Encouragement

I plan to speak to you today about how to give encouragement. By the time we get to the end of the sermon, I think you'll appreciate even more that it is indeed a meet-in-do-season message appropriate for this weekend. First of all, encouragement is one of those things that people hear, meaning if I say encouragement, you hear the word. Everyone is familiar with the word. You all have some sense of feeling about the word. But I don't know how many of you ever stop, stand at arm's length from the word, and assess what it is actually saying. I mean, if you've got a friend that's down in the mouth, and you go up and put your arm around him, and you say, hey, what's wrong? You really look bad. Can I help you out? You sit down with someone, and you can tell that things aren't going well, and you just say, well, can we talk? We respond when we see the need. There's a natural tendency in human beings that if you see the need, it resonates, and you do respond. But as I said, I don't know how often we stop and really stand at arm's length and ask, well, what does it mean? It means exactly what it says. The prefix EN stuck on the front of courage simply means to give to or provide to or to assist someone in gaining courage. That's what it's all about. When you encourage, you're in the role of assisting someone, or you may even go further than that. You may be in the role of providing someone, or in the very least, you are fostering someone else's courage. And life is such that all of us need courage at various and sundry times. To me, one of the great courage stories in all the Bible is the story of David and Goliath. Now, I'm not going to spend a lot of time here. What I'd like to do is simply set the stage so that you can understand the true sense of giving courage. David and Goliath is one of those stories that all of us know, so let's just take it as a start point. You've got all of Israel standing, looking at a giant, a man who has intimidated the entire army of Israel. He hasn't intimidated the army of Israel because he can take on the whole army. He's intimidated them because the style and the manner of warfare in those times and in those days, as has been true in many different parts of the world throughout history, was rather than sacrifice your men in battle, you send out a champion to combat a champion on behalf of the army with the stipulation that the army behind the loser would capitulate, that they would surrender. The intimidation was the fact that this was a one man takes on one man and the winner takes all proposition, and that's what was frightening, the Israelites army.

In college, I threw shot put. I threw it in high school also, but they weigh differently between the two. The high school shot put is 12 pounds. The college shot put is 16 pounds. And I mentioned throwing it in college for this reason. In the description of Goliath, the spearhead on his spear weighed the same as the shot put that he's thrown in college. The strongest and the best of men in college can throw a shot put about 70 feet. This was simply the spearhead on the end of his spear. It said his spear shaft was like a weaver's beam. That would probably be something about yea big around. With a 16 pound spearhead on the end, and that was symbolic of his basic armament. And he was saying, send somebody out. We all know the story. We all know that David was not intimidated. We know that David said, who is this Philistine? And how does he defy the armies of God? And I'll go out there. And he didn't waste any time. He ran out to meet him and to make the long story short, he defeated him. Now that's the story all of us know. In other words, that's known from the time that kids are little kids and they're told the Bible stories. We know about how David slew Goliath.

You know what hardly anyone knows?

What hardly anyone that I've ever met knows is how that gave courage to the Israelite army. I know the part that you know. I know the part where after Goliath was slaughtered, then the Israelites army was willing to take on the Philistines. That's not the part I'm talking about. I'm talking about a little section in 1 Chronicles 20, and the implication behind this little section.

If I were to use a Paul Harvey-ism, this is the rest of the story. This is the part that people don't usually think about or most people don't even know. 1 Chronicles 20 begins in this fashion. It says, It goes on from there to talk a little bit more about the battle season. At that day and time, it was also typical that in winter you stayed home. You fought during good weather, you stayed home during bad weather. As spring arrived, the Chronicles statement is a very literal statement.

It was the time that kings go out to battle. You fight during the summer, you assess your victories, you mark your boundaries, you peg that I've gotten this far, and you go home for the winter. If you want to do more, like the Assyrians usually did the next year when it warmed up, you came back to where you ended and you decided you'd conquer more.

Here's the good part about the gaining courage. It starts in verse 4. It happened after that war broke out at Giza with the Philistines, at which time, Sibekai, the Hushithite, killed Sipai, who was one of the sons of the giant, and they were subdued. Now, I know all of you have heard of Sibekai, a household word. Everybody yell. Let me tell you about him. Verse 5. Again there was war with the Philistines, and El-Hannan, the son of Jeir, killed Lami, the brother of Goliath, the Githite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam.

Every child knows the story of David and Goliath. How many know the story of El-Hannan and Lami? Nobody. Yet again there was war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature with twenty-four fingers and toes, six on each hand and six on each foot, and he also was born to the giant. So when he defied Israel-Johannan, the son of Shimei, David's brother, killed him. These were born to the giant in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.

You see, the rest of the story is once David had slain Goliath, the rest of them said, you know what? It's possible. Didn't think it was possible. Didn't know it could be done. And he said, if he can do it, I can do it. And verses four through eight are the list of Goliath's brothers and kinfolk who were laid to rest by normal-sized people from Israel following David's defeat of Goliath. This is the meaning of the word, and courage. To give courage to someone else, to get something done that he or she doesn't believe they can do.

