Just thinking… unbelief and enouragement

How do you encourage people? Not just tell them what you like about them but how do you encourage them to keep up their faith in God? I’ve had people compliment me. I’ve had people tell me I am doing a good job. But it was the people who stepped past the superficial pat to my ego and encouraged me by telling me what they see God doing in my life. They did this face to face, through little encouragement cards and phone calls. I really appreciate those moments. They helped me see God working in my life and didnt leave my eyes left to look just at myself and how I was doing in this world.

We all need encouragement because without in we start to slip into unbelief both about ourselves and toward God. A believing heart is a heart that will walk in obedience when God calls. But an unbelieving heart will walk away and think, “I can’t do that” forgetting that God can do the impossible, even the impossible through us. Community helps us to keep our eyes adjusted correctly and to keep them lifted up to God because it is really easy to just see what we are not good at or what we cant do.

In Hebrews 3:8-11 “Today, if you hear his voice,
⁸do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,
    on the day of testing in the wilderness,
⁹where your fathers put me to the test
    and saw my works for forty years.
¹⁰Therefore I was provoked with that generation,
and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart;
    they have not known my ways.’
¹¹As I swore in my wrath,
    ‘They shall not enter my rest.’”

Here we see that the Isrealites disobeyed and hardened their hearts and God kept what He said would happen to them, “they shall not enter my rest.” So, my logical thoughts think that our obedience changes the outcome even if our past mistakes have had consequences.