How Can You Encourage Your Spouse Today?
Every summer (since 2013) our family spends a week together at family camp. We started as campers and since 2020 Kristen and I have been speakers/teachers. This week away together as a family consistently ranks as the highlight of our year. We spend great quality time together—we enjoy meals as a family, worship, laugh, and learn. I’m so grateful we’ve made this week together a priority for the last 12 summers.
Whenever we teach, Kristen and I speak on marriage and family. We get the privilege of helping married couples and single parents, newlyweds and grandparents and everyone in between.
This summer we taught about the importance of being lifelong learners (1 Peter 3:7), how to build up with your words (Ephesians 4:25-32), how to be uncommon as parents (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12), emotional intimacy (Genesis 2:24-25), and how to be a winning team together in marriage. It was a really fun week of teaching for us and for the families.
If there was a common thread throughout the week, it was the theme of encouragement. It wasn’t an intentional decision on our part to talk a lot about encouragement, but it kept coming up in our talks.
Hebrews 3:13 says, “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
Ephesians 4:29 says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”
1 Thessalonians 2:11-12 says, “For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.”
At some point I felt like we might be beating a dead horse, talking about encouragement so often!
On the last full day of camp, we spend one session teaching and then the final session is something called *Camper Share* where campers stand up and share their big takeaways from the week. It was so powerful to see many husbands and wives stand up, walk to the front of the room, and publicly encourage their spouse in front of 100 other people. Tears streamed down the faces of both the spouse who shared and the one who was encouraged.
It became crystal clear to me and Kristen how badly people need to be encouraged and how much they long to be affirmed by their spouse. It’s like the idea of encouragement was infectious among these couples/families. Like they caught the bug of encouragement and wanted to pass it on to others.
Your Turn:
A very simple challenge for you today. Who can you encourage?
Does your spouse need to hear you build them up with your words?
Do your kids need to hear what they’re doing right instead of nitpicking all the things they’re doing wrong?
Does a friend need to hear the Good News that God loves them so much that He sent His Son Jesus for them? Encourage someone with the Gospel!
And maybe you need to hear some encouragement today. Can you admit this to your spouse or a friend?
Go encourage someone else and encourage them to pass it on to someone else. If we don’t encourage, we might become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13). Encouragement costs us nothing and takes so little time. Yet it can have a profound impact on your marriage and your family.