Or, as is many times the case, at those times when they're down and discouraged and need to be brought back up to where they know they can do it. Today's sermon is a practical sermon. I wanted to give you that so that you had a real good mental handle on what the word encourage means. The rest of the sermon is intended to be practical, not theoretical. I want to talk to you about how to do it. I want to talk to you by category about those of you who should do it.

When you have a chance to lead, and it doesn't matter what kind of situation you happen to be in, you have the opportunity to give courage. You lead in many ways. In fact, you lead every day in ways that you may not even stop to consider. If you happen to be a role model for anyone, it doesn't matter who, it doesn't matter how young, it doesn't matter how old. If you happen to be a role model for anyone, you are in a position to be able to encourage. If in a work situation you happen to be in any form of management or oversight, team leadership, even if you're not in any, and you happen simply to work in a team-based environment where you are a team member, you're in the same capacity.

Every single one of you who is currently parenting lives there every single day of the week.

And all of you who are married know the impact that you have on your spouse.

You have the capacity to either lift their load, or you have the ability to burden their steps. So I don't care who you are, and I don't care what capacity you're in. I don't care if it's the workplace, I don't care if it's home with parenting or being a spouse. Or as I said, even if you happen to be in a team-based environment, whether it's school, if you're in school as a student, or if you're a worker in a team-based environment at the workplace, every single solitary one of those positions has the capacity to give courage to the person. And that's the courage to someone who is there in your presence or hears of your accomplishments.

You know, as you look at some of the biblical examples, we assume that everybody in 1 Chronicles that I read to you about was probably standing there on the hillside looking down over the valley and watching David. But that isn't necessarily true in all biblical cases where courage was given. Sometimes the courage was simply given by word-of-mouth description of what had happened somewhere else.

There is the old adage that we use as individuals, well, if I can do it, anybody can do it. And people listening, they'll grin and they'll say, well, yeah, you know, that's easy for you to say, but I'm not you. But it does work the other way around. When somebody says, I've done this, and you sit there and you process it, you can come to the place of saying, huh, if he or she can do it, it means it's doable. I may not necessarily know if I can do it, but it's worth giving it a try. And usually that's the biggest obstacle. Getting to the place where you're willing to give it a try is usually the hardest step in the whole process. Let's talk about leaders first, in general, okay? When you have a chance to lead, are you an encourager?

How would you assess yourself? How are you at giving courage to anyone who is a follower?

Let's talk about some of the ways that you have the opportunity to do it. One of the most simple and straightforward ways to encourage people is to show them that they can do more and be more than they thought they could be.

Inherently in people in any situation where they feel insecure or intimidated is that tendency to back away and say, I can't do it.

The capacity or the willingness or the ability to show someone that they can be more than they thought they could be is one of the first and the greatest steps in being an encourager. I'm currently in the last stages of filling out camper application evaluations for the summer camp program for United. And as I look at the list of teenagers who are asking to go to camps all over the place, I was teasing the Portland congregation, that some of the kids have gotten a taste for camp, and now they figure if one camp is good in the summer, two camps is better. I said I didn't find anybody going to three, probably stressing Mom and Dad's pocketbook, because there's not just getting to camp, there's the travel to get there. But I've got two or three kids going to two camps this year, and I'm looking at Carter down in Texas and Pinecrest in Missouri, Challenger up here in the Tetons, and of course Davidson, their resident in the Northwest, and come to think of it, I've got somebody or somebody who's going to High Sierra. So I've got teens from Portland going to Challenger, Davidson, Pinecrest, Carter, High Sierra, at least five camps.

I know why they go the second time. They go the second time because they found out how much they could do the first time. Many of them got the opportunity to do things they'd never done in their life. And it didn't matter whether it was water skiing, sailing, ropes course, whether it happens to be rock climbing. It doesn't matter what it is. It is that ability to do something that you didn't know you could do, and to say, I'm going to go back. To many teens, that's described in a three-letter word, but it's a whole lot more than that to them. They may say, that was fun. It's a lot more than fun. It's the fact that I learned something. I developed a level of confidence that I didn't have before, and that confidence is progressive. If I can do this, the next year I can go back, and maybe I can do that. It's progressive encouragement.

Summer camp is seasonally speaking. Summer camp is one of the greatest places on the face of the earth for those who are between 12 and the end of high school. And for those going to Challenger, the opportunity. Of course, this year we added a winter challenge camp down in Arizona. Another level to these things, but they're all opportunities. At a time in life where you're moving from childhood, the zero to 12, into adulthood, the 12 to 20, and you're wanting to know, who am I? What can I do? What can I accomplish? When you teach youngsters how to do what they fear they cannot do, you've given them courage that goes far, far beyond that environment. You know, the beauty of camp is, the physical part of it is very, very physical, but the spillover goes way, way beyond that. It goes into education, it goes into career development, because once you convince somebody they can do something, they're very indiscriminate about what they believe they can do. Conversely, it works the other way around. If somebody is intimidated by one thing, they're likely to be intimidated by all sorts of things. And so there's an infectiousness to courage. If I can do this, then I can do that, and they may have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

