I like to compliment people – to see their eyes light up, to know that they are walking away with a better outlook on life and themselves.  But I’ve also wondered whether it’s really a healthy thing: To compliment but rarely criticize, to tell people what they’re doing well without much in the way of what they can do better.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that encouragement is more than saying nice words.  The root of the word comes from the French word encoragier, meaning “make strong, hearten.”  In other words, “encourage” means to give a person courage – not just to make them happy.

Giving courage can look like many different things, but it’s constructive as well as uplifting.  It makes a foundation and builds upon it.  Its goal is to build strength and help a person succeed.

Sometimes that means looking practically at giants (problems, fears, etc.) and making strategies so the person can overcome.

Sometimes that means reminding a person of who they are: the battles they’ve won, the power that they wield, their gifts and abilities, and who God is in them.

Sometimes that means highlighting strengths in the other person.

Sometimes that means critiquing someone or their work (not accusing) so that they can grow stronger.

Sometimes that means simply listening as they work out their own courage.

Encouragement never looks like:

1. Shame

2. Encouraging sin

3. Accusation

4. Reminding of failure in a way that discourages (it’s not wrong to constructively look at failure, but it must be in a way that builds up instead of shames or tears down)

Because all of these tear down without building up.  Encouragement always gives more courage than it takes away.

One of the interesting things about bringing courage to people is that it’s not always a direct line of logic between the action of encouragement and the person finding courage.  I might hand you a plate of cookies “just because I’ve been thinking about you,” and yet somehow that gives you the courage to tell your boss the things that need to be said.  There’s no direct correlation between the two.  But you felt known and seen, and something about that gave you courage.

If you don’t know how to help someone find courage – how to encourage them – you can try to make them feel like they’re known.  That you see them, in the middle of whatever they’re in or going through right now.  That you care enough about them to be there for them.  Just being a friend – not pushy, not overbearing, but present – can go a long way to give someone courage.

“Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

“But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Hebrews 3:13)