Podcast: Positive Thinking ≠ Lasting Encouragement (Lindsey Carlson)

June 06, 2022 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Are Positivity and Encouragement the Same Thing?

In today's episode, Lindsey Carlson talks about the discouragement we all face and where to turn for true encouragement that won’t let us down.

A Better Encouragement

A Better Encouragement

Lindsey Carlson

Lindsey Carlson leads weak and weary women to a refreshing stream—the God of endurance and encouragement, who satisfies spiritual thirst through the better word of his Son.

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Check out other Crossway Podcasts including the new podcast Blessed: Conversations on the Book of Revelation with Nancy Guthrie.

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:57 - A Need for Encouragement

Matt Tully
Lindsey, thank you so much for joining me again on The Crossway Podcast.

Lindsey Carlson
It’s good to be here.

Matt Tully
Lindsey, the title of your new book is A Better Encouragement. I think there’s a lot implied in that title in those three words that I want to unpack today in our conversation. To start off, do you find that many people are feeling like they need encouragement these days?

Lindsey Carlson
I think yes. I think after a pandemic people are very disconnected, and especially having come out of a season where people were doing church from home, they may not be as connected to their churches the way they were before the pandemic. I’ve seen a lot of emails from women’s ministry directors specifically speaking about how they are regularly hearing from their women how discouraged people are.

Matt Tully
Do you feel like women in particular are facing a unique encouragement battle these days that maybe feels distinct from what you’re hearing from men and the conversations your husband, as a pastor, is having with men in the church?

Lindsey Carlson
Any battle that we face is going to be unique to our time just because we’re always changing. I think the desire for encouragement is probably no different than it was any other year that the world has been created. I think it’s always changing because we find new technology and we find new ideas and we like to switch it up. But I think that the longing for encouragement has been there in every season. I think that when women were raising children in the Bible days they were just as needy for encouragement as we are today, but I do think that the technology that we have access to does fuel a lot of disconnection with women. Also, I think we still have a lot of backlash from the power of positive thinking from the 1970s and even farther back. Those things have gone into shaping how women have been trained to look for encouragement. I think you combine those two things together—a poor understanding of where we should seek encouragement put together with this lack of connection we’ve developed—and I do think we are in a unique place in history where we’re having to renavigate how to find biblical encouragement.

03:13 - The Empty Promise of Technology

Matt Tully
I want to unpack both of those things that you mentioned—both the technology side of things and also the positive thinking and self-esteem movement that we have all grown up in—but maybe turning to the tech issue first, you said something very interesting right there. You said that technology has fueled a feeling of disconnect that we all sense, and women in particular in certain ways. That feels so ironic given that so much of the technology that we have and use promises us that it would connect us to each other and give us community in some sense. Unpack what you’re saying when you say that that’s actually not happening.

Lindsey Carlson
Absolutely. Specifically with Christians, the struggle that we face is that we know that when we’re growing in Christ we should be being sanctified and being made new in Christ, and then you pair us with technology that puts on a platform for the world to see how we’re growing, what we look like. I think that when you have Christians who legitimately want to walk in holiness and we’re growing and learning, but now you’ve given us software to filter out all the negative things in our lives and given us the ability to create this fictitious image. I think it creates this tendency to want to withdraw because we don’t feel the freedom to be open as we would in our real lives because we want to hide. It’s just like when we see Adam and Eve hiding in Genesis. I think that when we feel a lack of maturity or a lack of knowledge or any lack inside of us, we want to control that image, so what we are connecting with is not an actual, real picture of who we are. We are actually not connecting fully because we’re connecting on this very superficial level that only shares the part of ourselves that we want people to see. Or we might react to something online and then someone pushes back. You see this all the time where people blow up on Facebook or on different social media areas. Then, you have the immediate disconnection. You are completely disconnected from the person because they’ve blocked you—or whatever it is—because we can’t handle disagreements anymore. There are all of these different ways that it has played out. We just start to filter what we’re looking for, even filtering our news feeds into I only want to look at the people that don’t make me feel uncomfortable. I only want to look at the people who have the same opinions that I have. I only want to look at people that share the same worldview as me. So we’re not being trained in righteousness in some of the ways that we were in previous years when we had to bump up against these differences in the regular world.

Matt Tully
It sounds like you’re saying that when it comes to this technology that we have that purports to connect us to each other, maybe a big difference is that we have so much more control, both over what we’re seeing from others and even how we’re presenting ourselves. Are you essentially saying it feels like it’s a completely fake, or false, world that we’re creating for ourselves?

Lindsey Carlson
Definitely. It’s interesting because you can see women—I won’t speak for men; I don’t know if they’re doing it in the same ways—are very open to building online communities. We can have book clubs online or a group of writers I follow that write the things that I like to read everyday and feel encouraged. But then if you ask where they are plugged into a local church, they can’t tell you. Or they might be going to a local church, but they’re not deeply engaged with people. They’re just showing up, getting their ticket stamped, and going home. That begs the question, You want connection, you want encouragement, and you may even want biblical encouragement, but if you’re not willing to go and put the face time in with actual people that can see into your life and actually press and ask questions and challenge and pray for you and bring you a meal when you’re sick, then are you really desiring real, actual, biblical community? Or are you desiring the feeling of encouragement?

