What the Bible Says About Encouraging Others

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When we go through difficult times, it’s hard to see how anything good can come from them. It feels like everything is going wrong and that God has forgotten about us. But God can use our circumstances for encouraging others. When they see how God has used our trials to help us grow closer to Him, it encourages them and gives them hope for the future.

In fact, James 1:2-4 says “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect work, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (TLV)

Read on and learn more about what the Bible says about encouraging others and how the God of all comfort can use YOU to be a comfort to hurting people.

Hard Times Seem Worse When We Focus on the Little Things

I found myself in the hospital recently about a month after a stroke I had. I had weakness and numbness on my left side, which was not the side affected by the stroke.

My husband took me to the Stroke Center and they determined it was not another stroke. That began the long process of trying to figure out what was going on.

After multiple tests and an MRI on my full spine, they found that I had “severe, severe arthritis” in my cervical spine that was constricting the nerves to my left arm (Cervical Spondylosis).

Now we had to solve the problem.

Neurology determined that surgery was not the best course of action because of the risks. There are about 5 various ways to treat the problem, with surgery being number 5 (by the way, after all this unfolded and I had an appointment with a neurosurgeon two months later, he advised surgery right away, which I have since had).

They said a rehab facility would be best so that I could get intense physical and occupational therapy, plus speech therapy for the issues remaining from the stroke.

So I would be moved to a short-term rehab facility closer to home where I would spend about a week.

I was happy to be closer to home but definitely not happy about being away for a week!

They had an ambulance come and pick me up at the hospital to transport me to the rehab facility. When I arrived there it had just gotten dark.

They wheeled me in and my heart just sank. The smell was just…not good.

It was dark (seemed that way in more ways than one at the time), and let’s just say everything just seemed to feel awful.

The people were nice but I was not liking being in this nursing home. I wanted to be in MY home.

I didn’t think I would ever sleep in this place. I literally cried on the phone with my husband and he was ready to come and get me.

But I knew for my health that I needed to stick it out. I just cried and cried.

but after taking my medication I was finally able to drift off to sleep and actually slept all night.

Encouraging Others Might Be Why You Are There

The next morning, things looked a little brighter. It is amazing what some sunshine can do!

I got up and got washed up and felt much better. Then I pulled the curtain back from around my part of the room and there was my roommate, a woman who, I would later find out, was 90 years old.

She was just sitting up in her bed looking at me with a smile.

I had heard her throughout the morning, weeping a bit and saying “Why God?”

So I knew she was a bit distraught about being there away from her family. I could certainly relate to that part!

And I could feel it deep down; I felt “God wants to use you“!

I just felt this woman needed an encouraging word.

I said “Good morning!” and she said it back. 

She seemed thrilled to have this “young person” to talk to. So, we began chatting a bit. 

I found out that she was 90 and had three sons and they owned a family restaurant. 

She told me about how she was from Italy and had always wanted to be a nun, but her father wanted her to move to the United States with him.

Then she told me that she wondered why God would “do this” to her. She had injured herself in a fall. 

She was pretty much healed now but she was still in physical therapy and due to go home in a couple of days.

Her family members visited her every day and she would get a phone call at least three or four times throughout the day, so she had support from family and friends.

Her sons would bring her food from their restaurant so she had the food she loved. She had a lot of people who loved her but she felt God did not. She felt God had put her in this place.

We spoke for a while and I tried my best to encourage her by letting her know that God didn’t do this to her. 

She thought maybe she had done something wrong to have this happen to her. I explained to her that was definitely not the case.

Words of Encouragement

I went on to speak to her about God’s love for her and how He would never will for her to be hurt that way.

In everyday life, we experience difficult times but He is the God of hope and the God of love and He is always with us and He is holding us up through those difficult times.

God’s Word promises that He loves us and cares for us and He will uphold us with His righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

He can take our trials and our difficulties and use them for our good.

Sometimes we go through trials because of our own decisions in life.

 I had a stroke. God didn’t cause my stroke, hormone replacement therapy did.

I made a decision, based on poor medical advice but my decision nonetheless, to go on this therapy. 

But God was most certainly with me through it all.

He used (and IS using) my story to help encourage others and let them know that God does not cause their pain but He will use it!

He took this stroke, He took this spinal injury, and He placed me where I was at the right time (although it didn’t feel like it!) to speak to this 90-year-old woman about the peace of God and to be a source of encouragement right when she needed it.

She smiled a big smile and put her hand on her heart and said “Oh thank you! God bless you! God sent you here to me!”

That made my heart happy!

It made all the complaints I had about the place, all the grumblings under my breath, and all the texts I sent to my husband telling him I wanted to get out of there, worth it.

