Encouraging

I have been meaning to write about encouragement for the past week, but I never got around to it. How should I start? I'll start with what I wrote down last week -- "...how or when or why do we encourage others? What is it? I think encouraging someone is lifting up someone's face. Even when they cannot lift up their own face, an encourager holds their friends' dignities. They hold each other up. Who needs to be encouraged? Everyone. We were created into a community, right? Then there must be a reason. We were created to help each other out. It may be from writing a letter to showing someone you appreciate them by noticing the everyday little things they do -- laundry, dishes, cleaning, etc." I'm not completely sure what I meant by the dignities part, but that's what I wrote, haha. After contemplating on how people encourage or get encouraged, I realized that there's no set way to encourage. Everyone gets encouraged in different ways. Sometimes you need to hear something, sometimes you need to see something, and it just goes on and on. Sometimes it's just one word that someone says that really encourages you. Furthermore, I learned that encouraging others is not a one-time deal; it's always an on-going process. The devil will always try to convince us with his lies. Even in the most victorious moments of our lives, he will always whispers lies and we must encourage each other constantly to stand firm in the truth. When it seems like God isn't there, it's easy to listen to the lies, but we can't. We must be constantly on our watch.

Think about this -- (well, I biblegateway-ed "encourage" and it came up 54 times and the first thing that came up was about Joshua, so I was reminded of Joshua). Joshua was leading the Israelites to conquer the Promise land, but he did not do it by himself. God told Moses "But commision Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he will lead his people across and will cause them to inherit the land that you will see" (Deut 3:28). Here, we see that God sent Moses to encourage Joshua. Our leaders also need to be encouraged. King David, a man after God's heart, was always encouraged by his best friend Jonathan. Without Jonathan's encouragements, who knows what could have happened? I feel like we often overlook encouragements or more specifically encouragements we have received in the past when we have success. I know I do. Sometimes I think I end up thinking I did something by myself when in reality, I overcame things because people encouraged me. I also realized that a way of encouraging someone could be through prayer. It reminds me when I had to take my SATs for the first time. I know that knowing people were praying for me really encouraged me. Also being with optimistic people who believed in me helped too. (:

If you see a friend downcast, what are you going to do? Watch him keep falling? No, lift him up. Help him. Do something. Don't watch him keep falling.

Proverbs is deep. (:
"An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up" (Proverbs 12:25).
"As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17).

Encouraging someone can be very inconvenient. I suppose in a way, it's a way to love him/her and it takes effort, but try it. When you encourage others, you'll find yourself being encouraged too! (:

I haven't posted pictures in a while so here it is! These pictures make it seem like it's fall than spring.