The Lost Art of Encouragement - Jon Tyson

I want to open with a question, who is the most encouraging person that you know? Who is that person? When you think, when you go through your life, you know there's some people who are discouraging and you think about them, you're like, oh gosh, I do not want to meet with them. But then there's those encouraging people where you get in their presence and you feel built up, you feel lifted. What is it about them that makes them so encouraging? I want us today to look at how to become an encouraging people. We live in a world that needs encouragement. I was reading this last night, according to the American Psychological Association, the percentage of American adolescents whose symptoms of major depression has nearly tripled from 2005 to 2019, that's before COVID, and anxiety has almost doubled. The percentage of American adults of all ages who are not too happy about their lives has doubled from 2000 to 2023, and this is almost hard to comprehend. Women have been especially hard hit. 45% of female Americans between the ages of 12 and 26 have received a formal diagnosis of anxiety or depression by 2024. We can sometimes look out there at the world and think, oh, people in the world are doing great and enjoying their sin. Not true. Arthur Brooks, in studying American society, said that the default experience of people in America today is anger, sadness, and fear, and a lot of that has snuck into the church. I see so many people losing heart, particularly when they think about the future, and what a phrase to lose heart. In the Greek, it has the idea of a bow, like a bow and an arrow, where the string is taken out and it just sits there, not living according to its purpose. And we see so many people capable of serving the Lord, stepping up, but they're so overwhelmed. They've been so discouraged. They're unstrung. They're just sitting down, not living up to what God has done for them.

And so what I want us to be able to do is get back in touch with a vision of being an encouraging people in a discouraging world. Now, I want to remind you of this. This is not self-help. This is not hype. The Bible is a book of encouragement. Look at what we see. Deuteronomy 138, encouragement in leadership transitions, but your assistant Joshua, son of Nun, will enter the promised land. Encourage him because he will lead Israel to inherit it. Moses was commanded to encourage the next generation as they were stepping up into leadership. I want to note, it was not enough for God to directly encourage Joshua. There was a leadership requirement from one generation to encourage the next. We see this in Psalm 1017, you Lord hear the desire of the afflicted. You encourage them and you listen to their cry. When we are in distress and we pray, one of the things God does is he meets us in prayer and he encourages us. It's in Acts 14.22. It says this, strengthening the disciples and encouraging them to remain true to the faith. We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God, they said. So when the church faces resistance, they don't just need prayer, they don't just need good teaching, they need leaders to come along and strengthen their hearts with encouragement. But not only in moments of resistance in everyday church life, 1 Thessalonians 5.11, therefore encourage one another and build each other up just as in fact you are now doing. A part of congregational life, if you're in a small group or serving on a team, part of that dynamic should be an encouraging environment. We need encouragement when processing church discipline. 2 Corinthians 13, the Corinthians were a wild bunch. You think there's scandals in the church now?

Go back to Corinth, wild. They had to remove people from their congregation, but when they're bringing them back in, look how Paul closes 2 Corinthians 13, finally brothers and sisters, rejoice, strive for full restoration, encourage one another, be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. We forget sometimes that when you show up in somebody's life, you can carry a spirit of encouragement that lifts them. Paul says this to the Ephesians by the coming of Tychicus. He says I'm sending him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. We should encourage one another as a part of our regular teaching, Titus 2.15. These are the things you should teach, encourage and rebuke. Now I don't want to talk about rebuking today, it's not a sermon on rebuking, that's an important part of what we do, but encouragement is what should be happening from the pulpit. We need encouragement to resist the delusion of sin. Hebrews 3.13, encourage one another daily as long as it's called today so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. How often do we need encouragement to fight sin? Daily. Encouragement is a core part of why the church gathers. Hebrews 10.4.25, classic verse, let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day approaching. That's just a very brief biblical survey that shows from the Old Testament to the New Testament,

