Some people are so encouraging. Sometimes we don’t even notice how gifted they are until after we walk away feeling more capable and built up by their ability to see what God sees in us. It is then that we feel a bond of love and appreciation toward them.
Here’s a secret for those of you seeking mates. We tend to fall in love with people who help us like ourselves. We long to be around those who respect us and who let us see our own beauty reflected in their eyes. The fun part is that when we learn to bring out the best in people, amazingly, they tend to see the best in us.
When we need to correct our children or our employees or the ones we are privileged to mentor the goal is not to impress them with our competence, but rather to give them an enhanced vision of their own capabilities. This is building people up rather than tearing them down with harsh criticism that comes from a need to prove ourselves.
The reward for winning the game of King of the Hill is possessing the mound alone. The reward for lifting someone else up the hill is that they ask us to join them in their rejoicing on the mountain top. This is the fruit of grace.
Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth. Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love. (Ephesians 4:11-16)
Charis: Subject to Change 
The Lord has spoken to me today, here – thank you for being His voice! Very much needed these helpful encouraging words, this scripture and need it now TODAY – especially to be reminded we can be “trick[ed] . . . with lies so clever they sound like the truth.” also to keep believing, knowing, seeing that, giving others a hand up builds community, companionship, shared rejoicing – powerful loneliness antidote.
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Thank you, BBJ. You know I have often made the mistake of trying to impress people. “Impressive people” may be on call to lend approval but they often run into competitiveness, or even jealousy (which the Bible says is a nasty form of hate) and can feel lonely due to a lack of people who truly know them and love to come along side and rejoice with them. Someone told me that the hardest part of losing a mate is having no one to tell good news to. Made me think.
You are a person who knows how to see the potential and beauty in people, especially a child that others might overlook. You are precious in His sight.
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Thank you for this affirmation. Yes, having no one to share my joy with is very painful at times. I do revel in so much in this life/world, and so often; God showers me with blessings of beauty every day – tonight’s sky for instance. It was long-lived, continuously changing,a great huge theatre of wonder – divine beauty. How do people sit in front of TV evening after evening, not seeing, or those seeing barely notice are not be thrilled by it. I enjoyed it like I the natural world, daily, but that lovely pleasure of standing together with someone in awe, doubling the delight, is missing. Yet, I don’t know how, in my economic constraints, to break out of my isolation, I spend most days alone. Year after year of the singular journey and the prospect of 30 more, seem to be playing on my mind negatively more lately, when others seem to become grateful for it or get used to or even content with it. Your blog post here has made me realize I need to get busy helping others. Get my mind off what I don’t have.
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Hi, BBJ. I hear you. I know a woman who was jilted by the man she had waited for, for so many years. As she faced the prospect of living alone and childless she did something I don’t know would have occurred to me. She decided to spend all night thanking God for everything she could think of, including the lost love, even though she didn’t understand. Later she decided to take a honeymoon with Jesus, to let him be the fulfillment of everything missing in her life. When she returned from the trip the man of her dreams showed up in a bizarre string of co-incidences that only God could arrange. The thing was he didn’t show up until she didn’t need him to. Jesus was enough. This is not a do this and you’ll get what you want suggestion. This is just something that someone who was willing to lay down everything for her Lord taught me. In thanksgiving there is freedom. Someone told me that thanksgiving attracts angels, because it is an atmosphere they are used to. Is that true? I don’t know, but I know that it does change atmospheres. Better than getting your mind off what you don’t have, it gets your mind on what you DO have. Bless you, sister. May you feel Abba’s loving arms around you tonight, precious daughter of the king. That’s something, like the sunset show he put on for you, that is priceless.
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Jesus Christ is that kind of person, and more.
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He loves relentlessly, doesn’t he?
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Yes.Amen.He does!
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