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The encouragement women (actually) need: Part 2
Christian women are starving for encouragement that leads to greater and deeper love of Jesus. We are exhausted of platitudes and cliches. Examining Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well in John chapter 4, we can glean four biblical truths to encourage all women. In The encouragement women (actually) need: Part 1, we discussed the first two biblical truths: Jesus chases after us and Jesus calls us out of hiding. Here, we will look two more encouraging truths from this passage:
The encouragement women (actually) need: Part 1
Messages targeting Christian women, whether from books, podcasts, or even (some) pulpits, are often confusing, contradictory, and sometimes even simply unbiblical. Sometimes light hearted attempts at encouraging women result in vague, silly, or unintentionally condescending platitudes.
The surprising power of encouragement
Encourage (verb): to help someone feel confident and able to do something; to inspire or motivate.
One of New England’s mission partners, Dean Anderson, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Woodbury, Tennessee, wrote about the power of encouragement: “I recently heard about a man whose paperboy landed the newspaper on the driveway about 75% of the time, and in the wet grass the other 25%. The man wrote a note thanking him for being so accurate and so often hitting the driveway. And from that day forward he never found another newspaper in the grass!” Pastor Dean understands the surprising power of an encouraging word: Recognizing and affirming when people do something well, motivates them to do even better.