Many people are naturally fearful. I won't ask for a show of hands about how many of you have faced things in life. I looked back at my teenage years, and what I felt that I could do, I was extremely confident about. But what I felt I couldn't do, I felt I couldn't do. I was a very black and white person. What I knew I could do, I was very confident. What I didn't believe I could do, I didn't believe I could do. If I look back at my teenage years at something where I wish somebody had given me some mentoring, it would have been in the area of demanding that I do some of the things that I had convinced myself I couldn't do. I watched two young ladies play the piano. When I hit the age school-wise where band was offered, in my head, trying to figure out how you finger everything, if it's a violin or a trumpet or a piano, I simply said, I can't wrap my head around that, I can't do it. To this day, I wish I could play a musical instrument. I don't, and I know where it started. Many people are naturally fearful. When you teach them how to do what they think they can't do, they remember it for the rest of their life. And there's no place in life where it's too late to start. I've had fun taking a couple of ladies, in this case, reasonably older than I at the time, and saying, you know what? A computer is simply not as intimidating as you think it is. And you look at the look on the face and say, I can't do that. I don't understand that. I'm not even going to embarrass myself by trying that.

And you introduce them to some of the things that are totally intuitive, just a little bitty tiny dose of something that's intuitive. And you see the light bulb come on that says, well, you know, this is a very mysterious thing, and it's very intimidating, but that worked. And you walk away and you say, you know what? That worked experience is infectious. Because if that worked, then who knows how much else will work?

I was reminiscing about the days in Columbus, Ohio. We had a hoard of teenagers, and we were in a very heavily populated church environment. Ohio churches were large. Columbus had 700 members. Cleveland probably had more between their churches. The single congregations in Dayton and Youngstown were 500 to 600 apiece, and the youth population was large. This was the day of Y.O.U. sports, national activities, and Columbus was a powerhouse in track and field. In fact, Columbus absolutely clobbered everyone in track and field. And what was interesting was they didn't do it because they were better athletes. In fact, when it came because there were progressive levels, you had a district tournament where every church competed against every other church. And in that area, Columbus had no one that even came close to them. But then you took the best athletes in all the events. You put them together, and you made a regional team. And when you put a regional team together, Columbus was not inordinately represented. In other words, there were not a larger group from Columbus, and there were the other groups. We absolutely walked all over everyone else at the district level for one simple reason. We made every single solitary teenager in the church come out to track practice. And you had a whole slew of them to settle. I can't do that. I don't know how to do that. You could see it written, I'm not going to make a fool of myself. I'm not going to embarrass myself. And we simply said, you don't have an option. Every single teenager here is going to do station work, meaning you are going to jump, you are going to run, and you are going to throw. Every one of you. And so you are all going to jump the long jump, you are all going to run the 100 yard dash, you are all going to high jump, and you are all going to throw the shot put.

The delight was to watch as somebody went through the stations, and you saw for the first time in the eye the sense that, I can do that. When you watch somebody that had absolutely no clue, for instance, that they could throw a discus, because that's a coordination item. It's not a strength item as much as its coordination. And you see some gangly kid get up there, and it goes out nicely. And when it lands, they turn around, and there is this funny grin on their face that says, that worked.

And you said, I've just got a discus thrower. Now it's just a matter of training. We had the infection. Now we just have to provide the training. Columbus absolutely dominated in track for that one reason only. We made every single team prove to themselves whether they could or couldn't do something, and most of them proved that they could. We then simply fostered what they had already demonstrated was there. Now I've used teen activities, summer camp, track, a few of these other things. It doesn't matter how old you are or how young you are. The principles that I've named in these four points are as applicable if you're 60. And I did use a 70-plus-year-old lady was my first experience in talking to somebody who said, I can't use a computer. And I thought, oh, you really don't know that you can use a computer. And if we can simply show you one thing that does not intimidate you, we'll spark the curiosity as to what else may be behind that screen that doesn't intimidate me. It's ageless. There is no time where you cannot give courage to people in these particular ways. They all fall into the same category, showing people they're capable of doing something they don't know they're capable of doing. Most people, by nature, simply avoid what they think they can't do, and they rob themselves of tremendous richness in life. As a leader, a secondary that's extremely important is give credit to those who accomplish.

If you're going to build courage, you have to recognize it, and you have to appropriately praise those who do accomplish. We were talking last Sunday in Portland about establishing a teen banquet in Portland. I was talking with Mr. Howard Davis and the youth leaders and the congregation, and they were trying to figure out how to have an annual recognition banquet. And I said, I didn't give them the whole story. I had talked to one member of the group earlier, and we had discussed it. And I just gave them the short version this time. But I moved into a blue-collar area where there were very few people that saw in life a sense of going beyond high school. It was an area that was basic skill manufacturing, and as a result, I was watching my kids come through, graduate from high school, and go into manual labor. We established a recognition banquet every year that recognized the entire range of accomplishments. We had built in the recognition of Y.O.U. activities, so that was a given. If they had received camper awards, camper of the week, or camper of the session awards, we recognized those. If they had awards in Y.O.U., we recognized those. But we went way beyond that. We recognized any legitimate form of academic achievement.

