Category Archives: Scripture Memory

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You Are God’s Harvester of Souls

Lost People Matter to God - They Should Matter to Us, Too!

SYNOPSIS: There is a very real harvest of human souls that will spend somewhere in eternity—either heaven or hell. To the Lord of the harvest, the in-gathering of these unsaved souls is his primary “business,” if you will. Moreover, the Lord of the harvest has recruited you and me into his field to do the harvesting of these souls on his behalf. All that to say, since lost people matter that much to God, they must matter that deeply to us as well! As Elton Trueblood observed, winning souls “is not a professional job for a few trained men, but is instead the unrelenting responsibility of every person who belongs to the company of Jesus.”

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // Matthew 9:37-3

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest”

This verse represents a clear view into the compassionate heart of a seeking God, and more than anything, it reveals the compelling core of his very being.

Moreover, Jesus’s words remind us that there is a very real harvest of human souls that will spend somewhere in eternity—either heaven or hell. And being Lord of the harvest, it tells us that the gathering in of these unsaved souls is God’s primary business, if you will.

Finally, it tells us that we are those he has brought into his field to do the harvesting of these souls. In other words, you are God’s harvester!

All that to say, lost people must matter to us because they matter to God!

John 3:16, the most compelling of all the verses in the Bible, is compelling for a reason. It reminds us, in no uncertain terms, that the salvation of the lost, both near and far, both next door and across the ocean, is the driving conviction of God’s being:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Now if lost people matter that deeply to God—enough to send His only Son to die for us—they ought to matter deeply to us as well. And that is a critical issue since, as Christian author Jacquelyn Heasley puts it,

How we believe God perceives people determines how we will respond to them.

Every time you see the face of another human being, you’re seeing a soul that’s so loved by God that he sent his Son to die for their redemption—illegals crossing the southern border, the homeless camping along the interstate, anarchist breaking windows downtown, your next-door neighbor who won’t cut his grass. They matter to a missionary God and crossing international borders as well as our own comfort to reach them with his love is called missions. So, they need to matter deeply to us as well.

So reaching them with the Good News of salvation and the free gift of eternal life is the mission of God that has been assigned to you and me. In that sense, you and I are missionaries—albeit to our next-door neighbor, or to our classmate at the next desk over, or to our coworker in the cubicle next to us.

May I implore you to not only memorize this verse this week but to see it from a whole new perspective from now on? Let it remind you of the ripe harvest all around you. Let it give you a clear and constant view into the very heart of the seeking Father. And let it shake you to the core that God is depending on you to be the gatherer in his great harvest of souls.

May this be the compelling call that transforms you into a Christ-follower who has become intensely missionary. Henry Martyn, the nineteenth-century Anglican missionary to India who died, incidentally, at the age of thirty-one bringing the Gospel to Iran, said:

The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become.”

God help you, and God help me, to become intensely missionary!

Reflect and Apply: Perhaps a prayer today is in order. Ask God to help you to see lost people as he does. Ask him to give you his heart for those who don’t know him and are, therefore, headed for a Christless eternity. And ask him to use you to influence someone to him today. And remember, he hears your prayers.

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All-Sufficient Grace

You Are a Trophy of God's Grace

SYNOPSIS: God’s grace is sufficient—always. It was for the Apostle Paul, who wrote of how God’s all-sufficient grace empowered him even as he endured a season of debilitating weakness: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” And because he loves you just as much as he did Paul, God’s grace will be sufficient for you, too! Whatever your weakness is, God is going to use it to display his strength in you so that in reality, your life will be nothing less than a living, breathing trophy of grace.

