Encourage Me

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?