If they were on the school's honor roll, if at graduation they were a salutatorian or a valedictorian, if they were on the National Honor Society. In the state that I was in at the time, the state, because it was not happy with academic achievement levels, in the state, created a state scholar program. It was named by, I won't name the area, but they referred to it as a so-and-so scholar. That was reaching a certain level of academic achievement that would allow you to be recognized in that state as a state scholar. Then, of course, the creme de la creme, the top of the stack, is the National Merit Scholarship Program, either achievement or even candidacy. We recognized all of those. If there were scouting programs and they had merit badges or they had attained certain levels, we recognized those. If there were public service areas where there was legitimate achievement levels established and they were recognized in public service, we recognized those. It was interesting, in the six years that my wife lived in the area, to watch the movement within the congregation among the youth to actually being goal-oriented, an achievement-oriented. What helped is simply watching all of their peers, once a year, in a banquet format, receive recognition for what they had achieved. It was the same situation. I've known him since he was five years old, and I was five years old. If he can do it, I can do it.

Encouragement comes sometimes by nothing more than recognizing what has been done and letting those who see it say, I know this person. They're a normal, average person just like me, and if they can do it, I think I can give it a try.

In the workplace, and of course, the workplace is the least relevant in a church setting, but I will state that in a workplace, you never inspire or encourage anyone who is a subordinate by having them do all the work and then taking all the bows. There's never a time where if you assign someone all the tasks that make something happen, and then you're ready to take all the bows for what did happen, that you will ever give encouragement to anyone who works hard, works diligently, and makes things happen.

Third category in leadership is use control wisely when you're in a leadership position. You know, there is direction, there's control, and then there is Hitlerian control.

Even at my age, I still remember landmark events in life that formed ways of thinking. In terms of control, the first event that I'm cognizant of took place when I was in the fifth grade in terms of the mechanics. We lived in the desert in southern Idaho between Boise and Mountain Home. I've noticed that in the last generation of upgraded maps, they've even erased the name of the community that I lived in off the map. It is no longer there. Last time I took my wife through there to show her where I spent the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade period of my life, there was nothing there. It is nothing but sagebrush and sand and south Idaho desert at this particular point in time. At that time, my father was a railroad telegrapher, and the station master, as was typical in the Union Pacific in the fifties, lived in the station house. The station master was a lady whose seniority was such that she'd been on the railroad many years, and she was her grandmother. She wanted to have her granddaughter come and visit her. Her granddaughter was, I don't know, five years old. Since she had to work all day, even though the residence was in the same building as the office, it's the old typical 1940s, 1950s railroad station, granddaughter couldn't be running in and out from the residence into the station. You're having to take messages from the dispatcher, you're having to hand up orders to the trains as they're coming through, and so she needed a babysitter, and I got hired. But the fact that the residence exit door was the entrance to the office allowed her to constantly be an earshot. And it took me only two to three days of babysitting her granddaughter before I was seriously wondering who was babysitting who. I wasn't sure... Her name was Hattie Allen, so we have a name here. I wasn't sure whether I was babysitting Hattie's granddaughter or Hattie was babysitting me, because if she heard any sound whatsoever that bothered her, she was through the door to find out what was going on. And I think she spent more time in checking out to see what was going on than she spent doing her work in the office. It was a great lesson in life, though. In terms of leadership, if you're going to give it, give it. If you're not going to give it, don't pretend to give it. I was being paid to be babysat was really what it all came down to. And I thought, this is a waste of time. If I'm going to be given a job, I want to do a job. I'd grown up basically on a farm where at least I understood by the fifth grade what responsibility was, and this was not working. This was not responsibility. I was simply keeping this child out of the station, and that was effectively what I was doing. But I was being babysat more than she was.

Make sure those who follow understand what to do and how to do it, then give them as much latitude as you can constructively give them. Make sure somebody knows what it is they're supposed to be doing, and then get out of their way and let them do it.

If you don't do a good job of letting them know what to do, that's your problem, not theirs. But once you've taken the time to constructively guide them in the direction they ought to go, then get out of the way and let them do it. My first part of the day and latter part of the day blend into one another, so I don't remember whether it was in the first part or whether it was over brunch, that the comment was made about farm life.

It may have been made in both. I spend a reasonable amount of my childhood in a farm environment, and I've always been impressed by farm life and the maturity that comes from living on a farm and being responsible for animals, machinery, and chores. There is a phenomenal difference in the maturity of a young person who lives in a world where they are responsible, they have areas of authority and responsibility, and they are held to them. I'm reminded being here and after driving from Spokane down through Kellogg and Wallace and St.

Mary's to here, of the movie, A River Ran Through It. How many of you have seen, I know it's been some time, you know what impressed me as much as anything in the entirety of the movie, A River Ran Through It? A boy this size and his capacity for mature handling of responsibilities and duties. And I looked not just at what he did.

