I often tell the story of an offhand comment the pastor of our church made to me one Sunday morning as we were leaving after the service, and how that comment has shaped my life since then. In this case, it was a positive comment, but it still serves as a powerful illustration the power of words, both to build and destroy, to give life or to suck life out of someone.
In this particular case, as the pastor was standing at the back door greeting people as they left, he shook our hands as he always did when we walked past him. But, this time, he added something to his usual pleasant greeting. He looked me in the eye and said, "Chuck, you are a Barnabas, a 'Son of Encouragement.'" I don't know if the statement came out of his own particularly keen wisdom (he was a very wise person), or if God simply planted those words on his lips. The funny thing is that, years later, when I asked him about the statement, he honestly didn't even remember saying that. (He believed me, but he just didn't remember it.) However, I remembered it, and it has become a key part of my identity ever since then.
Over the past several weeks, our team at the US headquarters for Operation Mobilization has been going through some training sessions looking at spiritual gifting, temperment, experiences and passions -- what are the things that make us tick, and the kinds of ministries that very naturally flow out of our temperment and experiences. The point is to both better understand ourselves and the people we work with, and how we work together (or sometimes don't) to form a team.
I got to thinking about the word "encouragement". I've used that word to describe myself many times, but never really looked at the word itself. During one of the sessions, "the light went on," and I noticed something which in hindsight is obvious, but I had never noticed before...
The root word for "encourage" is "courage". What suddenly occurred to me (and was born out when I looked the word up in the dictionary) was that the essence of encouragement is to "inspire with hope, courage or confidence." That got me to thinking about the meaning of courage. To have courage is to have the ability to move forward with what we want, need or are called to do, even when the way is difficult and intimidating. Of course, there are as many ways to do this as there are people who need encouraging, but the end result is always that the other person is strengthened, lifted and given a fresh sense of Hope.
