by Joyce Meyer
Some of Crane’s students resisted this assignment. Some complained that they wouldn’t know what to say. Others were afraid of being rejected. And a few thought it would be dishonest to compliment someone they didn’t like. “Suppose you meet somebody you dislike?” one man asked. “Wouldn’t it be insincere to praise your enemy?”
“No, it is not insincerity when you compliment your enemy,” Crane responded, “for the compliment is an honest statement of praise for some objective trait or merit that deserves commendation. You will find that nobody is entirely devoid of merit or virtue…
“Your praise may buoy up the morale of lonely souls who are almost ready to give up the struggle to do good deeds. You never know when your casual compliment may catch a boy or girl, or man or woman, at the critical point when he would otherwise toss in the sponge.” 2
Crane’s students discovered that their sincere compliments had a positive impact on the people around them, and the experience made an even greater impact on the students themselves. Lois blossomed into a real people person who lit up a room when she entered it. Another student who was ready to quit her job as a legal secretary because of an especially difficult boss began complimenting him, even though at first she did so through clenched teeth. Eventually not only did his surliness toward her change, but so did her exasperation with him. They wound up taking a genuine liking to each other and were married.
George Crane’s Compliment Club probably sounds a little bit corny to us today. But the principles behind it are just as sound now as they were in the 1920s. The bottom line is that Crane was teaching what I call the Elevator Principle: We can lift people up or take people down in our relationships. He was trying to teach his students to be proactive. Crane said, “The world is starving for appreciation. It is hungry for compliments. But somebody must start the ball rolling by speaking first and saying a nice thing to his companion.” 3 He embraced the sentiment of Benjamin Franklin, who believed, “As we must account for every idle word—so we must for every idle silence.”
Five Things Every Encourager
Needs to Know about People
You have tremendous power to affect the lives of people around you. Encouragement from you could be the difference-maker in someone’s day, week, or even life, sending that person in a whole new direction.
It’s difficult to encourage people if you don’t know what encourages them. So become a student of people and learn what makes them tick. Know what lifts them up. To get you started, begin by embracing these five things I know about people:
1. Everybody wants to be somebody.
Every person wants to be affirmed. Every person wants to be loved. Every person wants to be well thought of. Everybody wants to be somebody. That is true from the smallest of children to the oldest of adults.
How can you help other people to feel like they are somebody? By seeing them as a “10.” I believe that for the most part, people respond to our expectations of them. If you think the best of them, they generally give you their best. If you treat people like a “10,” they respond like a “10.” If you treat someone like a “2,” he responds like a “2.” People want recognition and affirmation. It is a deep human desire, and we can help people become great simply by showing them how we believe in them.
2. Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.
People don’t want to know how smart we are. They don’t want to know how spiritual we are. They don’t want to know what degrees we possess or wealth we’ve amassed. The only thing they really want to know is whether we genuinely care about them. We need to show the love of God to others through our lives.
I learned this lesson from Katie Hutchison, my second-grade Sunday school teacher. She was incredible. She loved me and I knew it. When I was sick and missed church, she’d come visit me that week.
“Oh, Johnny, I missed you last Sunday in church,” she’d say. “I wanted to see how you were doing.” She’d give me a five-cent trinket that I thought was worth a million dollars, and say, “I hope you can come to Sunday school next Sunday because we missed you so much. In fact, when you come to class, I want to make sure I see you, so when I get up to teach, would you just raise your hand and wave to me?” (There were almost fifty kids in her class!) “Then I’ll see you, and I’ll smile, and I’ll feel better and I’ll teach better.”
When Sunday came, I’d go whether I felt good or not. I’d wave. She’d smile, and nod, and teach. I knew how much she cared for me, and that made me feel like I could do anything.
3. Anybody in the body of Christ belongs to everybody in the body of Christ.
As Christians, too many people try to make it on their own. And they become indifferent to others and expect them to make it on their own too. But that’s not how the body of Christ is meant to work.
When a Christian tries to go it alone, he’s like the bricklayer in a humorous story I once came across. He needed to move about five hundred pounds of bricks from the top of a four-story building to the sidewalk below. The following is reputed to be his own words taken from an insurance claim form:
It would have taken too long to carry the bricks down by hand, so I decided to put them in a barrel and lower them by a pulley which I had fastened to the top of the building. After tying the rope securely at ground level, I then went up to the top of the building, fastened the rope around the barrel, loaded it with bricks, and swung it over the sidewalk for the descent.