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Do you ever wonder why God allows you to struggle with certain things? Perhaps there is a physical limitation from which you have asked God time and again to heal you, but to no avail. Maybe there is a limitation in your ability to learn or speak or a lack of confidence in interacting with others that holds you back vocationally or relationally, and you have desperately sought for God to give you victory over it, but to no avail. Perhaps there has been a struggle with a particular sin over the years, and you have agonized in prayer that God would remove it, but your prayers seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

The Apostle Paul had something like that going on in his life, too. He called it a “thorn in my flesh”. He saw it as a direct assault from Satan. And he prayed intensely that God would deliver him from whatever it was. There has been speculation as to what the thorn in the flesh actually was. Many think it was a physical malady. Tradition tells us that Paul had plenty of physical limitations. Some think the “thorn” was a person who was opposing Paul and his work. Then there are a few who surmise that it was a temptation to which Paul was particularly susceptible. Who knows for sure, but what we do know is that it was really bugging Paul—to the point that he felt frustrated enough to get really serious before God about it.

One of the things I appreciate about Paul is his ability to gain an eternal perspective on things. He was able to re-theologize the negative circumstances in his life to where he could see the mighty hand of God aligning things for his benefit. Such was the case here. If God saw fit to leave this pesky thorn in Paul’s side, then God must have a purpose. And the purpose in this case, he finally figured out, was to keep him from conceit, since throughout his ministry he had been given so many unusual experiences in the supernatural dimension that it would have been easy to become spiritually prideful. Paul needed a little humility, and God gave him a thorn to keep him weak, and therefore humble, in a particular area.

But it wasn’t just humility for humility’s sake that Paul needed, God wanted Paul to come into a much more important understanding of how the Kingdom of God works. God wanted Paul to have a firsthand experience of grace. Paul was the Apostle of grace, so through this experience where all he could do to survive was depend on God’s unmerited favor, he learned to hang on to grace for dear life. Paul learned one of the most important lessons a Christian can ever learn:

Through grace, our weaknesses are parlayed into God’s supernatural strength, which enables us to achieve kingdom success that result in all the credit going to God.

That is why Paul could be grateful for his weakness. That is why he could tolerate his thorn. That is why he could turn his disadvantage into an advantage. Satan afflicted him with a thorn, but God watered it with grace and it budded into a rose. Charles Spurgeon wrote,

Soar back through all your own experiences. Think of how the Lord has led you in the wilderness and has fed and clothed you every day. How God has borne with your ill manners, and put up with all your murmurings and all your longings after the ‘sensual pleasures of Egypt!’ Think of how the Lord’s grace has been sufficient for you in all your troubles.

God’s grace is sufficient—always. It was sufficient for Paul. And because God is the same yesterday, today and forever, and because he loves you just as much as he did Paul, God’s grace will be sufficient for you! Start looking at your thorn from a different perspective. It might hurt a little—or a lot—but God is going to use your present struggle to achieve an eternal glory that will far outweigh any discomfort you feel in the present.

Never pray for an easier life—pray to be a stronger person.  Never pray for tasks equal to your power—pray for power equal to your tasks.  Then doing your work will be no miracle—you will be the miracle.~Phillip Brooks

Reflect & Apply: Offer this prayer, “Lord, thank you that in my weakness, I receive your strength!  Thorns may pierce me, but they drive me to you, and into a deeper experience of your grace than I would have known without them. In my weakness your sufficient grace is revealed, and I am strengthened to overcome.  You bring victory out of defeat in such a way that all the credit goes to you. Therefore I will boast all the more that in my weakness, I am strong in your strength.

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Remember

God Will Never Fail You

SYNOPSIS: If you are going to walk faithfully with God over the course of your life, you will have to get good at remembering. In fact, God himself calls you to practice remembering: Remember the trustworthiness of his character, the certainty of his promises and the track record of his faithful activity in your life. Failure to remember God’s unimpeachable ways in the past will lead to fear and faithlessness when you hit rough roads in the journey ahead. That is why he wants you to practice remembering that he will never fail you, that you will never be alone, that he will always keep his promises and he will always reward your faithfulness!

