H a b i t 1 1 : Encourage
Have you ever had a day in your life where you felt too encouraged, where
you received so much encouragement you had to tell people to stop encouraging you? Nope. Most people encounter a daily dose of bad news, difficulty, critique, negativity, and discouragement instead of encouragement. One of the most powerful and overlooked commands in Scripture is to “encourage one another.” When you encounter an encourager, or a group of people creating a culture of encouragement, great things can happen: wounds can be healed, courage can be stoked, identities can be strengthened, spiritual attack can lessen, new risks for the Kingdom can be taken, breakthroughs can occur, and God can be glorified. Though we must “run to the tension” with one another (see Habit #7) from time to time, the dominant and daily note of how we communicate is marked by encouragement and building one another up.
MEMORIZE
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. - 1 Thessalonians 5:11
STUDY AND DISCUSS 2 CHRONICLES 32:1-8, ROMANS 15:1-7, AND 1 THESSALONIANS
From 2 Chronicles 32: What impact did Hezekiah’s encouraging words have
on the people of Judah? How would you define encouragement from this text? From Romans 15: What conclusions can we draw from the fact that the Bible is referred to as “the encouragement of the Scriptures” and God is referred to as “the God of encouragement”? How does this text add to your definition of encouragement and how it functions for God’s people? From 1 Thessalonians 5: How does this text further sharpen what encouragement is and what encouragement does? Brainstorm as a group a 1-2 sentence definition of encouragement.
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