from the Psalms to the Prophets to the Gospels, we see that the spirit of encouragement is a core part of the church. When someone is encouraged, it changes how we live. People who have an encouraged spirit, who feel built up, have significantly lower cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. They recover from stress better, have stronger immune systems, and respond better after surgeries. Having a spirit of encouragement within you actually changes your health. Now, sometimes when you think, oh gosh, this is a Christian sermon on encouragement, you can just think, oh gosh, the church is so full of cliche statements about encouragement, okay? And I wanna start by telling you what encouragement is not, okay? Encouragement is not a general affirmation. Going up to someone who is not encouraged and saying to them, be encouraged, is not encouragement. That's like saying, you're horrible, stop being horrible, and they're like, thank you for your help, this has been really, really instructive. It's not just general affirmation about somebody's wellbeing, okay? I wanna, it's not flattery. Sometimes in the church, what is called encouragement is just people using speech in a way

to manipulate other people, either to get someone to like them, to sort of climb status in a particular community or organization, or because you want something from something else. Flattery is not encouragement. Encouragement is not toxic positivity. You know, sometimes the church is like, everything's gonna be amazing, and you're like, can I give you some feedback? My life sucks right now, everything is not amazing. And you saying it's amazing is not changing my life. It's not toxic positivity, okay? I have a friend who oversees a network of churches, and a lot of these churches, like the leaders were making bad leadership decisions. They were shrinking back, there was all sorts of chaos in the church, and he pulled them all together to do almost like a leadership intervention. And he said, they sort of had like an encouragement and prayer time, a prophetic time. And he said, they started saying things like, God is so proud of you for stepping up to leadership. And he was like, stop it! This is not about God being proud of you. You're doing a terrible job as a leader. Encouraging you when you're failing to lead is not encouragement. And sometimes the church can be the worst at this.

We're just talking about how amazing it is, and it's not amazing. And it's also not, this is important, tolerating low performance. One of the things I've noticed about a younger generation is we care about people so much. If someone is struggling, instead of telling the truth, like, hey, you're actually not doing well, and you perform very poorly, because we love them so much, we actually double up the encouragement over them so they get a warped perspective that what was not going well was actually awesome. And so as a result, you get a whole bunch of people walking around thinking they're doing well because everybody is giving them false encouragement instead of telling them the truth and actually raising them up to their full potential. So these things exist in the church, and I'm not talking about that. The biblical vision of encouragement is rich and potent and powerful. The word that's used for encouragement means to come alongside. It's from the word paraklesis, and it's cognate verb parakaleo. And these words are compounds of the preposition para, beside, alongside, or in the presence of, and kaleo, which means to call or summon.

Therefore, parakalesis literally denotes a calling alongside to comfort, exhort, and entreaty, or to appeal to someone. It is coming alongside someone to comfort, exhort, and entreat. Now, I know that that's a little too technical, okay? So here's what I would love us to do this morning. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could get a mentor in encouragement here this morning? Like, just going back through church history and thinking, wouldn't it be great if we could learn from someone? And I was thinking through this, and I was like, I don't think there's a better person in the Bible at encouragement than Barnabas. Do you remember Barnabas? Barnabas, a remarkable leader. And a lot of times people talk about Paul, and Jesus, and Peter. And then you've got your boy Barnabas over here, who is just like instrumental in the expansion of the church, but he doesn't get enough attention. So if I could, I would love it if I could just. bring Barnabas out here and do an interview with him. Like, hey, Barnabas, man, I just want to draw out some themes in your life of why you're an encourager. So that's what I sort of want to do this morning. I want to look at how, in the Bible, encouragement accelerated the mission of the church

by talking about Barnabas. So Barnabas, his original name is Joseph, and he's a Levite from Cyprus, and they changed his name. You know that you are loved and accepted when you get a nickname, you know that? And when you get a nickname, it's often like kind of cheeky or just, you know, it's a little bit, sometimes it can even be a little bit of a put down. The apostles founding the church gave Barnabas a name, and his name is the Son of Encouragement, okay? So I want to show you five things that Barnabas did that accelerate the mission of the church through encouragement. Number one, encouragement in the life of Barnabas is leveraging your resources for the sake of others. Leveraging your resources, again, Acts 4.36. Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas, which means Son of Encouragement, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles' feet, okay? This is Acts chapter four. Now, you're probably familiar with this verse. It's one of those verses that's always used in building campaigns, okay? Someone sold some land, and they came and they put it at the apostles' feet. But I want you to understand the dynamic of what's happening here. There's a moment where the church is either going

