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Copyright © 2003 by Calvin Miller. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph © 2003 by Michael Gesinger/Photonica. All rightsreserved.
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Edited by Jeremy P. Taylor
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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the HolyBible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission ofTyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rightsreserved.
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CONTENTS
Preface vii
Profile: Elizabeth 1Introduction 7
Chapter One 25
Holy Involvement:The Art of Seeing inside the Needy
Chapter Two 43
Diagnosis:What Does This Person Need Me to
Say Right Now to Heal or Give Hope?
Chapter Three 63
Playing the Role of Christ:The Giving of the Bold Blessing
Conclusion 81
Praise: The Affirmation That CelebratesOur Spiritual Health
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PREFACE
I I I I
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Life is hard. Faces are hard. We get out of bed
and hustle off to work for the day wondering
who might assail us or what circumstances
will befall us. Terrorism looms menacingly
over the predictable world we once knew.
Many of us feel powerless in our jobs—and,
even worse, we feel unappreciated. We seem
shackled to feelings of weakness and insignifi-
cance. We sometimes feel that we are allowed
to make no significant decisions. And since
our decision making is so often what authenti-
cates us, we are forced to live with a self-image
that is limited at best.
We are electron-isolated Internet inmates,
channel-surfing lounge lizards, the point-and-
click hermits of a day that doesn’t care. We are
social creatures shut into solitary confinement
by television tubes. Eyes eager to meet other
eyes spend the hours instead gazing into the
blue glare of computer screens or staring
down at the tiny displays of e-books.
But here and there, we run into those who
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The Power of Encouragement
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actually see us. They smile at us. They greet
us. They compliment us. In those moments
we catch our breath. The world stops. We
emerge from deadness to life. We are real
persons—with real nervous systems, real feel-
ings, and real hearts.
Then comes the ultimate gift that ends our
mediocrity. Someone speaks to us, perhaps
relating some affirming comment as simple as,
“Hey, I like your cap, man!” The cap! I’d forgot-
ten I was wearing one. But it wasn’t my cap you
really liked, was it? My desperate ears might as
well have heard, “Hi there, you wonderful
homo sapien, you, I’m a homo sapien, too! Isn’t
it nice that we who live on the same level of
the food-chain have actually met?” Such
moments of random affirmation are made all
the more wonderful by their rarity.
I experienced one such moment of
encouragement one day in the most unlikely
of places—an airport security line. I travel a
lot, and I have learned not to expect any
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charm to issue from airport security people.
They do not often say anything warmly
human. If the beeper goes off as I pass
through the scanning arch, they brusquely ask
me to empty my pockets and walk through
again. If I continue beeping, they ask me to
step to one side while they pass a cattle prod
over my body in a matter-of-fact manner,
seeking to get whatever they suspect me of
carrying to beep. My self-esteem plunges.
I want a cordial security officer to smile at me.
But their cattle prod is as warm and cuddly as
they get. Alas, it seems they are convinced that
I must be a terrorist. So I have developed an
advanced case of scan-o-phobia. I freeze up as
I approach security lines. Beeper-tense,
I dream of passing through beep-free.
I had been on the road all week, and I was
weak. I approached the security checkpoint
with the usual apprehension. But on this occa-
sion a sweet southern belle at the X-ray machine
said, “May Ah see your boardin’ pass, honey?”
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The Power of Encouragement
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I looked around. There was no one in line
behind me. She was talking to me! She
seemed buoyant and warm, overcome with
emotion. I was dumbfounded. Had she been
addled by the X-ray?
Dutifully, I handed her my ticket.
“Thank you, sugah,” she said. I liked this
lady! She handed my boarding pass back to
me and said, “There you go, dahlin’!”
Whoa! Box me up and put me in the
window of the shop! And glory upon glory!
When I walked through the X-ray arch,
I didn’t beep. “You’re mighty clean, sugah,”
she said as she handed me my briefcase. “You
have a real nice flight, honey!”
“I don’t wanna go!” I wanted to say. “I’ve
felt more like a person at your X-ray machine
than I have on any other flight I’ve ever taken.
I’m not leaving till you finish building me up!”
Of course I did ultimately fly on, but that
woman gave me a gift I have never forgotten
in the thousand X-ray lines at security check-
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points I’ve been in since. She blessed me as a
fellow member of the planet. She was a
sympathetic earthling who was open to seeing
others as fellow passengers on the way
through life’s journey.
I don’t know who told that woman that
we are all life’s pilgrims, but I know she
believed it. She had blessed me with the rare
gift of affirmation.