You know, what is done is secondary to demeanor. The demeanor of that, if you get the opportunity sometime to go to a movie rental and rent, A River Ran Through It. Study the young boy's level of maturity way, way past his calendar age. There was a level of steady understanding, confidence of how to do that can be bred in no other way than having done and done successfully and been trusted to do it again.

There's no substitute. You can't raw, raw, raw people into confidence. It doesn't work. It truly comes in that solid, stable, unflinching way by knowing I can do this. I remember my younger brother. I have two younger brothers. This is not my youngest, but my younger. I remember my younger brother, when he was five years old, being stuck behind the steering wheel of the farm truck. His dad and grandpa bucked bales. And grandpa would put it down in the lowest gear and then pull the choke out enough so it would just go, and Ron would sit on a pillow. There was this much room between pedals in his feet and hold onto the wheel, and the instructions were simply, keep it going down the road.

And to watch the grin from here to here about, am I not important? I am really doing something. Well, now as an adult, you could have popped that balloon in a moment. You could have said, look, Squirt, you're not doing a cotton picking thing. The truck's driving itself. You can't reach the pedals. You're too weak to really make any major change in the steering because this is not power steering.

And so basically, you're just there to keep it going. You could have deflated the balloon, but by not deflating that balloon, it's progressive. It's progressive. It simply continues to grow. Use control wisely when you're in a leadership position. Give as much opportunity as is reasonable and sound.

I remember as an adult, when we lived out in the desert in Idaho, there were times I was not the oldest child in the community. I was the second oldest. There were times that my father, as I said, I was in the fifth grade. There were times when my father would simply give me a handful of 22 shells, and he'd give me the 22, and he would simply say, here. And, you know, not a whole lot of them. 12, 15 shells, single shot 22, and he would say, I only had one instruction. I knew that none of the other kids could go with me.

During the heat of the day, the jackrabbits would find a sagebrush to hunker down under and just get out of the sun. So I was out stalking jackrabbits. And he just simply said, don't point the gun toward the station. That was the sum total of my entire instruction. Now, as you went from the station southward, there was no civilization until you hit the Idaho-Nevada border, and there wasn't any civilization on the Nevada side.

So, in other words, there was no problem shooting south. I asked him as a man. I said, you know, when you're a man and you have children, and you look at your children, and I looked at mine, and I said, there is no living way. I'd give you the one of my boys a 22 and a handful of shells. Who knows what would happen? And I said, Dad, explain to me. And Dad was not a heavy explainer.

He just simply said, I knew you were reliable. Now, the only thing that I can attribute that to is the fact that I mentioned earlier. There had been enough farm work. There had been enough responsibility in doing things that the track record had already been done. The track record had already been established. And as a result, it was a matter of saying, this is a show of trust based upon performance already done to simply create greater sense, as we're using the term right now, of courage.

Okay, let's shift out of leadership. We're co-mingling like man as we go along, but let's shift out of leadership and let's shift into parenthood. Because the greatest opportunity to give courage in a lifetime is while you're parenting. You're never going to have an opportunity like that opportunity. A parent has that rare opportunity to impart something that no one else can impart in the way that they can. You know, we've acknowledged in church leadership as pastors and elders, as long as I've been in this church, that the church can never supplant the parent. It's foolhardy to believe it can. Even if the church said we would like to own the kids, it would be a fool's paradise because what you can impart seven days a week is so much more in terms of formation than what the church can with all of its teaching, all of its camps, all of its Sabbath school programs, that there is no comparison.

So the church has never really even tried to go that way. Even the camp program says this is supplementary. We need parents who will do their job. We hope once a year we can supplement their job. That's as fundamental as far as it goes. During the last two years of the Portland congregation, we've had a birth quake.

We have had babies like there is no tomorrow. Now, it's slowed down. We had two new ones a week before last. It's slowed down, but it hasn't stopped. I think we had nine or ten babies last year in a 12-month period. We had 12? Okay. The statistician, unofficial grandmother to some of them, says 12 last year during a 12-month period. And then we've added another...we had two weeks before last. Were there any others in the interim? Anyway, we've been talking in Portland about the fact that, okay, you've got a brand new bundle.

Here it is. What are you going to do with it? And you've got the greatest opportunity on the face of the earth to form a human being. And this is ground floor. So, where to from here? Turn back to Deuteronomy 6. I don't know the degree of accuracy some of the sociological studies actually demonstrate, but it is said in the sociological world, when it comes to the areas of encouragement and discouragement, and I'll use the term that was used when I heard the study, that it takes 10 attaboys, 10 opportunities to tell somebody they've done a job well to equal the emotional power of one you did a stinking job.

So, in terms of how they weigh on the human mind and on the human spirit, that it takes 10, that was a good job, to equal the same power or the same force as one, that was a pathetic job. Now, as I said, I gave you the disclaimer. I'm not a blind believer in all the sociological studies, but I do know, and what resonates true in that regard is discouragement is a whole lot more powerful than encouragement.