to keep going in the power of the Spirit, or it's going to dissipate according to human dynamics. And here's what had happened. You've got these Grecian widows in the New Testament who, in essence, the widows received almost like a payment or a subsidy from the temple to enable them to survive. And so there was almost like an endowment that went out to provide for the poor and for the widows from the temple. When people converted to Christianity, they lost access to the resources of the Jewish community. And when people came on the day of Pentecost up to Jerusalem, the Spirit's poured out. There's thousands of people who have made a pilgrimage for the day of Pentecost, and they all stay instead of going back to where they are. And so as a result, you've got this massive need in Jerusalem. You've got poor people who've lost access to their resources, and you've got people who are staying who are straining the systems of the church. Now imagine they said, okay, everybody, you know what, the poor folks, sorry, you can't have any money, and everybody else, just go back to where you were. There would be no Acts 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. It would have all shut down. And then Barnabas sees a moment, and he says, you know what, this is a breakthrough moment in the kingdom of heaven.

And if I don't bring breakthrough resources, this thing won't keep going. And so you know what he does? Instead of thinking, well, I wanna set up a foundation and have multi-generational wealth, he's like, this movement will not be here for generations to come if this moment isn't met. Now this is radical. He's a Levite, and you know, historically, the Levites did not receive land as an inheritance when they came into the promised land. And so you've got a man with a very rare resource. And instead of keeping this rare resource for himself, scholars tell us that under Herod the Great and his massive taxation systems, a tiny percentage of people actually retain their ancestral land. So this is the rarest commodity. And he says, I'm not here to keep this for myself. I'm gonna give in a moment so the kingdom can be extended. What a vision. I don't think we think of our generosity as a form of encouragement, but it can bring breakthrough in the lives of people and the lives of movement. When I was a youth pastor, I was not paid very much, okay? Horrifically, I'm glad that the church has caught up. It was a very, very tense moment for me. I couldn't take my wife out for great dates. We had two little kids.

We were dirt poor. And there was a real strain on our marriage. And then one of the guys on the production team at church came up to me and said, hey, my wife and I have been praying and we wanna bless you by babysitting your kids. We trusted him. We wanna babysit your kids so you can go on a date. And I'm thinking, I don't have money to take my wife out on a great date. He said, and you probably don't get paid enough to be able to take her out on a great date. So we would like to pay for your dates while we watch your kids. And I was like, oh my gosh. And the first night, it was incredibly awkward. They come to our house and I'm like, hey, Nathan, Hayley, you know our friends here. This is Jay and Erin, and they're gonna be watching you. And I'm getting ready to walk out the door and I'm like, yeah, and please have that, thanks very much. And like six months in, I'm like, yo, bro, there's the kids, thanks for the money. We out, having a time of our life. Well, that changed our marriage in a moment of... incredible stress. Somebody on the production team saw the strain we had in our marriage and said, I just want to encourage you. Recently, Jay came and visited our church. It was probably 1400 people there in a Jewish synagogue. And he didn't know anything about us. He didn't know what we'd do, where we'd go, what God would do. And I made him stand up in front of our entire church on Sunday morning and I said, hey church, I want you to see this man here. When no one believed in us and we were struggling youth pastors, this man invested

in our marriage. And I made him turn around and I said, hey man, this is your fruit. All of this is here because you sowed a seed of generosity in my life when I was a young man. There's power in being generous. I got 50 stories like this of the power of generosity lifting up my life. But I want to ask you, who can you come along with, with your resources and your generosity and build up and encourage in the power of God. Barnabas did this and the church was able to move forward. You never know what your financial generosity in the life of somebody else may unleash in their life. Second thing we see, not just leveraging your resources to encourage, leveraging your influence for the sake of others. I love this passage. This is Acts chapter 9. When Saul came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples but they were all afraid of him, not believing he was really a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of the Lord. Now this is a fascinating passage of encouragement because all of us have a measure of leadership and social capital that we get to take risks on other people and bring them into leadership when people are suspicious about them. The early church defaulted to fear and self-preservation because of the reputation of Saul and Barnabas does something amazing. You know what he does? He listens to Saul, meets with Saul and instead of having a spirit of fear and self-preservation, he goes up to this man who was the least likely candidate to become an apostle and to write most of the New Testament but he saw something early when everybody else saw nothing. He said, I want to make sure that this man becomes all that he is called to be. So he absorbs the institutional relational risk and in so doing ends up empowering and leveraging his influence to release the influence of another person. Everybody loves a winner when they've risen. Very few people can see possibility in a rough shell and in a rough background. And true encouragement is when someone believes in you early before you've reached your destiny and helped get you there along the way. When I, I am the recipient of people risking on me. I'm the recipient of leaders who said, you know what, I know Tyson's pretty rough around the edges but I see something in him. When I first showed up to church, I dropped out of high school. I started working as a butcher when I was 14, dropped out of high school when I was 16 and I was so zealous for the Lord. Sometimes I would come straight from the butcher shop to the church and I

