Encouragement | Driving Toward the Morning Sun

Rummaging in the basement for a book recently, I found a book I wasn’t looking for: Encouragement: The Key to Caring by Dr. Larry Crabb and Dr. Dan Allender. It was a good find. The authors define encouragement as “the kind of expression that helps someone want to be a better Christian, even when life is rough.”[1] This is the kind of expression recommended in Hebrews 10:23-25 – “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (emphasis mine)

However, if we don’t believe our words matter – that they have real power – we might think such encouragement is pointless. Making a case for the power of our words, the authors cite these Proverbs:

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” – Prov. 18:21
“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs him down, but a good word makes him glad.” – Prov. 12:25
“A gentle tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.” – Prov. 15:4
“Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.” – Prov. 16:24
“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” – Prov. 25:11[2]

In these Proverbs, words have the power of life and death. Power to lift or break a spirit. They have real power to influence others for good, or for bad. They can influence our health, bodily and spiritually. Our words are one of the hardest things for us to control – especially online – and unless we realize their power, we’re too likely to take them lightly. James wrote that taming our tongues may be our biggest challenge, and if we can tame it, we can tame our whole body. (James 3:2-3)

Therefore, pray for more encouraging, more powerful words today, and that God would cleanse our hearts, the spring from which our words come[3], so we may praise Him and provide “sweetness to the soul and health to the body” of those around us.

It won’t happen all at once, and all will stumble, but as the saying goes:

Yard by yard, life is hard!
Inch by inch, life’s a cinch!

[1] Crabb, Larry and Dan Allender. Encouragement: The Key to Caring (1984). P. 10.
[2] Ibid. P. 19. See also Proverbs 25:20 and James 3:5-6.
[3] James 3:11

Many of us have loved The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the rest of the Narnia series of fantasy books by C.S. Lewis for so long we just assume they have always existed and were inevitable. Behind the books, however, is a story of the fight to get them written. The partnership between Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien is widely known, but less known is that one of the reasons Lewis had trouble writing Narnia was discouraging objections from his friends. One said that “the children wearing fur coats since it seemed an endorsement of the fur trade and the murder of all the innocent animals needed to make such a coat,” while Tolkien himself criticized the story for not fitting the conventions of the genre.

In the article linked here and below, Harry Lee Poe, a professor at Union University, shares these stories and more about how Lewis persisted in writing and “experienced a renewal of his imaginative power.” Each of us is a marvelous work of a powerful Creator, designed to represent Him in this world. As you read the article, “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” (Hebrews 10:24). Is there a world of Narnia trying to come out of each of us?

(Estimated reading time 7 minutes)

I discovered this article through fellow blogger Barbara Harper, who posts a weekly list of good reads on Saturday.

https://www.crossway.org/articles/the-birth-of-narnia-and-why-tolkien-hated-it/