Day 15 – The Ministry of Encouragement

(Acts 9:26-31 & 11:22-25)

We need encouragement

You may have experienced discouragement at one point or the other or have someone close to you who have experienced it.

As life happens, there are moments we feel all alone, very low or overwhelmed with the pressures or demands life places on us. It is mostly at those times that we need encouragement from someone else.

Barnabas demonstrated this in his role in the life of the apostle Paul and John Mark. He provided encouragement for them at crucial moments that shaped their life and ministry.

Encouragement is a desire to help someone succeed

Encouragement rouses and invigorates someone in a low state and lifts or inspires them to a higher state with increased or renewed energy. It comes in the form of support or assistance from someone close to us or even a stranger.

We are encouraged when someone believes in us, cheers us on and helps us to flourish. It helps us overcome our fears, struggles, weaknesses, and disappointments.

At the heart of encouragement is desire to help someone succeed. Encouragement is the best gift we can receive or give to someone in every season of life.

Be an encourager

God calls you to be an encourager like Barnabas. There is a Paul or John Mark in your life that needs encouragement from you.

Your position, skills, trainings, and experiences, both the good and bad ones qualify and equip you to be an encourager. There is someone around you that God has assigned you to encourage in this season.

Remember that you have what it takes to encourage those God has assigned to you. Being God-centred at all times, grace and faith-filled, patient and kind, with empathy and love are virtues that make you a good encourager.

The ministry of encouragement is a prophetic reminder

Encouragement helps people to become stronger and enables them to achieve their dreams and goals in life. This happens because good encouragement is a prophetic reminder of God’s promises and purposes. It inspires confidence, faith, and hope, thereby enabling us to persevere.

Giving assistance, approval and affirmation will arouse and invigorate someone and make a significant difference in their lives.

The power you possess through the ministry of encouragement is limitless.

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near“

Hebrews 10:24-25