Today I’d like to share an excerpt with you from Charles Swindoll’s book Encouragement for Life. If you haven’t had a chance to check out this book yet, you can learn more by clicking here. It’s one of my favorites. It captures so many longings of the heart and provides great Biblical advice and encouragement.
All of us need encouragement – somebody to believe in us. To reassure and reinforce us. To help us pick up the pieces and go on. To provide us with increased determination in spite of the odds. . . .
When we encourage others we spur them on, we stimulate and affirm them. It is helpful to remember the distinction between appreciation and affirmation. We appreciate what a person does, but we affirm who a person is. Appreciation comes and goes because it is usually related to something someone accomplishes. Affirmation goes deeper. It is directed to the person himself or herself. While encouragement would encompass both, the rarer of the two is affirmation. To be appreciated, we get the distinct impression that we must earn it by some accomplishment. But affirmation requires no such prerequisite. This means that even when we don’t earn the right to be appreciated (because we failed to succeed or because we lacked the accomplishment of some goal), we can still be affirmed – indeed, we need it then more than ever.
I do not care how influential or secure or mature a person may appear to be, genuine encouragement never fails to help. Most of us need massive doses of it.
Leave a comment and tell about a time when you needed encouragement – genuine affirmation and not just appreciation. Did you receive that encouragement? Did it come from the Lord directly? Or did it come through a person in your life? What can you do this week to encourage someone?
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Since ancient times no one has heard,
no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides You,
who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him.
You come to the help of those who gladly do right,
who remember Your ways.
But when we continued to sin against them,
You were angry.
How then can we be saved?
All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
No one calls on Your name
or strives to lay hold of You;
for You have hidden Your face from us
and made us waste away because of our sins.
Yet, O LORD, You are our Father.
We are the clay, You are the potter;
we are all the work of Your hand.
Isaiah 64:4-8
Isn’t it comforting to know that in spite of all of our shortcomings, our failures, our sins, that God still cares for us? These past few weeks, we’ve been focusing on different aspects of the way God relates to us. Like a Father, He tenderly cares for us. He takes pride in us and desires our best. Even when we rebel against Him, He loves us. As a Friend, God wants to be intimate with us. He confides His plans to us, and asks that we meet with Him, face to face. This week, we think about God as our Master. He is more than a Father who desires our best; He is also a Master potter who forms us with His very hand. If we let Him, He will mold us into a new creation. Hallelujah!
How do you see yourself being molded today?
He who loves [and takes more pleasure in] father or mother more than [in] Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves [and takes more pleasure in] son or daughter more than [in] Me is not worthy of Me;
And he who does not take up his cross and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conforming wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying also] is not worthy of Me.
Whoever finds his [lower] life will lose it [the higher life], and whoever loses his [lower] life on My account will find it [the higher life].
Matthew 10:37-9 AMP
Sometimes I forget what an extreme life we’re called to in Jesus. We are called to conform wholly to the example of a Savior who gave His very life in service to the Kingdom of God. Reconciling the world to God was more important to Jesus than His own life.
In my day-to-day tasks of writing blog posts, updating websites, planning events, grocery shopping, taking my dog for a walk, eating dinner with my husband, and all the other non-extreme things I do, it’s easy to ignore the example of Jesus. It’s easy to keep my relationship with Him compartmentalized, to only examine it at church, and to conveniently put it away the rest of the time.
But do I take more pleasure in my daily tasks than I take in Jesus? Do I love Him more than all of these other things and people that often get more of my time and attention than He does?
I’d like to. But the truth is I’m not quite there yet. I’m a work in progress. May I find my greatest pleasure in You today, Lord.
What about you? Is it difficult to fix your eyes on Jesus in the midst of the daily grind? What practical steps have you found that help you to treasure Christ more than anyone or anything else?
Photo by EssjayNZ (flickr.com)
When I was reading through Leviticus awhile ago, I came across some gruesome commandments about sacrifice. Here’s an example:
If he brings a lamb as his sin offering, he is to bring a female without defect. He is to lay his hand on its head and slaughter it for a sin offering at the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered. Then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering and pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar. He shall remove all the fat, just as the fat is removed from the lamb of the fellowship offering, and the priest shall burn it on the altar on top of the offerings made to the LORD by fire. In this way the priest will make atonement for him for the sin he has committed, and he will be forgiven (Leviticus 4:32-5).
As I read passage after passage of God commanding the Israelites to sacrifice animals, I started to feel uncomfortable.
My world view was being tested.
I’ve always been an animal lover. I suppose it’s in my genes. Everyone in my family is a sucker for cute, cuddly pets who need a home.
And here I was reading (and actually taking it in, instead of glossing it over as I had done so many times before when reading the Old Testament sacrifice passages) that God – my gracious, loving, wonderful God – required the death of cute, cuddly animals to atone for sin.
In my discomfort, I was tempted to gloss it over once again. On the surface, I just don’t know how to reconcile these two things. A tender, loving God with a God who demands bloody death and sacrifice. But this time, instead of moving on, I asked God about it.
“Father, is this really who You are? How can this be? How can the God I know and love so intimately be this same God who requires blood and death?”
Immediately, I felt the Holy Spirit respond. “Yes, it is who I am. It is very much part of who I am. And this isn’t as incompatible with your view of Me as you think. Death in Me is life. You can’t have the one without the other. You can’t be alive in Me until you’ve died to yourself – a horrible, bloody, gruesome death. It doesn’t come easily. It feels uncomfortable, even painful. It doesn’t feel fair. But after you’ve done it, true life can begin. My life in you.”
Once more, I repented of holding on to my own idea of how life should be lived. I repented of needing to feel in control of my life. I surrendered to Him again, laying myself on His altar, believing that something much better was waiting on the other side.
“The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 1:20).
I APPEAL to you therefore, brethren, and beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service and spiritual worship.
Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you] (Romans 12:1-2 AMP).
Have you ever wrestled with incompatible views of God? What happened? Have you faced questions from others about how a loving God can ask for painful sacrifices? What did you tell them?