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // Hebrews 13:62

“So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? … Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

If you are going to walk faithfully with God over the course of your life, you will have to get good at remembering. In fact, God himself calls you to practice remembering: Remember the trustworthiness of his character, the certainty of his promises and the track record of his faithful activity in your life. Failure to remember God’s unimpeachable ways in the past will lead to fear and faithlessness when you hit rough roads in the journey ahead.

God calls us to remember so that we don’t forget. That is why he has gone on record time and again in his Word that he will indeed keep his commitments—all of them. God wants us to know that it is his nature to be faithful. God keeps every one of his promises!  He just can’t help himself. That is why Hebrews 10:23 urges us to,

“Hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful!”

Not only does God want us not to forget him, he wants us to know he will never forget us. God knows who we are, where we are and what we need.  He remembers us, he remembers his promises to us and he graciously acts on our behalf at the proper time. And just about the time we think he has forgotten, he invades our dark days and interrupts our desperate realities with the light of his loving plan—because God remembers!  Isaiah 49:15-16 beautifully reminds us,

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”

Furthermore, God wants us to know that he will never forget our tenacious faithfulness to him. When it looks like God is absent, or that he doesn’t care, and we ruthlessly cling to our trust in the goodness of his character and fidelity of his promise, God’s heart is moved—and he rewards. Isaiah 40:31 says,

“They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

God wants you to practice remembering that he will never fail you, that you will never be alone, that he will always keep his promises and he will always reward your faithfulness! God’s promise to you is that you will never be forgotten, no matter what!

In the 1980’s, Tom Sutherland was taken hostage by radicals in Lebanon and held in captivity for 4 years, mostly in solitary confinement. He existed in deep darkness during that long ordeal. Sometimes he could hear is captor’s radio when they tuned it to the BBC, and Tom would listen intently hoping and praying to hear his name mentioned on a newscast. But he never heard it, so he figured that people at home didn’t even know he was alive, much less imprisoned.

Finally, Tom was released.  He flew back to the US and landed in San Francisco, and he was amazed as he got off the plane to see a huge crowd, people waving signs, cameras, reporters, and TV lights. He turned to his wife and said, “There must have been a famous person on this plane with us.  See if you can spot him.”  And she said, “Tom, they’re all here for you!”  Tom broke down and cried like a baby. And he finally said, “I thought everybody had forgotten me…I felt abandoned…I didn’t think anybody cared.  Thank God I was wrong.”

If you’re feeling forgotten at this moment, thank God you’re wrong!  God remembers you and will fulfill every single one of his promises at the proper time.

So remember not to forget that!

I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain ~John Henry Newman

Reflect & Apply: Use your Bible concordance to search God’s promises to remember his people. Find seven verses, one for each day this week, and reflect on them. That is what one of the ways you can practice remembering.

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Resurrection Monday

If Christ Is Risen, Nothing Else Matters

SYNOPSIS: Jaroslav Pelikan put it profoundly, “If Christ is risen—nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.” What difference does resurrection make? When you take resurrection reality and power out of the church on Sunday and into your world on Monday, transforming faith, unshakeable hope and radical love will be released into your life. Count Bismarck said, “Without the hope of eternal life, this life is not worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning.” But the Bible promises that Jesus’ resurrection is God’s guarantee of your resurrection one day, and that’s something worth celebrating today—even on a proverbial Monday morning!

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // John 11:25-26

“Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.’”

The story is told of Martin Luther, who once spent three days in a deep depression over something that had gone wrong.  On the third day his wife, Katie, came downstairs dressed in mourning clothes. Luther asked, “Who’s dead?”

She replied, “God!”

Luther was offended, “What do you mean, God is dead? God cannot die.”

Kate replied, “Well, the way you’ve been acting I was sure He had!”

