Don’t Forget to Be an Encourager!

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Jump-Starting the Battery"

"Saying 'Yes, Lord" When Life Is Hard"

"Your Husband and the Cheerleader"

"Encouraging Your Husband to Lead" 

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Dannah Gresh: Last month, I actually got excited about watching baseball with my husband! He’s a Phillies fan. And if you don't know, Philadelphians aren’t known to be encouraging fans. They’re hecklers . . . and proud of it. They’re hard on their players. But all that changed last month!

Trea Turner, the team’s shortstop, had been well-deserving of the heckles. His performance was . . . lazy, lacking what was expected. He wasn’t getting any hits.

But a local radio personality posed the question, “What would happen if we actually encouraged him?” And on August 4 they did. As Turner stepped up to bat, the fans went wild with a standing ovation . . . before even one pitch!

Turner recorded one hit in the game and launched a three-run homer the very next day. That encouragement seemed to break something!

Hmm, I wonder what could happen if you encouraged someone you expect more from?

Hi, I’m Dannah Gresh. Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

On our last episode, we began studying 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 14. It says, “Admonish the idle . . .” We weren’t talking about baseball, of course, but of our spiritual walk. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth expounds on this verse.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Somebody who is unruly, who is idle, they need to be admonished. Sometimes you need to get in somebody’s face—and sometimes we need somebody to get in our face—and say, “Look, you are wrong. Your lifestyle is not emulating that of Jesus.”

Dannah: Last week we explored practical ways to do just that—to get in the face of someone who is being slothful or lazy. Now, if like a Philly fan you really love “admonishing the idle,” today I have a caution for you. Because right after Paul tells us to do that, he follows it up with another command: encourage the fainthearted.

Nancy: That word “fainthearted” is a compound word in the Greek that literally means “small-souled.” Their soul has shriveled up; they’ve become fearful and weak and timid and faint.

You don’t come to that person with these strong words of exhortation; you come to that person with encouragement and comfort and help.

Dannah: We are about to learn how to do that. Nancy will show us more about encouragement from the Word of God. We’ll also hear from a woman who was encouraged by her sisters in Christ just when she needed it. 

Monica Hall: They cried with me. It was their tears that ministered to me; that they were carrying that for me so deeply in their own hearts. 

Dannah: And you’re going to discover that the person who most needs encouragement might be living right under your own roof!

Bob Lepine: I will try to look confident because I think I’m supposed to look confident. But it’s really just a show.

Robert Wolgemuth: So if we could take a poll of the men who are listening right now and say, "How many of you are afraid of your wife?" there would be hands in the air—everywhere.

Dannah: We are in a month-long quest to explore 1 Thessalonians 5:14. It says: “And we urge you, brothers [and sisters are included], admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”

How do we encourage the fainthearted? Let’s begin by hearing from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth from the Revive Our Hearts series, “Encouraging One Another.”

Nancy: Is encouraging one another just about giving people compliments and praise, saying nice things to them, trying to help them feel better about themselves? Well, as you’re going to see, this word holds in it a lot more than that.

This ministry of encouragement I think is one of the most needed ministries in the church today, and it's one of the ones that a lot of people never sign up for. 

Encouragement . . . this is a means of giving and receiving from one another courage—to encourage. It’s giving hope and confidence and comfort in the Lord. We’re going to talk about distinctively biblical encouragement. What does that look like? What does it mean?

Now, encouragement to our souls is like oxygen is to our brains. It’s oxygen. Encouragers are energy-giving people. And I might say, on the other hand, that discouragers suck the energy out of a group, or out of a home, or out of the church. They’re energy-draining people.

But when you see an encourager—they infuse grace and hope and life and comfort into the atmosphere around them.

Now, you might know somebody who seems really upbeat and optimistic, and you think, Well, they don’t need encouragement. Everyone needs encouragement. Even the apostle Paul, the great apostle Paul who founded all those churches, who wrote all those books of the Bible, who had all those revelations from God, he needed human encouragement.

Remember early in his Christian life—you read about this in Acts chapter 4—how he was facing some people who couldn’t believe that he had really been converted, and Christians weren’t sure. They were looking at him with skepticism, and they said, “Is his testimony real? This is the one who persecuted the believers.”