would smell like meat. I had these overalls on but I was like, I cannot miss a minute of worship. Like I've got to get to church. And I wasn't like, I didn't see myself as like a promising young leader. I had very low social skills. I was raised in a butcher shop that had an environment very similar to prison. Okay. So I'm not showing up with emotionally healthy men who are helping me integrate into the life of the church. But when I go in there, one of the things that happened was amazing. The youth pastor said the first time I came to church, he stopped and he said, Hey, young man up the back, I see the hand of God on your life. I remember thinking, what on earth does that mean? I don't feel this hand. I certainly can't see this hand and I do not perceive this about myself. But he said, no, no, no. I see something on you. And in a night where I was covered with shame, everybody else knows how to act. I don't know how to act. Everybody's confident in church. I'm not confident in church. It was that moment where he saw something in me I could not see in myself. The reason I got to preach, and I think this is honestly one of the most extraordinary things. I'm at a youth camp and they're doing a testimony time come up and share what the Lord's done. And I'm like, here comes John the butcher. I come up and I'm like, I love Jesus. And Jesus has changed my life. Like very low content, very high zeal. Jesus is amazing. Jesus has changed my life. Go Jesus. Yeah. You know, not much. And I'm getting ready to step down and my youth pastor stops, same guy. And he says, hang on a sec. I noticed that when you shared the room, listen just a little bit differently. And in my experience, that tells me that there could be a call of God to preach on your life. And I want to stop the room right now. I want to mark this. moment out, and I just want to say, I see ministry on you. And he prayed for me and commissioned me when nobody believed in me. And I am preaching to you today at your church because as a high school dropout in Australia, when nobody believed in me, my youth pastor saw past the rough edges, past the lack of education, believed in something and called it out on me. How encouraging. We are around a generation that have so low self-esteem and so low belief in themselves and so much anxiety, nothing is more encouraging than coming alongside someone and saying, I see more in you. He took a risk on the reputation of Saul that opened a door for him to be brought in and the whole church expanded because of that. We've got to learn to steward our influence for others. Number three, recognizing and

celebrating the work of God in others is encouraging. Acts 11, this to me is crazy. Acts 11, 22, news of this reached the church in Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he arrived and saw what the grace of God has done, he was glad and encouraged them all to remain true to the Lord with all their hearts. He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord. Now, I don't know if you remember what happens in Acts chapter 11, but this is the first place the gospel goes from a Jewish context to a pagan context. And it wasn't an authorized mission trip by the apostles. It just says some men preach the gospel to Gentiles and not only to Jews. History's greatest missionary window was opened by men whose names we do not even know in the book of Acts. And they start preaching the gospel and they have this revelation, the gospel can save not just Jews, but anybody on earth. The city of Antioch had a massive temple where there was prostitution. It was a huge sporting city. There was a chariot racing environment. It was truly a pagan city. And so you think about Jewish culture, you think about, and again, you think about Barnabas, a Levite, and then you think about the ceremonial law and separation from uncleanness. And then imagine going into a church where there's meeting with pagan Romans and idolaters, all sitting in a room who have been saved and washed by the blood of Jesus. The apostles had no sociological category that the gospel could do this yet. So they hear rumors of the scandal of the gospel breaking out. And then here's what they say, send Barnabas to go over and see if this is legit. Now Barnabas shows up and here's what he doesn't say. Oh my gosh, what are you doing in a mixed environment like this? This is inappropriate. He looks past all of the preferences and categories that had been placed on him and he looks and says, you know what I see? The grace of God. I don't recognize the form, but I recognize that power. There is something there. It may not be my preference. It may not be my culture. It may not be my background, but the thing that's in me is in you and I bless it. And it says he encouraged them to remain true to the Lord with all of their hearts. What a vision. You know, the older I get, the harder it is to recognize and bless the work of God in others. The older you get, you get, you get your preferences pretty much set and you get your theology pretty much set. And you look around and you start seeing how younger folks do it. And you're like, well, that can't be godly. Why? Because I don't like it. And it's like, you'd never say that, but you can