Some years ago Ken Blanchard wrote a
book called the One-Minute Manager, in which
he said that affirmation was the soul of leader-
ship. The key to great interpersonal relation-
ships, he said, was to catch somebody doing
something right and praise them on the spot.
The book remains a best-seller.
I speak all over the United States in
churches of all sizes. The message from the
pulpit is always friendly. But after church it
seems there is an appalling lack of Christian
affirmation among the members of the congre-
gation. An older couple recently met me at the
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Elizabeth
THE MINISTRY OF
“BLESSED ART THOU”
1
I I I I
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Mary of Nazareth conceived Christ when she
was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. She had
a hard time making her
fiancé believe her story.
We can only imagine that
she found it even harder
to convince the Naza-
renes. Why? Virginal
conceptions are very
difficult to explain,
whether to geneticists or
the busybodies in one’s
hometown. Mary was almost certainly the
object of scorn among her peers. It was likely
for this reason that she decided to visit a good
friend.
Mary left Nazareth to visit her older rela-
tive, Elizabeth. No doubt she left home under
a blitz of gossip. In all likelihood her heart
was breaking. She had given herself willingly
to be the handmaiden of the Lord, and as a
reward for her obedience she found herself
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The Power of Encouragement
WE ARE CALLED
TO PARTICIPATE
IN THE MINISTRY
OF ELIZABETH—
THE MINISTRY
OF “BLESSED ART
THOU.”
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the center of ridicule and contempt. God had
required much. I imagine Mary had cried
until she felt her broken soul could stand no
more, until she was teetering at the very edge
of sanity.
Meanwhile Elizabeth had become preg-
nant in spite of being an old woman. There
was no open village condemnation of her situ-
ation. But there must have been smirks from
her friends and perhaps the assumption that
her postmenopausal baby would likely be
either deformed or mentally deficient. We
know that Elizabeth went into seclusion after
learning that she was pregnant. Is it possible
she shut herself up because she was living
with a constant sense of rejection and hurt?
Then, at last, these two women meet.
Hurt flies at hurt.
Love grasps at love.
They embrace wildly.
“Ave, Maria.”
“Ave, Elizabeth.”
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And as soon as Elizabeth hears Mary’s
greeting, her own baby leaps with gladness in
her womb.
Joy collides with joy as their words affirm
each other.
“Do you hurt, my dear sister? Hurt no
more, you wonderful, special vessel of God.
Blessed art thou!”
These three words penetrate Mary’s
injured soul, and her pain is healed.
Does she return the compliment? No!
Does Elizabeth try to wrench a good word
from Mary? No! Mary does not praise her
praiser. She praises God.
Mary sings!
What a song! Throughout the ages Mary’s
expression of joy and thankfulness has been
known as the Magnificat.
Oh, how I praise the Lord.
How I rejoice in God my Savior!
For he took notice of his lowly servant girl
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The Power of Encouragement
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Introduction
7
I I I I
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I I I I
We bring before you, O Lord, the troubles and
perils of people and nations, the sighing of
prisoners and captives, the sorrows of the
bereaved, the necessities of strangers, the
helplessness of the weak, the despondency of the
weary, the failing powers of the aged.
O Lord, draw near to each; for the sake
of Jesus Christ our Lord.
—ANSELM1
I I I I
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Coloring a Drab World
One Christmas I gave my grandson a new
coloring book and box of Crayolas. He excit-
edly ripped open the box and began to color.
He dumped them out all at once and colored
furiously. He didn’t waste time picking out
colors. He could see what we dull adults had
missed: the uncolored pages had far too much
white space. They needed to be colored, and
all at once! Different colors, all kinds of
colors—no crayon could be slighted. No page
need wait long. The waxy hues flowed all over
his small, white coloring-book world. Very
quickly he ran out of pages.
“Grandpa,” he said, “I would like to draw
a fish. Do you have some plain paper?”
I grabbed some paper out of the computer
box and handed the pages to him. He colored
the boring white away. Fishes swam in indigo
and magenta. Brown barracudas and purple
piranhas. Squid, shad, sturgeon. Tentacled
things. Green octopuses. Big fish, little fish.
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Red fish, blue fish. When he had finished,
reams of paper blanketed the floor with
hurried but serious art. At least one fish on
every page.
All this happened because he had made
a very simple decision: There are not enough
Crayola fish in the world. I can do something
about my drab and fishless planet. I have one
talent. I can color, and I will.
I applauded his decision.