And God sent a man along—remember what his name was? Barnabas—to come alongside Paul and to encourage him and to encourage others about Paul. In fact, Barnabas was called “The Son of Encouragement.” That’s the name he was given.

How would you like people to think of you as “The Daughter of Encouragement, A Woman of Encouragement"? Wouldn’t that be an incredible way to be known? I’ve known some people like that. As I’ve been working on this series, I want to become a woman like that, a woman of encouragement.

Throughout his life and ministry, the apostle Paul found encouragement, he found comfort in godly relationships and friendships, in partnerships with like-minded servants of the Lord. They came together around a common goal, a common mission, a common calling.

Toward the end of his letter to the Colossians, Paul sends greetings to a handful of dear friends, including these three: Aristarchus, whom he called “my fellow prisoner;” John Mark, whom you remember was the one who earlier had deserted Paul on their first missionary trip, and he sends greetings from John Mark, one of his close friends at this point; and then a man who went by the name of Justus.

He says then in Colossians 4, verse 11, “These [these three] are the only Jews among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have proved a comfort to me” (NIV). There’s that word. Some translations say, “an encouragement to me.”

John Mark had not been an encouragement early on, but by now he had become an encouragement to Paul. So he needed these people around him.

That word “comfort” actually used in Colossians 4 is a little different word, but it’s similar to the other times we read about comfort or encouragement. It’s the word that looks like our English word “paregoric.”

Do you remember paregoric? There are some of you old enough to remember. I understand it’s come back in recent years, but when we were kids, this was a medicine. It was often for children if you had an upset tummy or a sore throat. It’s a soothing medicine. It soothes. It brings consolation. It helps irritations—an irritated tummy or an irritated throat. Paregoric . . . you can buy it in the stores today.

That’s very similar to the Greek word where Paul says, “these men were a comfort (an encouragement) to me (they soothed me).” Paul had a lot of things in his life that did not soothe him—like being stoned, shipwrecked, hungry, rejected, and fought against. But he said these men were paregoric to him. They soothed his sometimes upset tummy or heart or mind. They were an encouragement to him.

Paul often felt alone in the work, and he needed other like-minded believers to encourage him. In 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, Paul says,

Timothy has come to us from you and brought us good news about your faith and love. He reported that you always have good memories of us and that you long to see us, as we also long to see you. Therefore, brothers and sisters [speaking of the Thessalonians], in all our distress and affliction, we were encouraged [we were comforted] about you through your faith (vv. 6–7 CSB).

Here’s Paul in some hard places, but he received news, he received this report from Timothy—we’ll talk more about that later in this series—and he says, “We were comforted, we were encouraged because of your faith.”

Listen, you can bear with distressing circumstances if you have some people around you who are encouragers, who bring grace, who infuse courage and faith and hope into your heart.

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth reminding us of the power of encouragement. Nancy mentioned how easy it is for pastors' wives to grow discouraged.

Monica Hall knows all about that from personal experience, as we’re about to hear. But she also has seen the need to encourage others in her role as a Revive Our Hearts Ambassador. What does an ambassador do?

Monica: Connect, encourage, and equip leaders to build up the body of Christ. We want to reach out to leaders in the church, whether that’s a pastor’s wife or a women’s ministry leader in title (a lot of them don’t have that title, but they’re organizing women’s ministries in their churches).

We want to do just that, just encourage them, be that safe place for them. Sometimes we’re able to equip them with resources. The ministry is so generous to give us resources to give to them. Sometimes we’re just able to gift them with the new Bible study that just came out or at least point them to it. 

Dannah: When Monica became an Ambassador and started encouraging pastors’ wives, she didn’t realize she would enter a season of needing that very same kind of encouragement. A few years ago, Monica’s church went through a season of conflict.

Monica: My husband was a pastor, and there were just some hard things going on there. We didn’t know if he was going to be asked to leave or if we were going to have to resign. I just felt very isolated, very alone, very hurt. 

Dannah: Around the time Monica was going through pain at church, another sad chapter was developing at home.