So, that's not rocket science. You don't have to be a PhD or anything else to know that you can gut someone a whole lot faster than you can build them up. And the staying power of discouraging comments is a whole lot longer than the staying power of encouraging comments. Now, those things are real easy to understand. Deuteronomy 6, this is where Moses is telling the children of Israel how to generationally build the nation. And he said in verse 6, in these words, which I command you today shall be in your heart.

So, he said internalize them. You've got to make them a part of who you are. Now, when you take something and it becomes a part of your heart, I know I can sit down with any one of you at a table just as a person. Let's say we've got a table of eight, and eight people sit down at the table and they talk conversationally. In an hour's time, I will know what's in the heart of a reasonable number of the people at that table.

Because, as the Bible says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So, I'll hear what you're interested in. I'll hear what really turns you on. I'll hear what makes you excited. I'll hear that because you can't stop, unless you are deliberately intending to do so, you can't stop the natural flow of the way God made you. So, he said, I command you today, and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. Okay, now, once they're in there, meaning this is really what turns you on, how then does it spill down to the next generation?

Well, you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up.

This is the heart and core of parenting.

I have mentioned in a number of child-wearing sermons when I reflect upon my own child-wearing. I have parents. My father died this last year. I have parents. I had parents, since I'll have to use it, both present and past tense, because my mother is still alive, my father isn't, who I knew loved me dearly. I never felt anything but deeply loved by my parents. But in terms of the style in which my father, and I'll focus on my father in regards to verse 7, influenced me. My father was not a teacher.

Now, I'm not advocating this, okay, in terms of, I look at teenage faces and younger faces, and the parents who are your parents. My father simply was not a teacher. In the entirety of the years that I was growing up in the church, and our first exposure was somewhere around 11 to 12 years of age, and we got serious when I was 13. So, seriously practicing began when I was 13 years old. I cannot close my eyes and mentally visualize a single solitary time in my teenage years where my father sat down, opened the Bible, and taught me out of it. It says, you shall teach them diligently to your children. End it right there, okay? That thought ends right there. And an entirely new thought begins following the end.

Talk with them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. My father taught what he believed, and I knew he passionately believed what he believed. At every time where the circumstances of life naturally led to speaking about convictions.

I absorbed my father's beliefs and convictions, not through formal teaching. I absorbed them because at the heart level what he truly believed and what he truly embraced and what he truly thought was right and wrong. He spoke of naturally when he rose, when we sat at the table, when we traveled, and before we went to bed, when it naturally flowed in the circumstances of conversation.

I was encouraged to live this way of life, not by classroom teaching, which, as I said, this is a good thing. The Bible is advocating both. I simply, in this particular case, am passing on to you the power of truly believing something at the heart level and the encouraging and infectious power it has to those who are around you. Colossians 3, verse 21, makes a statement about something that we as parents should not do. Sometimes in life it's seeing the heads and the tails of the coin that makes it a little easier to understand. So, Colossians 3, verse 21, says, fathers do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged. Ever been around parents that enjoy teasing? You ever been around parents that don't know when to stop? Teasing is great as long as you know the boundaries. It's very discomforting to watch a parent who teases a child into wrath and then uses parental power to say, you're out of bounds. That's an illustration of doing what Colossians says, don't do. Don't go that way.

We stereotypically look at parents from 100 or more years ago as sterner, straighter-laced, straighter-faced, firmer in their ways than they are today. Not always so. It's interesting when you go back to some of the biblical tools that are 100 years old that the comments that are made in those are just as soft and tender-hearted as they would be today. The language may be different. James and Fawcett Brown, that's going on a century old as a commentary, when it writes about Colossians 3, verse 21, says, it is a different Greek verb, therefore translated here, irritate not.

And it goes on to explain how you would irritate a child. It says, you do this by perpetual fault-finding. The comment I made earlier about takes 10 attaboys to equal 1. That was a lousy job. Here's a 100-year-old commentary regarding Colossians 3, verse 21. What it is saying is, don't irritate your children. Don't do that as a practice. And how do you irritate them? Well, by perpetual fault-finding. It says, by perpetual fault-finding, children are discouraged or disheartened. So now that you can strip the courage out of a child by fault-finding.

