Encouragement: The Key to Caring

This book was written by Dr Larry Crabb and Dr Dan Allender.

I google image searched the book and google gave me this picture...

It's completely different to the copy I have which is a bright green book that looks like this...

The difference between the two is that my version was bought at a book sale for $1! I seriously cannot help bragging about the bargains I get...

Anyway...

The book was so good. I think for me, encouragement has always been one of those things that I had a vague idea about, but that I never really knew how to define. 'Oh yeah, it's just like being nice to someone especially when they are feeling down and stuff'

But it's so much more.

Crabb and Allender help unpack what exactly encouragement is. What it is, what it isn't, why it's important, what barriers there are to it, what an encourager is like, how encouragement works, how it can change others and how to do it. There was just so much in there! I read this book quite quickly because it was really easy to read, and it gave me a thirst to want to know more. A chapter would end talking about some other topic and that would be addressed in the following chapter.

I found the concepts of surface communities especially interesting as this is something I have often observed growing up in church where people have layers that keep other people from knowing their fears. This in effect has the result that people communicate by just talking from one layer to another and never really get to address the core fears of others. They end up thinking they have encouraged someone, but anything that they thought they did was shallow and ultimately ineffective. We are to be totally committed to being instruments used by God in other people's lives.

I also found it interesting that the wrong solution to a surface community was  total openness. Crabb and Allender explain that total openness is self-serving as you are really just presenting your true self and expecting other people to accept you 'just the way you are'. We are to depend on God for acceptance - not other people. Total openness as Crabb and Allender put it is 'falesely courageous self-centredness'. Ouch! But so true.

Encouragement: The Key to Caring is a very practical book and a helpful resource which is fantastic because it is something that we all need to know how to do as Christians.