Monica: I have six children, and we had always wanted to adopt. We were at a place that we felt like we were ready to do that. My youngest child was three at the time, I think, or four. The Lord led us to embryo adoption.

Dannah: When couples undergo fertility treatment, they sometimes leave behind embryos that remain frozen. Monica and her husband had a strong sense of conviction that these embryos needed to be brought to term and given a family. They felt called to adopt two of these embryos and spent two years raising the needed funds.

Monica: It’s a grueling process, physically, for a woman who goes through that, and so we did. The embryos were transplanted in November of 2017. We did two, and I miscarried those. I’d had two miscarriages prior to that, but this one was just harder, it was different.

You know, I’d been walking with the Lord for years at that point; I’m a pastor’s wife. But it just took me to a place I hadn’t been before, to where I was questioning everything because I was so puzzled by why God had led us down this path, called us to this—which we firmly believed—and then to not let these babies live.

I didn’t understand the point in why we had to go through that. My body didn’t recover well from it, so I was experiencing physical problems that I wouldn’t have been experiencing if we hadn’t done it. It was a financial strain for us to do that. And I just had this longing for adoption—that was our heart—for those babies I had lost. I was angry. 

Dannah: As a Revive Our Hearts Ambassador, Monica had supported discouraged pastors’ wives in the past, but now she felt like she had nothing to give.

Monica: I just had no capacity to do that, and my Ambassador sisters, they “ambassadored” me at that time. My birthday was in that same season, and Angela had texted or called and said, “Can we video chat?”

Dannah: Angela Temples is the National Field Director for the Revive Our Hearts Ambassador program.

Monica: I didn’t know it, but she had contacted several others of the Ambassadors and asked them to join in, and they just prayed for me. (That was over Zoom. We weren’t together; we were all spread out.) I had prayed my whole life for godly friends. My whole adult life, I just struggled finding . . . I mean, we moved frequently with my husband’s ministry, so that was part of it. 

But with the Ambassador program, I didn't expect that aspect of it. I don’t think any of us expected what it has turned into, but that’s where God answered that prayer. And so, I’m walking through the hardest season in my life, and honestly just questioning God: “I don’t even know if You love me. I don’t know if it’s true that You’re good. I don’t know if I even want to do this anymore!”

They “held my arms up” on a day they didn’t know it was a hard day. I would get a text from one of them. They cried with me when I lost my babies. People didn’t understand; a lot of people don’t place that as an actual human life. So people would say, “I’m sorry it didn’t work out.” 

But they cried with me. It was their tears that ministered to me; that they were carrying that for me so deeply in their own hearts. That’s what they did for me, but that’s what our Ambassadors long to do. At that season, I was the lonely pastor’s wife that we’re called to reach out to.

Pastors’ wives are so lonely, in a lot of cases, and they’re carrying such burdens. We as Ambassadors, our hearts are just to help them carry whatever it is that they’re carrying. And that’s what they did for me. You know, that was my role, but I couldn’t do it right then; I needed them to do it to me. 

And that’s what they did to me. They are my dearest friends to this day, and I will forever be thankful for God calling me to this program. Now I’m in a better place. God has done so much work in my heart. We’re at a new church, and He’s blessing that.

Somebody said this morning, “It’s like you stepped out of the woods into the sunshine!” And that’s what I feel like. Now I’m so eager to finally be able to do the work that He’s called me to do and to pass that on to other women’s ministry leaders or pastors’ wives.

You can’t confide in people in your church all the time. We can be that for them. We can be a safe place. They don’t have to be afraid to tell us things about church members because we don’t know those ladies, but we can pray for them. I’m excited to do that for others the way it was done for me.

Dannah: Wow, what an amazing picture of what we read about in 1 Thessalonians 5:14, “Encourage the faint hearted.”

If you’re in ministry and you could use some encouragement, I hope you’ll reach out to Revive Our Hearts and see if we have an Ambassador in your area. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com/Ambassadors. 

You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh.

So we’ve seen that in our churches, a lot of women go through emotional valleys, and they feel fainthearted. They need our encouragement.