have preferences. I remember when the Asbury outpouring happened, you remember that? And there was all of these critics saying, well, you know, the kind of songs they're singing, they're not singing about the cross enough. And I was like, you saw like a one minute YouTube clip. You weren't even there. How can you make a judgment because you don't recognize the form that it's in? And that's such a temptation. And it takes, there's nothing more encouraging when you know, you've got something fresh from God, but it doesn't fit into the current paradigm. And someone comes along and says, I believe in it. And I want to release what's in you. This was the beauty of what Barnabas did for the believers in Antioch. Antioch ends up becoming the home base for the apostolic mission to the Gentiles. It's, it's Paul's home base for his ministries and his missions. And the whole thing opens up because Barnabas recognized something that nobody else saw. I don't recognize this form, but I recognize this power. I grew up in a Pentecostal church and the Pentecostal worship was always changing. And there was a moment in the late nineties when it was kind of shallow, to be honest with you. And I remember singing a song. It was, I think it was called jump for the fun. Okay. And here's the lyrics jump for the fun. Everybody boom, jump for the fun. Everybody move. So I was like, okay, I'm not, I mean, I don't even, I don't see jumping in the Psalms. I mean, maybe there's a way that there's a Hebrew word that means to elevate your body. I'm not sure, but it just sounds like jump for the fun everybody, boom, jump for the fun everybody, move. And this is when mosh pits were coming into churches, and it was like hugely controversial. The flesh pit, they were calling it. This is a flesh pit, and super controversial. And Australia had this Pentecostal patriarch, and his name was Tommy Evans. And he was in his 80s, and he'd been a missionary around the world, and he was just a legend. And I remember coming to our big youth rallies that were called Youth Alives, and in the mosh pit, the praise pit, right, in the praise pit, was Tommy Evans with earplugs in, because he didn't like the music. Jumping up and down everybody, boom. And he was like in there, in his 80s, looking around. And he said, this is not my style, but I remember when I was young, the zeal of God would touch

us like this. And though I do not like the form, I recognize this is the same fire, and I want to bless what the next generation is encountering in Jesus. I love that spirit. You know, all of us, I say to our church, on my best day, I'm an interim pastor. Somebody else is going to have my pulpit. Somebody else is going to have my position. Now, I may be 40 years of interim pastoral work in New York City, but at some point, you build it to give it away. There's nothing more encouraging than looking at something that you may not personally like, but recognizing God's in it, and empowering it to go. Next, we encourage people, not just by blessing the work of God, but by creating space for the destiny of others. Same passage, Acts 11, look at what it says, then Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, and when he found him, he brought him to Antioch. So for a whole year, Barnabas and Saul met with the church, taught great numbers of people. The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. Now, Barnabas is in the middle of a move of God, multitudes turning to the Lord, and in the middle of it, he stops. You know what he says? Saul has a call on his life to the Gentiles. And I know that Saul's promise, because he listened to his conversion story, was that he was going to be used to stand before rulers and kings of the Gentiles. And so in the middle of a move of God, he leaves Antioch, travels hundreds of miles away to find Saul, who's laboring in obscurity. The word that's used in the Greek means a diligent search. He really looked for him, and he said to Saul, Saul, there is a move of God in Antioch, you've got to come here because I believe your destiny is going to be released in this environment. And then when Saul shows up, boom, he realizes, I was born to reach people like this. And you know what ends up happening in Acts chapter 13?

