage one another.
Call someone “mighty.” Call someone “special.” Call someone “Rocky.”
Call forth the Peter from within a Simon.
Give the gift that God loves to give: the gift of encouragement.