I appreciate the final short sentence, a broken down spirit is fatal to youth. A 100-year-old comment, fact that comment is even older than that because Jameson Fawcett and Brown are quoting an earlier Biblical scholar. Couldn't have said it better and more succinctly, a broken down spirit is fatal to youth. Irritate not by perpetual fault-finding because it strips a child of courage. And the product is a broken down spirit, which if it lives into adulthood, can leave a ruin. Robertson's word pictures gives an additional comment on this that I thought was also good. Robertson's word pictures takes apart the Greek and it literally takes it right down to its grammar and its tense and its voice. And it says here, when it says provoke not, the essence of what it's trying to say here is, do not nag at your children as a habit. If you want the essence of what it means to provoke not, it says here it means to nag as a habit. I'm a people watcher. One of the fascinating things I see with people, and one that I have to watch out not to appear to be a stalker, if I'm at a grocery store and I watch at times, I'll watch a woman come in with somebody in a grocery cart. And I look at this little urchin in the grocery cart and it says, written all over the faces, totally out of control, don't know what control means, don't care what control means. And they come in the door and from the minute they come in the door, her mouth is going like this. Put that down. Stop. Leave that alone. Smack. How many times have I told you? They go along, buy the food. The kid reaches out, puts it, put that back. Leave that alone. She turns the other way, grabs it again, puts it back. It goes all the way to the checkout counter and as they leave the checkout counter, the same yammer is going on as they head for the car and you think this thing never stops. But what's fascinating is to watch the child. There's nobody home. The child says, I hear this all the time. It means absolutely nothing. It isn't worth the time it takes for her to say it. She's not really serious. This is meaningless. You've got this child that is totally, completely turned off because of this constant, endless nagging.

And they want a fascinating thing to watch. And you watch the parent and they're totally clueless. I walk along and I think, lady, you can't be that clueless. And you come to either the next aisle. Honestly, you can't be that clueless. You go through the checkout stand and head for the car and you say, I guess they're that clueless. They're that clueless.

Robertson's said what is being talked about here is depriving. It uses the term, privative. But the Greek word, athumos, which is the word that's mentioned here, is a privative of spirit or courage. So it simply means to deprive somebody of courage by constantly haranguing, constantly yammering, constantly nagging.

There's no greater return on investment than to give courage to a child all that child's life. And then to watch it blossom in adulthood.

As they matriculate, as they graduate from your home, as their commencement takes place when they commence life, to watch them now standing on their own two feet and begin to blossom, you have the greatest reward that life can give you. You have given courage to a child that will carry them through adulthood.

Conversely, there are a few things more hollow than a dispirited child. When you teach a child they're worthless, the sad thing is they won't disappoint your expectations. That is the saddest thing of all. If you convince them long enough they'll never amount to anything, they won't disappoint you. They will amount to zero.

What happens in the life of a person who can never perform well enough to receive praise? They learn to perform to expectation. You expect me to fail? I won't disappoint you.

Parenting is that opportunity, if you base it on Deuteronomy 6 verse 7. It's that ability to take what is inside of you at the spirit level. I mean spirit in the whole sense of what God has given you through the Holy Spirit to the high school or college term of Spirit Day, where the cheerleaders go out and try to encourage, try to pump up spirit. So it's all the way from what you're enthused about to what at the spirit level you're convicted of. As you pass that along, as you impart it, you leave a tremendous legacy.

There's an effect of living in the day that we live in. Our generation is described in 2 Timothy.

No, I'm not going to go there. I'm not going to go there because I sat down and looked at my watch. We're going to forget there. Okay.

I've told you about leadership and I've told you about parenting. Turn back to Exodus chapter 34. Exodus chapter 34.

In this whole thing of encouragement, over time people have seen God as a parent and they usually see God through the filter of their own parents. If they had great parents, they see God as a loving Creator God, and if they've had parents the otherwise they see God as somebody they have difficulty with. I've counseled over the years with a number of people who say, I have a hard time praying our Father because of the feelings I have toward my own physical Father. Then you have to go to work to try to find a way to separate God in Heaven from a physical human being who is supposed to model for that person the God that they can't see. That's a tough one. It's a real tough one when the only thing we physically have is a genetic parent to set the model for somebody who's invisible and they have blown it so badly, people feel, I can't approach the invisible God. In Exodus 34, that invisible God says, well, here's who I am. If you really want to know me, God has given His name a number of times, but here was the greatest in all the Old Testament, here's the greatest statement from God's mouth of who He is. And of course, God is one who names things what they are. So the Lord descended, verse 5, Exodus 34, in the cloud, stood with Him, that's with Moses, and He proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before Him and proclaimed. So God says, here's who I am. This is who I am. The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children, the third and fourth generation.

So He gave both sides, but He said, you need to understand, I am merciful, I am gracious, I am long-suffering, I abound in goodness and truth, and I keep mercy for thousands, forgiving in iniquities and transgression and sins. This is who God is.

Arguably, the most quoted Scripture in the entirety of the Bible in the Protestant world, when kids in Sunday school learn memory verses, would be John 3.16.

Did you ever read John 3.17?

If you want to see a piece of encouragement, just go to John 3. Verse 16 is great, no problem with it. Verse 17 is even better.

In verse 16 it says, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Verse 17 says, You need to understand why this whole thing is going on in the first place. He said, You need to understand that God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He said, You need to understand the whole basis of the relationship. What I have to do, I have to do. Your Bible tells you what I have to do. But if you want to know where I come from, this is where I come from. I did not create you, nor the plan which you are a part of, for the purpose of smashing you. That wasn't what the plan was about.

I didn't send my Son into the world to condemn the world.

