Encouragement

Any teacher or coach knows that while we our job is to instruct others, there is also the aspect of encouragement that is an important part of our role.

I teach group strength classes and each student is different in the type of encouragement they need to excel. For example, some need encouraged to try heavier weights and others need to be encouraged to pull back so they don’t overdo it.

Encouragement is part of the instructional process no matter what we are coaching or teaching and it applies to all areas of our lives.

I’ve been thinking about encouragement in spiritual terms lately. One of the primary roles of a Christian is to lead others to Christ. To do that we need to pray and ask for the Holy Spirit’s help to encourage people on their journey of growing in relationship with Jesus. 

Much like coaching and teaching in our temporal roles, this encouragement is a very individual process and we are called to simply give what we have been given. Encouraging people with love, being authentic — and following the promptings of the Holy Spirit is what we are asked to do. The rest are up to him.

We can look to Jesus in the Gospels as our model of how to encourage others. Encouragement is rooted in love, forgiveness and being willing to stand up for others and to share the truth. Never has there been a time when our culture needs love and encouragement rooted in faith in God. May our role of encourager foster hope and healing in those who are hurting, angry, and feel misunderstood.

St. Paul said, the second Letter of St. Paul to Timothy, 4:2, “be persistent; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching.” He is one of many saints who encourage us to persevere constantly no matter what the circumstances. In fact, the saints are the embodiment of encouragement.

St. Teresa of Avila is one of my favorite saints when it comes to simple, everyday words of encouragement.

She said, “May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.”

She also said, “May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.”

One more beautiful thought from St. Teresa, “May you be content knowing you are a child of God.”

Encouragement. It’s simple, but not easy in a world where we are busy and often too focused on ourselves rather than lifting up others. Telling someone they are a beloved child of God is amazingly encouraging. God loves us and asks only that we pass on his great love. May St. Teresa’s message inspire us to be courageous encouragers in our everyday lives.

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about
doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.”

How Much is Enough?

When it comes to exercise, the general train of thought is that more is better. Sometimes my first task as a fitness coach is to gently move people to a new way of thinking that developing quality technique is more productive that doing lots of work without careful attention to how the body is moving and recovering.

Most people are exercising for general fitness and overall health for life and sport. Even when they are training for a specific event, such as an obstacle course race or a marathon, focusing on the quality of training, rather than the quantity, is essential to prevent injury and ensure they are well prepared.

I was reminded recently, in a conversation with a friend, that sometimes we have the same view of our prayer lives … that more is better. That may not always be the case.

If we set a goal of a specific quantity of prayer, rather than allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us as to what and how to pray, we might not even start, or if we do, we might rush through without any heartfelt contemplation at all.

We might be expecting too much from ourselves based on our vocation and especially with our full lives serving family, community and our employer— which, with the proper intention, are also forms of prayer.

Asking the Holy Spirit to guide our prayer lives and coach us on how to pray can be freeing and spiritually productive — without a time element. So we start by setting aside a little time and space, in our schedule and in our hearts, and trust that the Spirit will move us to pray in the way he desires us to pray.

St. Teresa of Avila said, “Much more is accomplished by a single word of the Our Father said, now and then, from our heart, than by the whole prayer repeated many times in haste and without attention.”

What if it isn’t clear how we should pray? 

We can stop, listen and have an openness to the gentle movement of the heart to pray, for example, a fervent decade of the Rosary for a family member. Maybe later in the day the Holy Spirit will prompt us to pray another decade. We may have a lunch date cancel and we have a desire to attend noon Mass. We might comfort a suffering friend with spontaneous prayer. We can pray the Gospel for that day in a few minutes at bedtime. The possibilities are endless and the Holy Spirit might just surprise us!

I know that each of us have had ‘God instances’ when we asked for help with time to pray and get everything else done too. Then we look back over the day and see how Our Lady and her Son worked it out all in a way that we could never have imagined.

St. John Vianney reminds us that prayer is love rather than an item on a checklist. “Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself.” With that thought in mind, let us pray with joy and confidence in the way the Holy Spirit is individually and intimately moving each of us.