One of my readers made an insightful comment about encouragement. I thought it was so good, I’ll answer it here in a post for all of you.
Encouragement is so needed but a rare “commodity” indeed in my humble opinion, maybe because I haven’t seen it in a majority of circles…
So kudos to all of you who are learning to be more transparent about being frustrated and discouraged.
It’s not an easy thing to do!
Not many people are equipped to help those who are being transparent.
For example, my husband and I have been transparent in the past, and then we got squashed by well-meaning people who do love us – they just didn’t know how to help us out of particular pits we were in. They said things that sounded spiritual and even quoted Scripture…but in the end they hadn’t quite listened to our hearts.
I could go on and on about this…
But I’ll end with this…from what we’ve observed, the ones who are equipped to help people out of painful, frustrating, depressing circumstances are those training to be therapists, counselors, life coaches…
…or they are mature people who have amazing servant’s hearts and/or great listening skills.
Maybe there are more.
If you’ve seen more, please let me know!
Of course the one who ultimately helps anyone out of any pit is Almighty God Himself.
Encouragement – what a rare and precious gift we can give someone!
If you want something concrete to work on to give the gift of encouragement, check out my 21-day Compliment Experiment.
Tags: encouragement, Thoughtful Thursday