When I was a young man, God convinced
me that the world was too drab and I could do
something about it. I could take the drab self-
image that stifles so many beautiful people and
add color to it. Not only could I do it, but I
would do it, and indeed I was called to do it.
Our Encouragement Commission
There are many scriptural injunctions that
teach us we must cause our dour world to
celebrate itself.
Paul once preached at Ephesus, “Now
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The Power of Encouragement
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I entrust you to God and the word of his
grace—his message that is able to build you
up and give you an inheritance with all those
he has set apart for himself” (Acts 20:32). Paul
also said that the authority God gave him “is
to build you up, not to tear you down”
(2 Corinthians 10:8). He taught, “While
knowledge may make us feel important, it is
love that really builds up the church”
(1 Corinthians 8:1).
The last official act of Jesus’ earthly
sojourn was to take his followers to a hilltop
and bless them (Luke 24:50). Jesus’ affirma-
tion of his followers transformed them from
common men of limited success to fearless
preachers and bold martyrs. His blessing—his
encouragement—changed them from weak-
lings to triumphant soldiers!
We are accountable for all our words.
Jesus said that on the great Day of Judgment,
all people will have to give account for every
idle word they have spoken (Matthew 12:36).
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We can use our words to cut or affirm. When
we use words to encourage, our words are
treasures eternal. But when we use words to
cut someone else down, those words are
stored up against our
future. Jesus said, “The
time is coming when
everything will be
revealed; all that is secret
will be made public.
Whatever you have said in
the dark will be heard in
the light, and what you have whispered
behind closed doors will be shouted from the
housetops for all to hear!” (Luke 12:2-3). A
compliment is a great act of stewardship.
One of the most wonderful acts of encour-
agement ever done for Jesus was when a
woman lavished on him an alabaster box of
spikenard, an expensive perfume worth
roughly the equivalent of a year’s wages. Some
of Jesus’ disciples were incensed with her
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The Power of Encouragement
WE MUST CAUSE
OUR DOUR
WORLD TO
CELEBRATE
ITSELF.
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extravagance. “What a waste of money,” they
said. “She could have sold it for a fortune and
given the money to the poor” (Matthew 26:8).
But Jesus said that every act of encouragement
becomes a part of the treasury of the ages.
“Why berate her for doing such a good thing
to me? . . . I assure you, wherever the Good
News is preached throughout the world, this
woman’s deed will be talked about in her
memory” (Matthew 26:10, 13).
We have a commission from our Lord:
Use your life to build others up! Each affirm-
ing act or word must issue from our need to
be like Jesus. Each time we bless a hurting
soul, we act as good stewards of Christ’s love,
so freely given to us. Our encouraging words
are kudos from our King. They are a serum of
grace for the plague of self-loathing. We can
and should do something to help color our
drab world with beauty and truth. We are sent
to demonstrate to our isolated world that God
has not left it friendless.
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The Importance of Self-Worth
I believe encouragement and love have to
grow out of a strong basis of self-acceptance.
People who give a lot of love usually require
a good supply of it. People who are generous
with affirmation usually
have to receive a lot of it.
People with the weak-
est self-image are the least
able to become ministers
of grace. Remember the
security lady at the X-ray
machine? What was her
life really like? My suspi-
cion is that someone living near her gave her
compliments regularly. Perhaps she was raised
in a home where kindness was lavished on
her. In the process of receiving much encour-
agement, her self-image developed to a strong
enough point that she could become a compli-
ment spinner at an airport scanner.
Hildegard of Bingen knew that we cannot
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The Power of Encouragement
WE HAVE A
COMMISSION
FROM OUR LORD:
USE YOUR LIFE
TO BUILD
OTHERS UP!
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give grace from the center of a scalded being.
We must feel good about who we are, or we
cannot minister a positive word in a negative
world. She wrote, “Remember that you were
made in the image of God. So you should love
yourself, recognizing your own beauty as a
mirror of God’s beauty. And you should want
to use your abilities in the service of others,
recognizing these abilities as gifts from God.
Do not be afraid of pain and suffering. Just as
gold is made pure by fire or precious jewels
are made to shine by grinding wheels, so our
lives must know the flame of God’s purifica-
tion and the emery of his polishing. Just as
refined gold and polished jewels perfectly
reflect the sun’s rays, so you will perfectly
reflect the love of God.”2
Three Steps to a Ministry
of Encouragement
Learning the ministry of Elizabeth is not hard.
The affirming life always operates in a very
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simple way. Here are the three steps we can
take to begin living the affirming life.
First, we must learn the art of seeing
inside the needy without violating their
sacred inwardness.
This is the blessed work of holy involvement.
