We all need encouragement. I don’t care who you are, you need encouraging. It doesn’t just keep us going and can also lift us up. For example……..
I’m a Realtor and last spring, I was showing houses with a family that I really liked and enjoyed working with but while I was smiling and cheerful on the outside I was down on the inside. I was having a progressively tough week, really struggling with a few things. Feelings of inadequacy on so many fronts, fear was getting the best of me, tired, not enough of me to go around, not spending enough time with my wife, my three boys. As I like to say, life had gotten “heavy” and as that day passed the heaviness was gaining momentum. To top it off God seemed miles away. Why wouldn’t He? My faith was clearly on vacation.
The day with my clients was nearing an end and we were at the last home on our list. I walked out on the back porch of the home and just sat down on the steps as they toured the property. I felt like I was dragging around a piano. I decided to check my email on my phone and in the list of emails was an alert that someone had made a comment on one of my blog posts. I clicked on it to check it out. It was a comment from Mike Horn that simply stated, “This is great Shane! Thanks for taking the time to give this word brother”! I was energized but that was just the tip of the ice berg.
For the record, I have a high opinion of Mike. So, a plug of confidence from Mike was well received. On top of that I had no earthly idea that Mike had ever read any of my blog posts but here he was commenting on one of them, which was nice. The bigger part is this, stay with me……
The blog post that Mike had commented on was also shared on Facebook by a friend of mine. I didn’t know this. It had then been shared again by a few other people. I didn’t know this either. On these shared posts there were lots of comments on Facebook, to me, that I had never seen. The technical aspects are not important but Mike’s single comment led me to discover 20+ additional positive comments that I was completely unaware even existed.
People were encouraging me to keep doing what I was doing, which was and is simply this……. sharing what God was doing for me and revealing to me as I finally, after 45+ years, sought His plan for my life. I won’t lie. I sat there fighting back tears hoping my clients wouldn’t see me and think their Realtor was a basket case.
Here is the thing, or things:
1) I received encouragement that I desperately needed and it lifted me up.
2) There were almost two dozen encouraging comments that had been there just waiting to meet my need, unbeknownst to me, for over a week.
3) God waited until I was at a very low point, when the encouraging comments would have the most impact, to reveal them to me.
4) The comments were in themselves encouraging but the fact that God had sent me a title wave of stored up encouragement at just the right time strengthened my faith to trust Him to meet my needs. All of them.
5) That’s how it works.
That’s good stuff right there. If someone is making a positive impact in YOUR life tell them. Just tell them. You never know when the encouragement you offer someone might be the boost they need to get through the day, or, it might even open the flood gates to a river of blessing for a parched soul.
As the post that was commented on stated……”Never fail to trust in the slow work of God”.
Get in the boat. Do your part.
1:6 / Nose to Toes / #16