If you are a “thread” you might have picked up on a statement I made during the message two weeks ago and that was that two weeks ago (specifically the weekend through the beginning of the week) had not been a very positive week for me. Nothing major or anything just had quite a few blows to the ego. You probably know the type of week that I am talking about. One of those weeks where you have multiple things in a row happen that make you think that you aren’t really very good at the things that you care about and that are important to you. Well, I had one of those weeks. Not a terrible thing but not a great thing.
Thankfully though I know people who are the remedy for such weeks. They are people who are regular encouragers. One of those people is a friend named Megan. She is just plain awesome. What is even better is that she tends to send encouragement when it is most needed without actually knowing that it is needed. I seriously doubt that Megan (who is on staff at an awesome church in Baton Rouge – if you are not a part of a church I cannot recommend highly enough that you check out Living Hope Fellowship in Baton Rouge) heard the message I preached two weeks ago and therefore I am pretty sure that she had no idea that a kind word would make a difference for me this week. She is just the type of follower of Jesus that regularly encourages people and when you regularly encourage people you often end up giving that encouragement at just the right time.
In the New Testament it was Barnabas that did this. He was literally a “son of encouragement“. Lifting up others was so much a part of his character that his friends nicknamed him as an offspring of encouragement. You have to be doing some serious inspiring for people to give you a nickname like that. My nickname growing up was “rat” – I’m not sure what that says about me.
Anyhow Meg is a female Barnabas. A daughter of encouragement. A batnabas?
We all need these daughters and sons of encouragement in our lives. People who say the kind word so often that it regularly comes at just the right moment. If I am correct that we all need such people it probably also means that for at least one person we each have the potential to also be one of those people. Some of us will be naturals at this and some of us will have to work at it, but I think it is within reach for all of us. Therefore we should try to encourage someone.
It helped me out today (Thanks Meg). I’m sure if you do it you will help someone else out.