Yesterday, I met with a friend who works in the town where Carol and I get away from time to time for some refreshment and reflection.
This friend works in the car business (no surprise there!), but things have been tough for him over the past couple of years. His dealership was "bought out" by a national chain which is headquartered almost 2,000 miles away from the town where we stay.
My friend was downcast yesterday. He had been through a long December and literally said that hardly a "good word" had been spoken in the past 6 weeks. After a few moments of the typical superficial "hang in there" statements, I looked at my friend and told him that I was convinced that God was with him through this ordeal and that He (God) had something better for him if he could simply hang on and trust God through these dark days.
It wasn't much, to be honest. It wasn't anything profound to be sure, but as is often the case, the Holy Spirit used those words to touch my friend's heart.
We talked today and it was like an entirely different person was there. He spoke of opportunities that might be coming his way and of a few other positive things that he had not seen clearly before.
I'm not doing justice to the story but the point is that encouragement is a very powerful gift that all of us can give. When we can step outside of our own circumstance for just a moment and speak directly to someone's heart, specifically a word that injects hope into their situation, it can be like a cup of cold water to someone who's languishing in the dessert.
As Dallas Willard writes, "It matters for all the world to know that life is ahead of us." He means not just eternal life, but abundant life that God promises. This is a deep inner yearning of every human soul and in these difficult times in which we live I've encountered too many people to even adequately recall who have fallen into a sort of hopelessness.
And so it takes an army of folks such as yourself who can bring a word of encouragement, a word of hope, and perhaps change dramatically, if not forever, the heart's disposition of someone who desperately needs to hear the words "you can do it."
Blessings,
Dr. Jay
Amen!
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