But if you’re married, don’t forget, your husband gets fainthearted too . . . even if he’s not showing it.

Bob Lepine: No matter how confident we may appear, we guys are insecure, and we have self-doubt. 

Dannah: This is Bob Lepine. He gave this message at one of the True Woman conferences. He titled the message, “What Your Husband Wishes You Knew about Being His Wife.”

Bob: You’ve just got to know, we know we’re supposed to look confident, and there are some things where we feel pretty confident and pretty secure, but don’t let that fool you into thinking we’re confident and secure about all the assignments we face or all the things we’re asked to do.

When I’m asked to do something like this, to come and speak, I don’t get very nervous. I’m fairly confident. I’ve done this a lot. I’m comfortable doing it. It’s worked out most of the times I’ve done it. So I’m usually comfortable.

Mary Ann will say, “Are you nervous about this afternoon?”

I’ll say, “No, I’m okay. I’m pretty confident about that.”

Now, if there’s a home improvement project, I will try to look confident because I think I’m supposed to look confident. And because, if I’m pulling stuff out of the box and going, “I have no idea what I’m doing,” I’m just afraid that Mary Ann’s going to (A) think I’m not much of a man if I can’t figure out how to put a ceiling fan up, and (B) be there hovering around me the whole time, double checking my work, and I don’t want that. [Laughter.]

So I will appear confident in some of these things, but it’s really just a show. It’s a pretense, because I think I’m supposed to appear confident.

There are some things that, as men, we feel like we’ve got to do well to qualify as men.

There are things we think we’re supposed to be confident about, and you just need to know that underneath it there is some insecurity. So be kind to us. Be kind, alright?

Dannah: Be kind. Do you struggle with that as much as I do . . . sometimes in my own home? Ouch! One way to live out 1 Thessalonians 5:14, to encourage the fainthearted, is just to be kind.

But so often, instead of giving our husbands encouragement, isn’t it easy to discourage them instead? To make them feel more fainthearted? Here’s Robert Wolgemuth.

Robert: So if we could take a poll of the men who are listening right now and say, “Alright, all cards on the deck! How many of you are afraid of your wife? How many of you want to do everything you can to keep her from reacting—or could we say ‘overreacting’—in certain situations? And how often do you not tell her the full truth because you’re afraid of that response?”

Nancy: Wow!

Robert: There would be hands in the air—everywhere.

Nancy: You think a lot of them?

Robert: A lot of them!

Dannah: My husband, Bob Gresh is here to chime in.

Bob: I see two things that are happening there. One is that, many times, wives are the more spiritual of the two in a relationship. They might read the Bible more; they generally listen to Christian radio more; they generally buy more Christian books.

Men think they lack spiritual authority because they’re not reading the amount of books, listening to the amount of Christian radio, going to the amount of conferences, and so they are not as confident about their spiritual authority in the home.

Robert: Yeah. Boy, I understand that! I married Nancy Leigh DeMoss, and she’s known around the world as an expert on Scripture!

Bob: Absolutely!

Robert: Okay, so I’ve taught Sunday school for a bunch of years and written a few of books . . . The reason why that wasn’t problematic was my wife’s attitude about what she knew. You could be married to a person who lords it over you because she does know more. She’s in more Bible studies, she spends more time in the Word (that’s no excuse for a guy, right?).

But a woman’s attitude about that in the presence of her husband is critical. In fact, the reason why she has all that information is to be more humble, to be more gentle, to be more kind (fruits of the Spirit), not to be an instructor, stand up, turn the microphone on, pull the podium out and let him have it!

Dannah: Several years ago, Vikki Rose was convicted that she had been doing this—letting her husband Bill have it!

Vicki is the author of Every Reason to Leave and Why We Chose to Stay. Here’s what the process of repentance looked like for her.

Vicki Rose: I memorized Ephesians 4:29: “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of my mouth but only what is helpful.” I prayed it every morning. I still pray it, “Lord, help me to say words that will bless my husband.” So I worked my way through this Bible study, and I really found freedom from this critical spirit that I had toward my husband. I was blind to it before that. I was miserable, but I was also making him miserable. I set a terrible example for my children.

