Encouragement
How I feel encouraged!
A personal story by Steve
I am motivated by organic encouragement
Family and close friends encourage through love, and selflessness, really with our best interests at heart
Like restaurant-commission-grown, beautiful tasting organic tomatoes or lettuce varieties or capsicum or beef or premium happy and grain fed chicken
Family encouragement is provided via this kind of care and love, this organic encouragement which is truly valued and richly cherished
A bit like saffron, true encouragement is meticulously harvested from individual flowers and prepared and presented with utmost care
I am encouraged by practical advice and support from knowledgeable and credible sources. All other expressions of support are of course wonderful however I see these as acts of kindness
True encouragement contains a kind of investment by the encourage – er as they have made the effort to provide their time, energy, experience and material wealth to help me along my way in life
Growing up I was encouraged to be patient, grateful, careful, polite, hardworking and honest. The source of encouragement was credible so for the most part I have felt motivated to follow these parameters
Being encouraged to be patient as a youngster, is probably one of the main areas that I remember, specifically. This tends to stick in my mind. Maybe because patience is a concept that is so foreign to us now. To be reminded in the back of my head about this fruit must mean that it was received as a solid core value growing up
“Just be patient and work towards your goal, be careful, watch the ball, sense the other players don’t rush. Be on time, work carefully and accurately, check thoroughly. Be and do these things, being patient along the way and you will be rewarded”.
You know, a simple thing but this morning one of my music students came into the studio with his dad and they were carrying some folded vinyl; this turned out to be the banner sign from our front hedged fence. For the second Friday night in a row it had been ripped from its cable tied moorings and left on the ground. Simple and annoying vandalism
At the end of the lesson the dad returned and seeing my disappointment and hearing my defeatist attitude having given up on reinstalling the banner, he kindly offered to drop in some industrial grade fasteners to secure this thing once and for all. But it was more than kindness, it was definitely encouragement because to me he was making an investment and was motivating me to move forward and get on with it rather than simply giving up on this simple yet proven form of marketing “the banner”
Like organic food, real encouragement is not mass produced it does not contain harmful poisons and has not been suddenly thawed for use. True encouragement is fresh, sweet, juicy innovative and satisfying.
Encouragement via example is another way I am motivated, to experience true leadership is in itself encouraging. To see the way others lead their lives, how they do business, how they look after their kids how they treat each other, their family and friends and to see how they worship is a great form of natural encouragement
I feel encouraged by the success of others and watching those with similar core values to mine. When I see the patience people put into learning or building or conferencing then I am truly encouraged to move forward and put that banner back up and get on with it!
I feel encouraged by those friends and family members who put up with my crazy ideas and don’t even seem to balk at the out there things I do and would ultimately like to do.
Home fruit and vegetable gardens are becoming more and more popular at the moment with the concept of sharing crops between neighbours soon to catch on; and it is this kind of home grown encouragement that we will also be turning to at times get a little tougher.
I thank you for listening tonight and I trust that as time goes by we will all have the opportunity to motivate and encourage one another to live a rich and fruitful and interesting life, with love, in the Lord.
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