That was a wake-up call to the great reformer. Luther snapped out of his funk. And Jesus’ claim to being the resurrection and the life ought to snap us out of our funk, too. Jesus is alive, and because he lives, we will live—forever.  This business of resurrection isn’t just for Easter Sunday, it is for Easter Monday and every other day of the week as well. The resurrection is our living hope (I Peter 1:3)—Sunday through Saturday—and that’s all that matters. I love how historian Jaroslav Pelikan put it,

“If Christ is risen—nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”

What difference does resurrection make? When you take resurrection reality and power out of the church on Sunday and into your world on Monday, transforming faith, unshakeable hope and radical love will be released into your life. Count Bismarck said, “Without the hope of eternal life, this life is not worth the effort of getting dressed in the morning.” But the Bible promises that Jesus’ resurrection is God’s guarantee of your resurrection one day, and that’s something worth celebrating today—even on a proverbial Monday morning!

Apparently in the Greek Orthodox tradition, the day after Easter is devoted to telling jokes. Why? They believe they’re imitating the cosmic joke God pulled on Satan in the resurrection. Satan thought he’d won, that he’d gotten the last word, or so he thought. But God raised Jesus from the dead, and salvation and eternal life became the last word.

When you make the resurrection the foundation of your faith, claim the Risen Savior as the basis of your hope, and invite the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead to be your overflowing source of radical love, come Monday you can laugh in Satan’s face when he throws all kinds of garbage at you. You see, no matter what he does, you win! That is the last word. You are living in the power of the resurrection and the hope of eternity!

Even on Monday morning!

Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. Let him say not merely, “Christ is risen,” but “I shall rise.” ~Phillips Brooks

Reflect & Apply: Charles Wesley wrote what is arguable the greatest resurrection hymn of all, Christ The Lord Is Risen Today.  If you know it, sing it every morning this week before you head out for the day. If you don’t know it, it would be a great one to memorize (look it up on your Internet search engine) along with the memory verse.

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Help Wanted—Help Received

The Throne of Grace

SYNOPSIS: What a difference in life it makes just knowing you have someone in high authority who has your back! You live more confidently, act more courageously, risk faith more often, let go of your failures more easily, seek forgiveness more readily, sleep more peacefully, worry a whole lot less and wake up ready to face the day with more energy than you’ve ever known before. That’s the privilege Christ-followers enjoy—or should—and that includes you!

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // Hebrews 10:15-16

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

What a difference it makes just knowing you have someone in high authority who has your back! You live more confidently, act more courageously, risk faith more often, let go of your failures more easily, seek forgiveness more readily, sleep more peacefully, worry a whole lot less and wake up ready to face the day with more energy than you’ve ever known before.

That’s the privilege Christ-followers enjoy—or should—and that includes you! After paying the price for your sins by dying on the cross, Jesus entered eternity to begin his heavenly ministry as your very own personal high priest. Now, he stands before the Father night and day to represent you. He intercedes on your behalf. He is praying for you. He is rooting you on. He is ready to help!

He understands your fears—he faced some pretty overwhelming stuff when he was here. He understands your temptations—all of them. He faced them, too. He knows your weaknesses—he had to overcome them one by one. He knows what it is like to be rejected, disappointed, persecuted, to go without, to have no place to call home and to be misunderstood. He even knows the heaviest weight a human being carries—the reality of one’s own death. Jesus has been there, done that.

But he did all that for you! That’s why he is a faithful, empathetic high priest. And that is why you can come into the very throne room of Father God with complete confidence, walk right up to that throne and ask him for what you need: Help, provision, healing, forgiveness—whatever.

You can do that because of what Jesus has already done—he paid the price for you to do that. That is now your right, your privilege, and your responsibility. You can also do that because of what Jesus is doing right now—he is standing alongside you with his arm around your shoulder before the Father bringing your case before the only One who has the power and authority to do anything about it.

With Jesus standing by your side, you will be glad to know that help wanted means help received. Now that ought to make a difference in how you approach life today.

