With this post, I am launching the new and improved version of The Electric Gospel. For Christmas, one of my daughters set up this new site (with expanded possibilities), upgrading from my previous blog. I credit her with site design and with doing much of the work of moving over archives of past devotional writings. The Christmas gift, a labor of love, was my daughter’s way of encouraging me to keep writing, to keep working at offering spiritual encouragement to others. I invite you to enter your email to subscribe for receiving new posts as this blog continues in this new form.
In launching the new site, I had thought about re-posting an updated version of something from the archives, such as a New Year’s post (from 2015) or a Martin Luther King Jr. Day post (from 2019). But you can get at those posts in the archives (follow those links).
A better way to begin the new version of The Electric Gospel is to post something new. Thinking of my daughter’s much-appreciated encouragement to me–as well as the intention of the blog site–it seems appropriate to speak about encouraging one another in faith and hope. If you wish to post a reply, please do!
Encourage one another
by David Sellnow
When I was doing college teaching, I made a habit of offering encouragement to students individually. Sometimes it was about a spark of spiritual energy I saw evident in them. Some I urged onward in their writing or other forms of creative expression, because they had talents to be explored. In many cases, I encountered young adults who felt out of place, who had questions or doubts, who weren’t sure the answers they were being told were consistent and true. Perhaps they were willing to share their doubts and wonderings with me because I was one who wondered along with them, a fellow learner, not someone who seemed to know all already.
On one occasion, I sent an email to a freshman student who had been offering novel insights in a history course. I encouraged her to continue sharing her thoughts, which were elevating the level of discourse in our classroom. Not long after receiving the email, the student came to my office, in tears. She was overcome with emotion, she said, because this was the first time in her life that a teacher had praised her work. I thought perhaps she was exaggerating, but her story was compelling. She had been raised in church schools where errors were duly noted and corrections expected. Perfect papers got praise. Her assignments mostly got marked up with red ink, pointing out every imperfection. She felt dismissed and disregarded by teachers, labeled as an underperformer. Her confidence and desire to do well diminished year by year due to the lack of positive attention.
We’d like to think of church settings as places where seldom is heard a discouraging word. Sadly, often much discouragement occurs. This is at odds with God’s gospel imperative to provide ongoing spiritual support. “Encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:11). It’s good that the Christians at Thessalonica were in the habit of encouraging one another. We do well when we follow their lead. In a similar vein, a writer to early Jewish believers urged them, “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds … encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24,25). Those Christians were enduring difficult times. But they held onto each other in faith and looked ahead to Christ’s return. The letter writer reminded them how they had “endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions” (Hebrews 10:32-34).
Mutual encouragement is especially important when enduring hard times, injustices, or oppression. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (April 1963), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., decried the lack of support from mainline churches for African Americans who were being deprived of their rights. How could this be, in a nation founded on the principle that all persons “are created equal … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” (Declaration of Independence)? King wrote: “The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are.” Establishment churches were good at supporting and encouraging themselves within the circle of privilege and prosperity. They were ignoring the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the despised. King pointed to the people on the front lines of the civil rights movement who supported one another faithfully as they struggled to achieve liberty and justice for all. One day the country will know, King said, “that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.”
If you are someone enduring struggles or suffering, I pray The Electric Gospel blog can become a source of encouragement to you. Fill out the “Contact Us” form if there’s a specific concern on your heart that might be addressed here.
If you know someone in need of spiritual encouragement, by all means, reach out, speak out, help out. Let that person know they have a friend on their side and by their side. Don’t let anyone continue to be starved of needed praise and support in a world full of criticism and judgment. We are called to be there for one another. As the proverb reminds us: “Two are better than one …. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10).
Dear God, help us to help one another and lift each other up, in Jesus’ name.
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All Bible quotations from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
