Encouragement is fuel for the day.
I pray you have one or more people who regularly encourage you. Or circumstances that lift you up. And I pray that you do not have a discourager in your life.
What to do if we don’t have encouragers and/or do have discouragers in our own lives:
Pray
Pray for an encourager. Pray for your discourager.
Encourage others
We can, and should, deliberately encourage others.
Therefore encourage one another and build up one another. (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
There are rewards. We are encouraged when we encourage others. We’ve kept our Lord’s command to encourage, and obedience always brings blessing.
Encourage yourself in the Lord
We should, like David, strengthen, encourage, ourselves in the Lord. (1 Samuel 30:6)
If you are a child of God, having received Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior*, you have promises and hope that fundamentally encourage you, both for this life and the life to come.
There is encouragement in Christ. (Philippians 2:1)
We have the encouragement of the Scriptures. (Romans 15:4)
As we take refuge in our Lord, we … have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast. (Hebrews 6:18)
Promises
There are entire books that enumerate God’s promises to us, His children,* and which encourage us. I was just given such a book, 335 pages long.
Here is one promise to us, children of God. We WILL make it to glory. It’s not that we can make it, we WILL make it. Hallelujah!
Father, please help us look to You and Your word in increasing knowledge and fervor. Please help us believe ALL that You say to us. Help us strengthen, encourage, ourselves in You. And, please, bring encouragers into our lives, and help those who discourage us and others.
*When we receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, God adopts us (Ephesians 1:5). (See Becoming a Child of God.)