If you took the love of all the best mothers and fathers who ever lived—all the goodness, kindness, patience, fidelity, wisdom, tenderness, strength and love—and united all those virtues in one person, that person would only be a faint shadow of the love and mercy in the heart of God for you and me. ~Brennan Manning

Reflect & Apply: Try offering this prayer: “Father, I stand before you in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and ask you to meet all of my needs today.  I pray that you would keep me pure, give me power, ensure my success, and make me useful to your kingdom. Work in me and through me today, and when I lay my head down on the pillow tonight, may I know the joy of having been totally pleasing to you.”

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Hilariously Happy

Designed and Built To Serve

SYNOPSIS: It may sound harsh to say we are commanded to serve, but it is what we were created, and recreated, to do. Christians serve! Like fish swim and birds fly, Christians serve. Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God shaped us to serve him. God was there at the moment you and I were conceived, even before, deliberately engineering us to fulfill that purpose. And when we do, his joy will flow into our souls. We will be hilariously happy.

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // Acts 20:35

In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Jesus was a different kind of leader than the world had ever known.   Instead of taking, he gave—even giving up his very life. Instead of seeking power, fortune and fame, he came to glorify the Father. Instead of insisting his rights as the Son of God, he came to incarnate a God who touched lepers, ate with sinners and healed on the Sabbath. Instead of being served, his very purpose in coming to earth was to serve.

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

So when Jesus—or his apostles who led the early church and formulated the New Testament theology by which we now order our lives—calls us to serve and to give our lives away, we are not being asked to do anything that wasn’t authentically modeled for us. Paul writes in Philippians 2:5-7, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God…took on the very nature of a servant.”

Jesus did that—now he asks us to do the same. We are called to serve, and quite frankly, the call is even stronger than that: it is a command. Jesus said, “I have set an example for you…now do as I have done.” (John 13:13-17)  Paul commanded in Galatians 5:13, “Serve one another in love.”

Now it may sound a little harsh to say we are commanded to serve, but it is what we were created, and recreated, to do. Christians serve! Like fish swim and birds fly, Christians serve! Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” God shaped us to serve him. God was there at the moment you and I were conceived, even before, deliberately engineering us to fulfill his purposes.

Now there are a couple of very important results that occur when we begin to serve our God-shaped purpose. First, we will begin to capture the world’s attention.  Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.” (Matthew 5:16, NLT) Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples: That you have love for one another.”  By our authentic servanthood and sacrificial giving, we become living proof of a loving God to a lost world.

Roy Hattersley, a columnist for the Guardian (U.K.) and an outspoken atheist, laments, “It ought to be possible to live a Christian life without being a Christian.” But after watching the Salvation Army lead several other faith-based organizations in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, he wrote,

“Notable by their absence were teams from rationalist societies, free thinkers’ clubs, and atheists’ associations—the sort of people who scoff at religion’s intellectual absurdity… [Christians] are the people most likely to take the risks and make the sacrifices involved in helping others.  Civilized people do not believe that drug addiction and male prostitution offend against divine ordinance. But those who do are the men and women most willing to change the fetid bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags, and—probably most difficult of all—argue, without a trace of impatience, that the time has come for some serious medical treatment.  The only possible conclusion is that faith comes with a packet of moral imperatives that, while they do not condition the attitude of all believers, influence enough of them to make [Christians] morally superior to atheists like me.”

The truth is, the spotlight never shines more brightly on Jesus than when Christians serve.  “By this, all will know…”

Second, when we begin to serve our God-shaped purpose, happiness is produced in our soul. When we serve we find it is indeed more blessed to give than receive. The word “blessed” here means “hilariously happy.” We are really serving ourselves when we serve others, because health and happiness gets produced in our inner core. You see, there is just something ennobling about serving others—and therefore joy-producing.

Karl Menninger, founder of the famed psychiatric clinic in Topeka, Kansas that bears his name, was once asked, “what would you do if you thought you were going crazy?” Without even having to think about it, he said, “I’d go out and find someone less fortunate to serve.”