Matt Tully
What would you say to the person who hears you say that and maybe their first reaction is maybe a little bit cynical and they say, Well, you’re a pastor’s wife. Your experience of a local church and of the community there is way different than what I’ve experienced. I’ve tried to be a part of that community and I’ve actually found churches in the past to be very discouraging to me.

Lindsey Carlson
I have two reactions. My first reaction is to be cynical also and say, Yeah, it’s the pastor’s wife. I get that. There are sinners filling the churches every single week that are filled with all kinds of hard stories and that say mean things and that have problems. I’m certainly not saying that women should come to the church because it is this pinnacle encouragement location where nothing will ever be difficult. I’m not saying that. As a pastor’s wife, I probably see more of the uncomfortable, yucky, hard things that people are walking through. However, I think that what I would say is that I’ve also seen people grow through those hard things. I’ve been able to have the vantage point to see, Look how this person came in broken, bleeding, wounded, hurt. She was walked with faithfully by women who loved her. Look how she grew and was encouraged in the faith. In our church plant we have had plenty of opportunities to see that happen, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It is actually encouraging to the other people who are watching. They might not be the one struggling at that specific time, but by being together in a body of Christ you get to see the witness of other people being strengthened through the word, the preaching every week, and relationships with one another. I would say that if you feel cynical and you do not feel like the church is an encouraging place, maybe you’re not in the right church. Maybe you need to look at where you’re going to church. Maybe you need someone to disciple you and walk alongside you in the church. That is not a lack in the church body; that’s a lack in maybe you haven’t had the experience of seeing the beauty of the church.

09:51 - How Positive Thinking Can Fuel Discouragement

Matt Tully
I want to go back to another thing that you mentioned earlier. The cultural air that we breathe today—you called it the power of positive thinking—you say that that maybe has contributed to the feelings of discouragement that we are all struggling with at times. Can you unpack that for us?

Lindsey Carlson
My generation grew up by being told by teachers, You can be whatever you want and you can do whatever you want if you try hard enough and if you apply your mind to it. There are all these little quips that we’ve heard over the years—

Matt Tully
Which honestly sound like they’re meant to be encouraging, right? Isn’t that all really encouraging, positive thinking for us?

Lindsey Carlson
Yes, absolutely. We think positive must always be good. But positive isn’t good if it’s untrue. If someone tells me, Lindsey, if you commit to being an astronaut, in just one year you, too, can be an astronaut. I’m sure that there are people that could sell me a program and tell me that I could become an astronaut, but the reality is that at my age and my season of life, I probably can’t pay enough money to become an astronaut. I don’t have the skill set and I don’t have the giftings. I don’t need encouragement in a place that is not strengthening me to do what God has called me to do or to be who God has not called me to be. I think it’s very dangerous within the church when we give encouragement—I say encouragement loosely because we use encouragement in a way that just says what people want to hear. When we say what people want to hear because we know that it will make them feel good or happy or affirmed, if it isn’t actually true and spurring them on in godliness and to obey Scripture, then it’s really not encouraging at all. It’s actually discouraging because we’re setting them up for disappointment and failure.

Matt Tully
What are the types of false encouragements that people are giving and offering to others that arise out of this power of positive thinking mentality that we’ve all grown up in?

Lindsey Carlson
One right off the bat that I can think of is that we went through a season where “Name it, claim it” was a huge problem in the church. We don’t necessarily fall into that anymore. I don’t necessarily have Christian women coming up to me and saying, Oh, Lindsey, if you need a new car you just declare it’s yours and it will be yours! But I do have women say in response to me when I say I’m really struggling today because my kids have been really difficult, or I’m really dealing with a lot of anger right now about a situation, I do have women say, Lindsey, you’ve got this. You’ve got this!. I think, I don’t got this! You do not see what’s going on in my house right now. I’m actually a mess and I’m struggling. I think that sometimes we speak what we want to be true into other people’s lives. Or if you have a sick kid that you don’t know what’s going on with the diagnosis, you don’t want someone to come up and say, Lindsey, I know that God is going to heal your son, because we don’t know if God is going to heal him in the way that we want him to be healed. I don’t need to tell a pregnant woman, Oh, I know that God is going to give you a baby because you are just going to be the best mom. That’s horrible encouragement if that’s not God’s will for their life. When I think about false encouragement and why it is so discouraging, it is because it labels something as truth that we want to give someone courage with, but we don’t have the authority to be using that to give courage to them with those words.

13:35 - Emotional and Mental Weakness

Matt Tully
Another thing that we’ll sometimes hear, both about the church and Christians today but even more broadly about our culture in general, is that we live in a coddled age. We’ve been pushed with this positive thinking message and this self-esteem message, and maybe that has contributed to an emotional and mental weakness. Do you think there’s anything to that? Is that part of the story in this conversation about why we’re always feeling discouraged?