Then I went down to the sidewalk and untied the rope, holding it securely to guide the barrel down slowly. But since I weigh only 140 pounds, the five-hundred-pound load jerked me from the ground so fast that I didn’t have time to think of letting go of the rope.
As I passed between the second and third floors, I met the barrel coming down. This accounts for the bruises and the lacerations on my upper body.
I held tightly to the rope until I reached the top, where my hand became jammed in the pulley. This accounts for my broken thumb.
At the same time, however, the barrel hit the sidewalk with a bang, and the bottom fell out. With the weight of the bricks gone, the barrel weighed only about forty pounds, thus my 140-pound body began a swift descent. I met the empty barrel coming up. This accounts for my broken ankle.
Slowed only slightly, I continued the descent and landed on the pile of bricks. This accounts for my sprained back and broken collarbone. At that point I lost my presence of mind completely, and I let go of the rope and the empty barrel came crashing down on me. This accounts for my head injuries.
And as for the last question on your insurance form—what would you do if the same situation arose again? Please be advised I am finished trying to do the job all by myself. 4
In a spiritual sense, that’s what happens when people remain disconnected from the body of Christ. God did not design any of us to go it alone. We were meant to encourage and help one another. As brothers and sisters, we need to take the journey together.
4. Anybody who encourages somebody influences a lot of bodies.
A lot of people have helped and encouraged me along the way in my life. I look back now at age sixty-one, and I am astounded by how generous and kind others have been.
One of the people who did that when I was a squirrely seventh grader was a man named Glen Leatherwood, another of my wonderful Sunday school teachers. We were an ornery group: always wiggling, squirming, talking, fighting—doing everything but listening. But we’d listen to Glen because he lived to love and encourage us.
One day his voice began to break, and every kid kind of turned around and looked up at Glen, and he looked at us, and tears were just streaming.
“Right after the class,” he said, “I’d like to see Steve Benner, Phil Conrad, Junior Fowler, and John Maxwell just for a second. I’ve got something great to tell you.”
After class when we met, he said, “Every Saturday night I pray for every boy in my seventh-grade class. Last night I felt God tell me that you four boys were going to
be called into the ministry, and I wanted to be the first one to tell you. I also wanted to be the first to lay hands on you and pray for you.”
Glen laid his hands on our heads and gave me what I have always considered to be my official ordination into the ministry. And he was right. All four of us become pastors in the ministry.
Many years later, I went to visit Glen, and I asked him how many people were in ministry from his Sunday school classes over the years. He said he wasn’t sure, but he knew for sure there were thirty.
I wonder how many churches have benefited from the love and encouragement he showed to bunches of seventh graders every year. How many lives have his encouraging words impacted? I probably won’t know until I get to heaven. But I can tell you this: anybody who encourages somebody influences a lot of bodies.
5. God loves everybody.
Many Christians tend to be too choosy about who they help and who they encourage. They look for people like themselves. Some people even believe that they should help only other individuals who believe what they believe and think as they do. That’s not the way it should be. It’s certainly not the way Jesus did it.
Years ago I came across a piece about someone who fell into a pit and couldn’t get out—and how others treated that person:
A subjective person came along and said, “I feel for you down there.”
An objective person came along and said, “Well, it’s logical that someone would fall down there.”
A Pharisee said, “Only bad people fall into pits.”
A mathematician calculated how the individual fell into the pit.
A news reporter wanted an exclusive story on the person in the pit.
A fundamentalist said, “You deserve your pit.”
A Calvinist said, “If you’d been saved, you’d never fallen in that pit.”
An Armenian said, “You were saved and still fell in that pit.”
A charismatic said, “Just confess that you’re not in that pit.”
A realist came along and said, “Now that’s a pit.”
A geologist told him to appreciate the rock strata in the pit.
An IRS worker asked if he was paying taxes on this pit.
The county inspector asked if he had a permit to dig the pit.
A self-pitying person said, “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen my pit.”
An optimist said, “Things could be worse.”
A pessimist said, “Things will get worse.”
Jesus, seeing the man, reached down and took him by the hand and lifted him out of the pit.
Jesus came to die for people. He was and is in the people business. And you and I need to be in the people business too. We should always keep in mind that God loves everybody, and we need to treat others the way Jesus would treat them. We need to encourage them to be who God created them to be.
I believe that deep down, everyone wants to become an encourager, and everyone who knows Jesus wants to be more like Jesus—even the most negative person. Why do I say that? Because I believe that we all want to be a positive influence on the lives of others. We want to add value to others, not take it away from them.
