They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: “We played happy music on the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a funeral dirge, and you did not cry.” Matthew 11:17

One of the things we need to understand if we are to be an encourager in God’s Kingdom is that being an encourager is not the same thing as being an optimist. An optimist denies the reality of problems in order to feel better. It turns out, however, that optimism doesn’t equip us very well for facing stresses. Studies show that when facing persistent stresses, optimists suffered a lower immune response than the rest of us (even pessimists). In other words, optimism takes a toll on our health because our bodies aren’t designed to live in unreality.

Being an encourager is very different. When we are in partnership with Jesus as an encourager we aren’t denying the reality of problems in order to feel better, we’re trusting in Jesus our overcomer and facing the problems with the confidence that He is at work and we are working with Him in His plan to do exceedingly abundantly more than we ask or think (Eph 3:2). He invites us to live without fear, frenzy, worry, and panic. Jesus is the one who invites us to, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28).

This rest Jesus speaks of is our greatest weapon against all unconstructiveness, discouragement, and disapproval in our lives. In fact, without Jesus’ rest, we really can’t do the encouragement thing very well or for very long. When we rest in Jesus, instead of reacting to the people and events around us we are trusting Him.

Will we still want to be a pleasing aroma to the people around us and light in the dark events around us? Of course. But the sting isn’t there when those people can’t be pleased and when our light fails to adequately dispel the darkness. The sting is gone because our identity isn’t in living up to those people’s approval or success in ministry—it’s in Jesus, and He approves us. 

We can live a life where we never need to react to the fiery darts because we are always responding to Jesus. When we respond to Him and His rest, there is no room for the unconstructiveness, discouragement, and disapproval that the enemy uses to make us feel inadequate and a failure…it shields us from the flaming darts that the enemy’s minions use to control us.

That way, whenever we experience these undesirable attitudes and circumstances through the people and life events around us, it is an opportunity to be led by the Spirit and to intentionally occupy that rest—to literally seize the place that Jesus has set aside for us—to “make every effort to enter that rest” (Heb 4:11). And through these situations we learn to occupy our place in the Spirit through the daily situations we face.