We must be willing to stand with people
under the crushing burden of the hurt they
carry. We must be able to peer into another
person’s world deeply enough to identify pain
but unobtrusively enough not to violate the
sacred inwardness of the one we are trying
to help.
We need to become skilled at seeing inner
brokenness. It will not be easy. Hurt hides.
Most of those who know pain never reveal
their suffering. But it lodges in their souls,
killing, strangling, suffocating. Such wounds
kill from the inside out. Only when we train
ourselves to see with the eyes of Christ will we
be able to penetrate people’s affable armor and
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Chapter One
HOLY INVOLVEMENT:
THE ART OF SEEING
INSIDE THE NEEDY
25
I I I I
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I I I I
Help me to realize that no matter how violent
their opposition, people are not the enemy. They
are prisoners of the enemy. Help me to realize
that you died to free those prisoners. And in that
knowledge give me the courage, I pray, to
penetrate their shores so they might be brought
out of their tombs, delivered of their demons,
dressed in their right mind, and given the
privilege to sit at your feet.
—KEN GIRE3
I I I I
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Removing Masks
God has committed to us the ministry of
rebuilding destroyed people. We cannot do
this unless we are sensitive enough to care
about what’s going on inside them. Why aren’t
we better at this? Because we don’t want to get
involved. Because most people are so bent on
appearing self-sufficient they all but make it
impossible for us to see their hurt. To use the
power of affirmation, we must get involved.
We must learn the art of seeing hidden
brokenness.
The Greek word hupocrites refers to an
actor who performs behind a mask. This prac-
tice of putting on masks was common in
ancient Greek drama. Greek actors didn’t rely
on the naked face to change moods. When an
actor wanted his character to appear mean and
selfish, he put on a mask to denote the inten-
tion. The character who wanted to connote
grace or sweetness of personality donned a
very different mask. Masks always hid the
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person behind them. No wonder Jesus
referred to Pharisees as “hypocrites”; it was as
if he were accusing them of wearing masks.
These professional religionists hid behind
disguises of forced piety,
never letting anyone see
the real person behind the
legalistic facade.
Not everyone we meet
is a hypocrite in this sense
of the word, but nearly
everyone is wearing some
kind of mask. Healing only
begins when we can
convince people to remove
the masks hiding their hurt. But mask removal
is hard work. Most of us are reluctant to
expose our naked faces and brave the world’s
censure. Behind such iron facades hide
fragile egos.
One of the most important aspects of the
Christian life—both in becoming a Christian
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The Power of Encouragement
HEALING ONLY
BEGINS WHEN
WE CAN
CONVINCE
PEOPLE TO
REMOVE THE
MASKS HIDING
THEIR HURT.
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and in our continuing relationship with
Christ—is confession. Our first confession
redeems; our later confessions attune us daily
to the integrity of God. Confession shows our
willingness to take off our masks and to
appear naked-faced in the presence of God.
Not that God is confused about who we are.
He certainly is not. We don’t clue God in by
uncovering our true egos, but once we agree
to naked-faced status, we can live in his pres-
ence without pretense.
Why do so many Christians take off their
masks when they come to know Jesus, only to
put them back on as soon as the initial excite-
ment of conversion has faded? Because while
they are willing to show God who they are,
they are reluctant to let their brothers and
sisters in the church see them as God does.
We use masks to cover fears, sadness, family
secrets, adulteries of the flesh, fornications of
the spirit. Removing our masks would expose
all those hidden things to the bright light of
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Notes
1. Timothy Jones, The Art of Prayer (New York:Ballantine Books, 1997), 117.
2. Robert Van de Weyer, ed., Hildegard in a Nutshell(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997), 43.
3. Ken Gire, Intimate Moments with the Savior (GrandRapids, MI: Daybreak Books, 1989), 43.
4. David Swartz, Embracing God (Eugene, OR: HarvestHouse Publishers, 1994), 77.
5. Calvin Miller, “Humming,” in Apples, Snakes, andBellyaches (Wheaton, IL: Harold Shaw Publishers,1996), 102.
6. Mary Tileston, ed., Daily Strength for Daily Needs(Springdale, PA: Whitaker House, 1997), 21.
7. Louis Evely, That Man Is You, trans. Edmond Bonin(New York: Paulist Press, 1964), 20.
8. James Stevens, “The Snare,” in The Book of a Thou-sand Poems, ed. J. Murray MacBain (New York:Peter Bedrick Books, 1986).
9. Richard Foster, Devotional Classics (San Francisco:HarperSanFrancisco, 1990), 259.