Encouragement Is Not Sympathy

According to 1 Thessalonians 5:11, God calls us to “encourage one another and build each other up.” Παρακαλέω, the Greek word for encouraging, also means comforting or urging.  Encouragement is not simply about making someone feel better.  Encouragement invites people into a way of life and a way of thinking that enables us to experience the fullness of God’s blessings.

Encouragement is not sympathy.  Encouragement strengthens and invigorates.  It offers power and confidence.  Sympathy, however, seeks to lessen the harshness of our struggles.  It tells us, “What you are experiencing is too much for you to handle.  Your life is too difficult.”  Much like pity, it weakens us with the message that we are incapable of dealing with the life God has given us. 

Sympathy cuts us off from the Lord.  It limits our grasp of his capabilities, until he becomes nothing more than the One who cares and holds our hands.  But encouragement draws us closer to God.  It urges us to One who fills us with His power to handle anything that we face. It tells us that with God, all things are possible and no situations are God-forsaken.  Sympathy says “What a shame!”  Encouragement says “Get ready for something amazing!”

Years ago I met a man with chronic physical ailments.  His wife sympathized for him.  She tended to his every need.  As he lay groaning on the hospital bed in their living room, she did whatever she could do to ease his struggles.  Each day he got weaker and weaker, and eventually went to a residential therapy center.

The therapists did not sympathize with this man; they encouraged him.  With caring and with firmness, they pushed him to do what he never thought he would ever be able to do again.  When he complained, they urged him to do the best that he could.  Over time he became stronger and stronger, until he was able to walk again and care for himself.

The man returned home, where his sympathetic wife once again cared for his every need.  When he faced a struggle, she took care of it for him.  The more she did, the less he did and became weaker and weaker.  Before long, he found himself back in the hospital bed again.  As well-meaning as his wife was, her sympathy took away his strength.

When God tells us to encourage one another, he wants us to act like the therapists, not the wife.