So please allow me to be your encourager. You can make a difference. You can add value to others. You can represent Jesus well and someday hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Everyone can become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have high charisma. And you don’t have to have it all together. You just need to care about people and be willing to get started. You don’t have to do anything big or spectacular. The little things you can do every day have the potential to have a much greater impact than you can imagine.
Catch someone doing something right.
Give someone a sincere compliment.
Assist someone in need.
Offer someone a shoulder to cry on.
Celebrate with someone who succeeds.
Give someone hope.
You can do this. Act now. And keep in mind this quote that I’ve always loved: “I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.” 5
CHAPTER
10
Aggressive Acts of Kindness
And let us consider and give attentive, continuous care to watching over one another, studying how we may stir up (stimulate and incite) to love and helpful deeds and noble activities.
Hebrews 10:24
Have you ever sat with a spouse, family member, or friend and discussed ways you can be a blessing to others? I would venture to say that most of you haven’t, and until about three years ago I hadn’t either. Now, as I mentioned in chapter 6, I find such conversations to be fun and very helpful. We all get excited when we purposely think and talk about ways to help other people. There will be no Love Revolution if we don’t do things on purpose that will help others. We must have goals and press toward meeting them.
Once I became determined to make loving others the theme of my life, I hungered for a variety of ways to show love. Love is not a theory or a mere talk; it is action (see 1 John 3:18). We can certainly love people with loving words that encourage and express how valuable we think they are, as I emphasized in the previous chapter, but we also need to use our resources of time, energy, possessions, and finances to love others.
You may be convinced you don’t have anything to give. Maybe you are in debt, doing your best to pay your bills—and the thought of giving to others is almost irritating to you or perhaps makes you feel sad because you want to give, but don’t see how you can. There are literally thousands of ways you can give and spread love if you will search for them aggressively.
Walk the Talk
I believe telling people what to do and failing to give them any information on how to do it is a huge mistake. Many people talk about love, but just talking doesn’t necessarily leave people with any concrete ideas of how to show love in practical ways. I just finished skimming an entire book on love. It was 210 pages long and filled with teaching about how Jesus said the one new command we are to follow is to love one another as He has loved us and by that love the world would know Him (see John 13:34–35). But I did not find one practical idea or creative thought about how that would actually look in the life of an individual. The author repeatedly made the point that loving one another is the most important thing we can do, but I can honestly say that if his book was all the knowledge I had about love, I would not have any clue how to begin doing it. I think people want to do what is right, but they need someone to lead them by pointing them in the right direction.
Jesus not only talked about love, but remember that Acts 10:38 says He got up daily and went about doing good and healing all those who were harassed and oppressed by the devil. His disciples saw Him daily helping people, listening to them, or letting His plans be interrupted in order to help someone who came to Him with a need. They saw Him make sure they always had money set aside to help the poor. They also witnessed His being quick to forgive and showing patience with the weak. He was kind, humble, and encouraging, and never gave up on anybody. Jesus did not merely talk about loving people; He showed everyone around Him how to love. Our words are important, but our actions carry more weight than our words.
Our words are important, but our actions carry more weight than our words.
Our Biggest Problem
The single biggest problem we have in Christianity is that we listen to people tell us what to do—and we even tell others what to do—and then we walk out of our church buildings or Bible studies and do nothing. It doesn’t matter what we think we know. The proof of what we know is in what we do. Jesus said we would be known by our fruit (see Matt. 12:33), which means that people can tell who we really are on the inside by what we produce with our lives and by our attitude.
I must constantly ask myself,
“What am I doing to actually show love?” We can be deceived by knowledge, according to the apostle Paul. We can become blinded by the pride of what we know to the point where we never see that we are not really practicing any of it. Paul told the Corinthians that mere knowledge causes people to be puffed up with pride, but love (affection and goodwill and benevolence) edifies and builds up and encourages people to grow to their full stature (see 1 Cor. 8:1). We should all make sure there is no gap between what we say and what we do. No wonder the world accuses many Christians of being hypocritical, for indeed they are.
I attended one church for many years that talked about missions once a year on “Missions Sunday.” I don’t remember ever hearing anything about reaching the poor and oppressed in our own city. Most of the sermons I heard were about doctrinal beliefs rather than the practical aspects of Christianity and how I should behave in my community. Solid doctrine is important, but understanding how to live my daily life is equally important. The church was filled with gossip, division, and people vying for position in the church. In many ways, we behaved no differently than the rest of the world; we simply went to church. I was finally asked to leave that church because I was too radical and enthusiastic about the supernatural gifts of God I had discovered were available to Christians. I had become an excited, enthusiastic Christian and was told I was just being emotional and needed to calm down.