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Inspirational Article From
Joanne Lowe

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GOD’S ENCOURAGEMENT TEAM

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.”

Proverbs 17: 22 King James Version

If you have ever watched the family program “Mary Poppins”, you have heard Julie Andrews sing “just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”. If ever we needed someone to care about us and an encouragement team of God’s children with heaping spoonfuls of sugar, which is the unconditional love of Jesus, to help the terrible tasting medicine of criticism and sarcasm go down, it is now.

When we are constantly criticized and constantly ridiculed, after a while we start to get discouraged and are tempted to give up and stop serving Jesus. This is exactly the opportunity that satan is looking for, a chance to poison our minds and defeat us. It is absolutely mandatory that if we are not already a member of God’s encouragement team that we join His team immediately!

We must encourage one another; not only in words, but also in actions. Remember that words without actions mean nothing. Anybody can tell us that they love us but we are not going to believe it unless they do something to prove they love us. That is exactly what our Heavenly Father did for us. Out of His compassionate heart of love, He gave His only beloved Son to die for our sins. He proved His love for us. When Jesus allowed them to crucify Him on that cross of agony and horror, He proved His love for us.

What are we doing to prove our love to others? The greatest thing you can give anyone is love, not our love because our love is conditional. We must give the unconditional love of our precious Saviour to people. There are so many people who are hurting and they desperately need to know that somebody cares about them. If we could see into their hearts like Jesus can see into their hearts, we would see the horror and shame that they feel from being raped, not once but several times. What is so frightening to these precious people and why they are having so much trouble forgetting these rapes is because some of these people were raped repeatedly by members of their own families.

We would see their fear of being tied to a bed and being abused sexually day after day. We would see their terror of being locked up in small rooms and left alone for days without anyone to talk to them. We would see the scars they have because they were beaten badly on an outside balcony on the fourth floor of a building. We would see the hurt of all the years of verbal abuse and criticism that they have endured.

Only Jesus can take the terror, pain and fear from someone’s heart. However, He has not been here for over two thousand years. He has left us to hug for Him. We may not be able to hug someone in person but we can hug them with our kindness to them. We can be a daily encouragement to them. It is not enough to say to people have a nice week or a nice day and then ignore them for the rest of the week or day. All of us need daily encouragement, sometimes we need hourly encouragement, because all of us are attacked by satan every day in some way.

No, we can’t take the pain from someone’s heart but we can hug them for Jesus. When is the last time you hugged someone for Jesus, either by words or by actions? When is the last time you told someone that Jesus loves him or her? So often we put off doing things until it is convenient for us.

When somebody is hurting that person needs encouragement today, not tomorrow. Are you on God’s encouragement team and are you spreading His unconditional love to people? If you are not on His team, not only are the people around you suffering, you are hurting Jesus and breaking His heart.

Joanne Lowe
November 8, 2007

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