While the leaders of the church are worshiping and fasting, the Spirit says, set apart Saul and Barnabas for the ministry that I have for them. Someone had the foresight in the middle of a move of God to stop and say, how do we create a destiny-releasing environment where the promises of God on people become possible because we give them space to do this? This to me shows such tenderness and care in how ministry works. And again, when I reflect on my own story, the guy that called me to preach would do something amazing. You know what he would do? He would reduce his sermon time at large events and give me five minutes of his preaching time and he would say, John Tyson is a young man who God has really touched. He has a call to preach and I'm going to bring him up. And I was like the warmup act for his sermons. So I would get up and I'd have five minutes to preach the house down and stir love for Jesus and then get off the stage. And you know what he would do after? He not only sacrificed his time, he would sit me down and he'd teach me, hey, too much zeal on the front end. Use more of the word of God, include more verses. He took space from his preaching time to give me space and then created space for me to learn to grow in my gift. He produced a destiny-releasing environment. This youth group had 150 kids in it and 40 of them went into full-time ministry because he created space for the next generation to rise up. Some of the biggest churches in America are my friends from youth group who are under that same leadership anointing. There is power in creating space for other people like Barnabas did to raise up Saul who would become Paul and reach the world. And then lastly, another way we encourage is really important, by offering people a second chance.

15. Sometime later Paul said to Barnabas, let's go back and visit the believers in all the towns where we preach the Word of the Lord and see how they're doing. Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark, with them but Paul did not think it wise. Why? Because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and it cannot continue with them. I don't know how to say it. Your boy John Mark was flaky. Things got hard and John Mark's like, I'm out man, this is too hard for me. And the word that's used there, he deserted them in the middle of mission. What a leadership framework. No one invests in leaders who desert them. They had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took Mark and sailed for Cyprus and then Paul goes on to his mission. This is fascinating here. Paul prioritized efficiency and Barnabas prioritized restorative grace. Now which one of them was right? Both of them. They're both right here. But I want you to know why this is important. Do you know what John Mark ended up doing? Do you know what happened to him in scripture? He ends up, Peter calls John Mark a son in the faith and John Mark follows the apostle Peter around and then he's exhorted to start writing down the story of Peter's life and writing down the teachings of Jesus through Peter. And you know what John Mark ultimately wrote? The gospel of Mark. How many of you when you read the gospel of Mark are grateful that someone didn't give up on him as a young leader and actually believed in him and gave him space to fulfill the call of God on his life. And when you read the gospel of Mark, one of the distinctive themes is how gracious Jesus is to failures. Because this was what Peter carried was grace for failure. And John Mark who had grace for failure was able to record that. And you know that every gospel has a different themes. One of the themes of the gospel of Mark is that Jesus is the one that gives failures second chances. How amazing that Barnabas saw something on him and said, I know it's flaky but this is not his destiny. Let me work with him. Let me stick with him and let me see what happens. It takes real, and listen, is there anything more encouragement than when you think you've blown it and it's over and someone says, this is not the final moment of your life. God's not finished with you. This is the spirit of Jesus. Jesus when he finds the woman caught in

adultery doesn't say, what were you thinking? He says, I don't condemn you. There's an option for another life. When he finds the woman at the well, he doesn't say you're bad at relationships. He says, I just see there's a hunger behind this. And he turns her into an evangelist that reaches her village. When Peter denies Jesus, Jesus goes, finds him. The spirit of Jesus is the spirit of restoration for failures. There's nothing more encouraging than coming along and believing in someone who has failed. Now I want to close just by making this practical. How do we get a, I want you to get a black belt in encouraging people. Okay. I want you to get good at this. So number one, what you will note is that encouragement is specific, not generic. When you see someone call out the specifics of what it is. Hey man, I want to know you've got really, really high people skills and you've got a way of influencing a room. That is encouraging. When you hear someone teach and you say, Hey man, you really handled God's word well. And I think people were built up and had a clearer vision of Jesus. That's encouraging. It's the old classic catch people doing things right. Instead of catching them doing things wrong, be specific in your encouragement. Next, the gap versus the game. People are always overwhelmed by how far they have to go. Focus on how far they've come, not how far they have to go. And this is very important, particularly as more and more non-Christians come into the church. Give an example, guy in New York, struggling with alcohol and partying, getting drunk every weekend, gives his life to Jesus, goes four weeks without getting drunk, gets drunk the fifth week. Instead of going, how could you? You go, Whoa, Whoa, that's not good. But dude, if you ever had a period in recent years when you've gone a month without drinking like that, you know what that's called? When there is a larger distance and less desire to sin, there's a biblical word for it. Sanctification. This is the work of the spirit in somebody's life. So show people what God has done and how far he's brought them, not how much they have to do and how far they have to go. There's encouragement in recognizing what God has done for you. Next, the importance of timing. You know who knows timing? Satan. The accuser of the abrasion just

