Last weekend my husband preached from 1 Thessalonians 3:1-8 in a sermon called “Encouragement Required: Building Each Other Up In the Faith.” (To listen to or watch this sermon please click here.) Many Christians view encouraging others as something that the “extra credit” Christians do. People act like saying nice things or a smile and wave is enough of a pick-me-up to be called “encouragement”. But the idea of really considering others and praying for for them before we see them and concerning ourselves with their struggles and trials seems like a whole new level of encouragement and maybe a lot of us tell ourselves–”I’m not gifted like that”. But there is not some special category of Christians who don’t need to be built up in the faith by others encouragement. This is a common deception.

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.

Hebrews 3:12-13

Every Christian is called to to be considering his or her brothers and sisters in Christ to push them on in the faith. It’s not optional and it’s not going above and beyond the call of duty. Encouraging others is expected, commanded and vital in the Christian life.

I was really motivated by this call to encourage, so I called up a bunch of high school girls and took a few out to lunch almost every day last week. My goal was to see how they were doing so that I could have more specific ways to build them up in the faith.

One night I took two girls to coffee and we talked for a couple of hours about how they could encourage their Christian friends. I didn’t have any paper so I grabbed two napkins and had them each write down the name of each friend and then we went down the list and thought of a specific way that they could encourage each person on the list. This was a spontaneous idea that I thought would help them and now I’m excited about doing weekly!

All I’m doing is in my notebook taking one page each Monday and just taking a few minutes to sit down and consider the people I know I’m going to see that week–students, friends, ladies at Bible study, or a babysitter–I write their name and then a dash and next to that I write one specific thing I will do that week to build them up. Many of them are as simple as a phone call, text message, e-mail, sending a card, inviting to lunch or just remembering to ask “How can I pray for you this week?” For some people it might be more involved such as writing out an appropriate verse on a card for them, getting a small gift to show my appreciation for them or helping another mom by watching her little one or giving a student a ride somewhere.

In Bobby’s sermon he reminded us that encouragement isn’t just a hug or a flowery Day Spring card. Encouragement is also coming alongside to admonish, keep accountable and sometimes give a needed “kick in the faith” for our brother or sister who is getting apathetic or is in sin. Bobby used the illustration of a spur and how when a cowboy gives his horse a nudge with a spur the horse gets going. Sometimes this is what people need. We need to make sure that we build others up with both sides of encouragement considering what their needs are.

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

Hebrews 10:24

We have so much opportunity to build up our brothers and sisters but we miss many of them because we don’t consider them ahead of time and think of tangible ways we can rise up to the call to encourage. I hope that you will take just a few minutes to think of specific ways to stir others up in the faith. Maybe this week you’ll even write down names of people you will see this week, consider what’s going on in their lives and how you can be a real encouragement to them as long as it is called Today!