After coming to this point of going to him asking for forgiveness, I started to live differently. I started to not just choose gratitude, but to say, “Okay, I am not allowed to complain again about anything. Not the weather. Not what my husband’s tie looks like. Nothing. I’m going to wake up in the morning. "This is the day the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. I will give thanks in all circumstances."

What’s happened is that God has really changed my heart, not just my outward words. But I have a new respect and honor. I honor. I do honor my husband, and am just kind of an awe about him, and that comes from the Lord. I believe God blesses when we try to do what Scripture says. He definitely blesses it and gives us the ability, the power to do it, because it’s not me.

Dannah: Kimberly Wagner is the author of Fierce Women. She’s also seen her need to rely on the Lord in this area.

Kimberly Wagner: Well, it’s His grace when we humble ourselves before Him and cry out, “I need Your help. I can’t be this in myself. I’m a destructive fierce woman. I want to live for myself. I want to be mean. I want to make him feel like an idiot, in myself. But when I see the ugliness of that through the mirror of God’s Word and see the beauty of Christ, that’s really what I want. And so I cry out for help from God, which is asking for His grace. And that’s the power to live out the Word. It’s not in myself.

Vicki: Right. But I also see the destructiveness in how it deflated my husband and at the end of the day, who was going to encourage him if it’s not his wife, me.

Kimberly: Yes, the one who knows him best. That’s who he wants to hear that admiration, affirmation coming from.

Dannah: Here’s a final word from Erin Davis, host of The Deep Well podcast.

Erin Davis: I think we get the equation wrong. We think, If we’re strong women and we come at them, then they will be strong men back at us. It will go like this. But I think strong women make soft men, but soft women make strong men. They rise up when we are soft toward them, then they are strengthened. But when we come at them hard, they just shrink from that because we have great men. He’s not going to come back at me if I’m yelling at him or complaining at him. He’s just going to shrink further and further away from me. When I realize I want him to be stronger so I need to be softer, that really turned things on it’s head. That’s so counter-cultural. You don’t hear that anywhere.

Nancy: So what does that look like when you are the more outgoing, you are the Type A, and he’s more reserved? Does that mean you both have to have a personality transplant? How do you live that out?

Erin: I think primarily for me, it means, just because I think it doesn’t mean I have to say it. I can still think it. I just don’t have to say it. My personality is still intact, and when I do talk, I still sound like me. But he is free to pick that parking spot which I would not have picked and there was the other one just closer. But I don’t have to say it.

He married a strong woman, and I think if I suddenly became this mild-mannered version of myself, that that would not be attractive to him either. But for him, especially, the best way for him to experience love from me is for me to compliment him in front of others. So for all those years of me subtly rolling my eyes in front of others or criticizing him in front of others was incredibly hurtful to him. So it just requires me to be a better Erin, a more under-the-Spirit’s-control Erin, not a totally different Erin.

Dannah: And that’s our prayer. Like Erin Davis, Kim Wagner, and Vicki Rose we say, “Lord, would you help us have your power—the power of the Holy Spirit—to live out 1 Thessalonians 5:14 and encourage the fainthearted?

All the helpful conversations we just heard came from episodes of Revive Our Hearts. To see a list of all those episodes and listen to them in their entirety, visit ReviveOurHearts.com and look for Revive Our Hearts Weekend. You’ll find a transcript of this program with links to hear more. 

We are able to bring you helpful conversations like these thanks to listeners who support Revive Our Hearts financially. This week, when you support the ministry with a gift of any size, we’d like to say thanks by sending you Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth’s latest book. It’s all about God’s power over world powers and individual relationships. The only reason we can hope for genuine change is because God is in control. Nancy will help you understand this as you read this book, Heaven Rules.

You can donate by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com, or call 1-800-569-5959, and ask for the book Heaven Rules with your gift of any amount. 

I’m Dannah Gresh, hoping you’ll be back with us next time. After telling us to “encourage the fainthearted in 1 Thessalonians 5:14,” the apostle Paul goes on to say, “Help the weak.” We will focus on that command next time here on Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

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