Encouragement

Many of our non-Christian friend and neighbors, however, may not know anyone with whom they can unburden their soul, and they don’t know how to reach God.  So God sends you and me to be “God” to them, to be as available and compassionate to them as Jesus Christ is to us.  Such encouragement is a matter of seeing a need and meeting it.  It may involve paying a compliment to someone at work, providing a meal for a sick neighbor, surprising a friend with a small gift of appreciation, extending an invitation to your home, or offering a listening ear over lunch.  Encouragement at this level is not complicated.  It’s basically a matter of being willing to invest ourselves in the lives of those people God places in our path.

David Jeremiah, Signs of Life, p. 147