Encourage the hearts of your fellow believers and support one another, just as you have already been doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:11

If we’re going to understand what the Bible means when it tells us to encourage each other, it would be good to do away with a few wrong ideas first. Too often in Christian circles “encouragement” is misused to the point that it isn’t even trusted. So, first of all, it doesn’t mean that we are to flatter one another or speak untruthfully.

Flattery is excessive or insincere praise. Often, flattery is saying nice things to people in order to get something from them. Flattery might look like encouragement but it isn’t. We need to learn to encourage without falling into the trap of praising people in order to win their approval or control their decisions or their lives, or to make them like us, or to manipulate them to do things we want them to do. So encouraging one another doesn’t mean flattering one another.

Likewise encouragement doesn’t mean quoting motivational platitudes to one another. There’s a billion dollar industry producing motivational products. But if a pretty poster with a cute saying is all it took to encourage one another then we’d be pretty shallow people. Biblical encouragement is much deeper and much stronger (and much more honest) than that.

So what is biblical encouragement? There are two Greek words used in today’s verse for encouragement. The first (parakaleo) means to call from alongside. The second (paramutheomai) means to give counsel from alongside. Notice that encouragement has this sense of coming along side of…it means coming close to someone’s life, their struggles, their story. Encouragement isn’t distant, it’s close: it’s the voice that says, I relate, I understand, I care. So encouragement has different voices because what people will need to hear is different in different seasons and different situations.

• To one who is hurting, we come alongside with loving comfort and perhaps warm counsel.
• To the one who stumbles, we gently seek to restore them.
• To the one who is going off in an unbiblical thinking, we call them to the truth.
• Those growing weary, we call to them to keep going, don’t grow weary, finish strong.

Biblical encouragement always points us to God. Where motivational posters point us to look within, to dig deep, find inner qualities of perseverance, determination, courage from inside of us, biblical encouragement has a different focus: it comes alongside to call us to look to Jesus, look to God’s promises, trust in His faithfulness. Because ultimately, both our strength to keep going and our greatest encouragement come from God.

“May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 15:5-6)