knows when you're beat down. It's that person in the church you preach five times on Easter Sunday. And there's that person who waits to the the fifth service to come up and say, you didn't say that Greek word right, and now I trust you, I don't trust any, and he's like, mate, I've just preached my heart out. I have an Australian accent, I think we say it that way in Australia. Why after the fifth service, man? Your timing, the right word at the right time can change somebody's life. And then I want to say this, be generous with your encouragement. You know, Australian culture, we're always worried about people becoming arrogant. And so we're like, well, I don't want to encourage him too much, I don't want him to get arrogant. And I was like, it's my experience that life tends to beat you down, not build you up. And the great challenge at this moment of history is not people running around with pride, it's people with depression. And so be generous with your encouragement. How often does it say we should encourage one another in that verse in the book of Hebrews? Daily. You can lose your heart in a day. You can get your heart back in a day. There is power in being generous with our encouragement. The world is waiting for this. We live with an anxious generation and we need a generation to find a way to walk into what God has. The moment I close with a story, and it's the goal of what I want this morning to be. My son in the third grade had a bully. He was on the bus, you know, the old school bus. He was just getting, he was anxious, he wouldn't go to school and I was like, man, what's going on? And he said to me, dad, there's a bully on the bus. I was like, in the third grade, there's a bully, New York bully too. I was like, oh gosh.

I said, Nate, you're probably too young for this. And this is a little early than I wanted to do it, but I'm going to have to introduce you to my friend tonight, William Wallace. And tonight we're going to watch the Braveheart. You are too young for it. I'm going to have to skip some scenes, but I just need you to know, many men have faced what you've been going through, facing bullies. And I remember sitting him down, you know, the battle of Sterling, where they got the long sticks and the horses are coming down and I was like, Nate, I just want you to know, look at William Wallace. I know his face is painted blue, but that's probably to hide the fear, okay? Look at William Wallace's face as they're coming and I'd pause and I'd say, how does he look? And he's like, he looks nervous. I'm like, yeah, because you've got a cavalry coming at him, mate. He's nervous. They get a little cold, you know, the music's building. I'm like, how does he look now? Look at his mates, even the psycho Irish guy. How does he look? He looks a bit scared. Yeah, man, because courage is not about not being scared. It's believing you can do it anyway. And then a little bit closer and ultimately the scene where they defeat him and Nate and I are losing our minds going wild. And I was like, listen to me, man. You were born to overcome bullies. You are a Tyson. Tyson means firebrand. You were made to burn in a lukewarm world.

Get on that bus. And Nate, here's the key. Bullies are intimidated. They're overcompensating because of their fear. Confront the bully and your bully will die. So next morning, this is an absolute true story. Come to the bus and I was just like, braveheart, man, braveheart. And my son grabs the school bus, swings back, looks at me and runs onto the bus and confronts the bully. You know what ended up happening? Totally transformed my son's life. Turning point. All he needed was someone older than him to come alongside him and tell him, face your fears, baby. You can do this. And because this is actually a Christian story, in the 12th grade, they became really good friends at a small Christian school in New York and ended like the book of Acts. Beautiful reconciliation. Praise the Lord. Here's the point I want to make. Some of you may be facing something in your life right now and you're like, I cannot go back to work tomorrow. I cannot make that phone call. Maybe you're in a relationship and you're like, I got to break it up, but I cannot break it up. I am too intimidated. Maybe you're facing something in your marriage and like, it's never going to work. Maybe it's an employee at work or a boss and you're like, I am demoralized by being here. I'm here to tell you that Jesus Christ has overcome sin, Satan, death and hell. And he has put his spirit inside of you.

And when you go back, you are not on your own to deal with these things. Christ himself will strengthen you. If you step out in faith, he will meet you with power to change the circumstances that you are in.