Jesus said, “I’ve washed your feet…now go do that for one another.”  Did he mean that literally?  Probably not.  Washing someone’s “barking dogs” back then was akin to getting treated to a hour-long massage in our day. It is the spirit of the foot-washing that Jesus is wanting us to capture. He is wanting us to follow his lead, take the posture of a servant, give our lives away and allow his love to flow to others by doing so.

In return, his joy will flow into our souls.  And we will be hilariously happy.

“Serve God by doing common actions in a heavenly spirit, and then, if your daily calling only leaves you cracks and crevices of time, fill them up with holy service.” ~Charles Spurgeon

Reflect & Apply: Christians serve! Do you? If you want to experience the “hilarious happiness” that Jesus spoke about, find a need and serve in his spirit and in his name.

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The Power of Encouragement

Give Thought To How You Can Encourage Someone

SYNOPSIS: One of the chief reasons we fall into sin, give in to a spirit of fear, shrink back from reaching our potential, or become spiritually hardened is from discouragement—or perhaps more accurately, the lack of encouragement. As believers, we have the awesome potential for making a huge impact in the lives of people simply by living out the Biblical injunction to encourage one another daily. Is there someone whom God is asking you to encourage today? Don’t delay!

Project 52 – Weekly Scripture Memory // Hebrews 10:24-25

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Proverbs 16:24 says, “Kind words are like honey—sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.”

There is nothing quite so powerful as an encouraging person! I love to be around them, and I’ll bet you do, too. They even find ways to have difficult conversations that leave you feeling valued and hopeful. They are life-giving. They are a gift. May their tribe increase.

On the other hand, we all know people who seem to find fault in just about anything. They look on the dark side of everything and infect anyone who is near them with their negativity. And if we’re not careful, we can get pulled into their black hole of negativity, fault-finding and discouragement.

That’s why the writer of Hebrews gave us these two powerful admonitions:

We should keep on encouraging each other to be thoughtful and to do helpful things. Some people have gotten out of the habit of meeting for worship, but we must not do that. We should keep on encouraging each other, especially since you know that the day of the Lord’s coming is getting closer. (Hebrews 10:24-25, CEV)

But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. (Hebrews 3:13)

One of the chief reasons we stumble into sin, surrender to a spirit of fear, slip into emotional depletion, become spiritually hardened and shrink back from reaching our faith-potential is from discouragement—or perhaps more accurately, the lack of encouragement. As believers, we not only have the spiritual responsibility, we have the awesome potential for making a huge impact in the lives of others by simply living out the Biblical injunction to encourage one another daily.

This is especially important since the Enemy of our souls works overtime in his attempt to discourage, diminish and destroy us. But good, old fashioned, Christ-hearted encouragement is arguably the most powerful force for good we can unleash on one another. Just consider the power of encouragement in the following verses:

The mouth of the righteous is a tree of life. (Proverbs 10:11)

The tongue of the wise brings healing. (Proverbs 12:18)

An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up. (Proverbs 12:25)

Death and life are in the power of the tongue. (Proverbs 18:21)

Wow—that is the amazing, life-changing potential in the words you can choose to deliver today. So why not try it! Let me suggest five different approaches you can take to unleash this power upon another:

One, through verbal compliments: Try showering someone with praise for something they have done.

Two, through inspiring words: Speak affirming words to someone because of who they are, the beauty and potential of their character.

Three, through acts of kindness: Encourage someone simply by doing something nice for them, when they least expect it, or maybe even don’t deserve it.

Four, through indirect words: Talk about them behind their back—in a good way. For sure, it will get back to them, and it will be even more powerful coming from a third party.

Five, through written words: Send someone a note of appreciation. It will have the added value of being enjoyed over and over again.

Encouragement—it’s the most powerful thing you can do. So let me encourage you to go for it today!

“Possibly the deepest human need is the need to feel appreciated.” ~William James

Reflect & Apply: This week, write a word of encouragement and send it to someone that God prompts you to bless. Or, before the week is out, use an indirect word of encouragement by telling a third party how much you love, appreciate a mutual acquaintance.