Acts of Service – God Wants to Use You in the Encouragement of Others

When I got there I was focused on my own comfort and my own feelings of uneasiness. That is natural to do especially when we are going through health issues.

But God wanted me to focus on what He had planned for me. 

Instead of complaining, I should have prayed and asked Him to show me someone that I could impact in some way for Him!

God wants to use you wherever you are!

You see, the mission field isn’t just in another country or in another city. The mission field is any ground we step onto.

Encouraging others and showing God’s love and grace to others should happen wherever we go!

When I was wheeled into this place on a stretcher, it became my mission field. 

The mission field isn’t just in another country or in another city. The mission field is any ground we step onto. Click To Tweet

God had a plan for me there.

He may not have caused me to end up there but He certainly knew I would and He wanted me to use that time to not only heal myself but maybe heal someone’s faith or heal someone’s heart.

I would like to think I made this woman happy by knowing God IS with her. 

His Word promises that! He had not left her at the door. He was right beside her, not punishing her but healing her and loving her.

So now I say “Show me someone else I can encourage today Lord!”

To be used by God is the best medicine in the world, especially for encouraging others!

And God wants to use you too!

So what does the Bible say about encouraging others?

What the Bible Says About Encouraging Others

There is quite a bit about encouragement in the Bible. Let’s face it, the encouragement of the scriptures is the best encouragement there is so why wouldn’t the Bible have a lot to say on the topic?

Exhortation, which is encouragement, is listed as one of the spiritual gifts in Romans 12.

Romans 12:9-13

Let love be without hypocrisy—detesting what is evil, holding fast to the good. Be tenderly devoted to one another in brotherly love; outdo one another in giving honor. Do not be lagging in zeal; be fervent in spirit. Keep serving the Lord, rejoicing in hope, enduring in distress, persisting in prayer, contributing to the needs of the kedoshim, extending hospitality.

TLV – Bible Gateway (Kedoshim is Hebrew for “holy ones”)

So if it is listed as one of the spiritual gifts, it must be important, right? And we are to outdo each other in giving honor. We are to be tenderly devoted to one another and not just go through the motions.

The word exhort in the Greek is parakaleo and it means to call near, to urge, to encourage. It is used in the Bible many times, especially in Paul’s letters.

In fact, Paul begins most of his letters with some kind of encouragement. And why wouldn’t he? We all need encouragement.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up—just as you in fact are doing.

1 Thessalonians 5:11 TLV – Bible Gateway

This is a directive to encourage one another. We are to build each other up.

This is not a suggestion, it is a mandate. So if we are not encouraging others, we are not obeying scripture.

And if we are not obeying scripture, we are not living according to God’s will for our lives.

If you think about it, encouragement is really at the heart of our faith. Jesus came to encourage us.

He came to urge us on. He came to call us near. And that is what we are supposed to do for each other.

It is a valuable gift we can give to those who are hurting.

A sincere compliment, words of affirmation, a listening ear – all these can bring great joy to others.

Bible Verses About Encouragement

Psalm 121:1-2

A Song of Ascents.

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains—

from where does my help come?

² My help comes from Adonai,

Maker of heaven and earth.

TLV – Bible Gateway

John 16:33

These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have shalom. In the world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world!

TLV – Bible Gateway

Romans 8:31

What then shall we say in view of these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

TLV – Bible Gateway

2 Corinthians 1:5

For just as the sufferings of Messiah overflow into us, so also through Messiah our encouragement overflows.

TLV – Bible Gateway

Isaiah 40:31

Yet those who ^[a]wait for the Lord

Will gain new strength;

They will ^[b]mount up with wings like eagles,

They will run and not get tired,

They will walk and not become weary.

NASB – Bible Gateway

2 Timothy 1:7

for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

ESV – Bible Gateway

Galatians 6:2

Bear one another’s burdens — in this way you will be fulfilling the Torah’s true meaning, which the Messiah upholds.

CJB – Bible Gateway

John 14:27

Shalom I leave you, My shalom I give to you; but not as the world gives! Do not let your heart be troubled or afraid.

TLV – Bible Gateway

ESV  –  “Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.”

NASB – “Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. Copyright by The Lockman Foundation“

CJB – Taken from the Complete Jewish Bible by David H. Stern. Copyright © 1998. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Messianic Jewish Publishers, 6120 Day Long Lane, Clarksville, MD 21029. www.messianicjewish.net.

Tree of Life (TLV) – Scripture taken from the Holy Scriptures, Tree of Life Version*. Copyright © 2014,2016 by the Tree of Life Bible Society.  Used by permission of the Tree of Life Bible Society.