He went on to say, The world does a great job of condemning itself. That's the next couple of verses. He said, That isn't what I'm here for. Sometimes people fixate on the most negative, dire, short, four- to five-year period in the entirety of all the Bible, called the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord, to the exclusion of understanding all the rest of what God is about. Here in John 3, 16, and 17, He says, This is what I'm about. Not that long ago, we kept Passover, and when we did, we read a series of Scriptures. And all of those Scriptures, the disciples, truly came to begin to wrap their heads around when Pentecost arrived. They didn't get it. They got some little bits and pieces of it before Pentecost. They really began to get it once Pentecost arrived. You see, the day that we will keep tomorrow is a phenomenal day of encouragement.

When you look at men who said, When Christ was condemned, it's all over. I go fishing. When Christ rose up in Galilee, they're all back on the boats casting nets. It was great knowing Him while we knew Him. He's gone. Time to go back to what we were doing. And then you see the men following the day of Pentecost who get thrown in jail and are absolutely tickled pink to suffer for their calling. So much so that even those around them are infected by it. Pentecost was a pivotal point in the world of encouragement. Now, Christ knew that heading into it. They didn't know it until they were looking back in the rearview mirror at it. The nature of God is God sees before things ever come, and man looks in his rearview mirror and says, Oh, that's what I just passed. Wow! Never saw it. Now I can see it as it's going the other way. Let's close, brethren, by looking at a series of Scriptures, John 14 to 16. I'll just read them to you. When they finished the bread and the wine and the foot washing before they left, Christ said, You know what? I've got a lot of things to say to you. I don't have time to say very many of them. I've really wanted to share this time with you. And here was the nature of what he said to those men. Men who, within hours of what he was saying, would be totally discouraged. Men who would have all run opposite directions. Only Peter and John had enough chutzpah to stay close. And Peter, of course, all full of himself, didn't really understand until Christ said, You know, before the rooster crows, you will have denied me three times. And when the rooster crowed, Peter realized that when somebody tried to put him on the spot, he even went back to the old, basic, carnal, bottom line Peter. Why, blankety, blank, blank, blank. I never heard of the man. Pushed him, and he tried to be polite. Pushed him again, the veneer came off. Pushed him the third time, and he was rough, old Peter. He swore at the person. And I don't know what their four-letter words were in that day and time. I wouldn't repeat them if I didn't know them, but it was blankety, blank, blank. I never heard of the man. I get off my case.

Christ, while they were not even with it, was saying, Look, let's dip in. Verse 12, chapter 14. Most assuredly I say to you, He who believes in me, the works that I do, He will do also, and greater works than these He will do, because I go to my Father. He said, You're going to do greater things than I've done. Verse 18. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. I'm not going to desert you. I'm not going to abandon you. I'm not going to leave you completely destitute and without help. Verse 21. He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is He who loves me, and He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love Him and manifest myself to Him. Verse 23. He says, If anyone loves me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love Him, and we will come to Him and make our home with Him. He said, I love you very dearly. My Father loves you very dearly. We know that this is reciprocal, and we are not going to let loose of it. Chapter 15, verse 15. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his Master is doing, but I have called you friends for all things that I heard from my Father. I've made known to you. He said, You're my friends. You call me Master. You call me Lord. You call me the Son of God, and all of these things I am. But I want you to understand something. With all that I am and all the power that I have, I am not up here, and you are down here in my way. You are my friends. Chapter 16, verse 7. I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I depart, I will send him to you. Verse 13, he says the same thing. However, when he in the Spirit of Truth has come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak and he will tell you the things to come.

Verses 26 and 27 of the same chapter. In that day, you will ask in my name, and I will...and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you, for the Father Himself loves you, because you've loved me, and that believe that I come forth from the Father. Because you don't have to go through me. You're going to be able to talk to the Father because He genuinely cares about you. I'm giving you access that people have never had before.

And in verse 23, if we back up just a few verses, he says, And in that day you will ask me nothing. Most assuredly I say to you, whatever you ask, the Father in my name, He will give you. In this period of time, following the Passover emblems, as Christ was already looking, He was already thinking Pentecost, and the aftermath of Pentecost. And He was saying, fellows, you don't really know what's happening right now. You're not expected to. You don't know what's going to happen when we leave this room. You don't really realize what you're going to do. You don't know about the resurrection three days later. You don't know what's going to happen if you tarry in Jerusalem like I tell you to. But I want to give you the encouragement to say, hang in there, understand that I am with you. I will not abandon you or leave you destitute. I am giving you access directly to the Father so that you can talk to Him. I want you to know that He cares as much about you as I do, and we are with you all the way. I am going to make sure, because I have to leave, that you actually have help that is superior to what you have had when I've been present.

I'll give you an instructor. I'll give you a helper. I'll give you a teacher, and I'll give you an encourager. God has loved us, those sitting here in this room, in all that He has called in all parts of the world, presently and previously, literally from the beginning of creation. He's called us to a destiny beyond our wildest imagination, and as Pentecost focuses our attention, He has provided us all the necessary help to reach it successfully.

How in all the world, or really, how in all the universe can you be any more encouraging than that?