Thought for the week: The importance of being an encourager to others

I love words. However, I am always conscious that words can be used to cause huge distress to people as well as bring huge encouragement to them.

Even a quick read of James 3 in the New Testament gives a sobering warning of the dangers of using words badly: "The tongue also is a fire; a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and/ is itself set on fire by hell’"

And those dangers and the distress caused are seen almost every day on social media, in broadcast media, newspapers and even in conversation, where it is commonplace to deal in half truths, or attack people with words, demonise them, or misrepresent them.

Not only do I love words, but I am always on the look-out for a word that is new to me and that is worth using. Recently, a Christian friend used such a word in conversation - ‘respair’. It is the opposite of ‘despair’ and is about having renewed hope and being delivered from distress or hopelessness.

My friend has decided that in this society where so many people are in distress, are desperate and disillusioned, he wants to play his part as a follower of Christ, and bring encouragement, hope and uplift to as many people as he can.

‘"Encourage one another and build each other up" (First Thessalonians 5.11) "Each of us should please our neighbours for their good, to build them up" (Romans 15.2). And the famous verse in Proverbs 16 could not be clearer: "Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones".

With the Lord’s help, I am trying to take my friend’s initiative to my own heart as a result of what he said. Maybe you would join with me and try to do that as well. Say nothing sometimes instead of adding to idle and unhelpful chat; challenge language that is destructive or demeaning; err on the side of being gracious and forgiving; be an agent of ‘respair’. Be a channel of well founded hope in God.