Lindsey Carlson
Absolutely. I actually think maybe what it has been in my life is I want to be a strong Christian, I want to be strong in the Lord, and I want to please God with my resilience. I genuinely want to please God with the way that I handle my emotions in different situations. So when I’m actually discouraged, it’s really kind of embarrassing to admit because it feels like I’m admitting spiritual failure. I think sometimes the weakness that we are feeling we forget that Christ is made strong through our weakness; we forget that little piece. We think that it is more honoring to God to say, I’m okay. I’m not afraid. I know that all things work together for the good of those who love him than it is to say, Lord, I’m broken and I need your help. I think we are anemic when it comes to lament. We don’t know how to lament hard seasons, so we just fake it until we make it by just talking about how we feel strong when we don’t actually feel strong. I think the other arm of that is that because just like in Job’s day we have so many people that are such bad encouragers—some just because they never learned and some because they’re prideful—because we don’t have a ton of really great encouragers always surrounding us, I think we have gotten hesitant to admit discouragement because we don’t want to be hurt. We don’t want someone to give us false promises. We don’t want someone to come in and tell us, If you did this, then you wouldn’t be so discouraged. If you just did this a little bit more, you could fix it. People think that they have solutions that the Lord didn’t intend for them to offer. I think there are a lot of reasons why we tend to hide that discouragement.

Matt Tully
We can tell so quickly that those things are not really the encouragement that we need. They fall flat so quickly. You just talked about how we have this tendency to try to hide our discouragement from other Christians. We’re not always as open about that. That’s one side of the spectrum, but it seems like there’s also others who are perpetually open about feeling so discouraged. It’s like things are never going well. They’re always down. That feels like the time you have the message of, You’re great! You’ve got this. You can figure it out. You’re strong, you’re powerful, and you’re brave. How do you balance that? To me it feels like those are two different poles.

Lindsey Carlson
You’re right. That’s kind of how we live, isn’t it? We’re on one side or the other, and sometimes ricocheting between them. There are a lot of people that just set up camp on the weak side and think, That’s just who I am. That’s how I live is perpetually weak and broken. Look at my #blessedmess. That posture tends to become very all-consuming and very self-focused. When you see encouragement used throughout Scripture, it isn’t just being used as a pep talk. God is not firing down words just to get your motivation up so that you’ll power through a workout. He has grander plans involved with his words that he speaks to his children. Typically, those words are to encourage the body of Christ. They’re not singular. They’re not just for you in your own private moment with you and the Lord. I think when we think that encouragement is only about us, we stay in that place of weakness because we’re getting something from it. The more that I just lean into my weakness and say, This is who I am. I’m just always going to be weak. I’m needy, then it becomes a way to gather love from others. Rightly, the church should see the broken and press in and want to help. If we perpetually have loving people who are running to the broken, but then we have broken people that are not taught to strengthen weak knees and make their hands strong, then they’re going to be perpetually needy. That’s not the goal of Christian living either. We’re supposed to join and encourage one another to be strong. The drawback from staying weak and never seeing encouragement for what it’s meant to be is that you kind of become a mooch on the body of Christ because you’re so self-focused on drawing encouragement for yourself from other people—specifically from people, not from the Lord—that you often have to learn how to see only the Lord as your encourager first. Then, when you start to see that, you start to think, Oh my gosh! I want to pour this out! I need to be overflowing this into other people’s lives. I think that the more the Lord encourages us, the more we begin to turn and encourage one another within the body.

19:14 - A Personal Story of Discouragement

Matt Tully
Before we actually started recording, you made a comment that it’s kind of ironic that this book, A Better Encouragement is coming out right now in the midst of a season that has maybe been somewhat discouraging for you. You’ve wrestled with that maybe more than you have at other times. I wonder if you could explain what’s been going on and what that’s been like for you.

Lindsey Carlson
It’s interesting because I signed a contract to write a book on encouragement, and then maybe two months later is when the pandemic shut down everything. My five children came home from school and needed to be homeschooled, and I had a book contract to write. That was never in my plans, to write a book during a pandemic while church planting with my husband. Also, church planting in a part of the country that’s not super familiar to us. We live in the mid-Atlantic right now, so church life is just totally different than the world that I grew up in in Texas in the Bible Belt. When we were trying to acclimate to all of the different ways that churches function here and trying to connect with people relationally in ways that are very different than we’re used to, we often felt very disconnected from people. Even though we were trying to connect, during the pandemic you didn’t have those natural mechanisms anymore. That was already stripped down from what we didn’t have before the pandemic. So, we found ourselves very discouraged in a time when we couldn’t do anything about it. Those are the moments that strip you bare and make you go, I cannot control this. I cannot control whether our church grows or shrinks or closes. I cannot control whether my kids go back to school today or tomorrow. I cannot control whether or not I’m going to have a fresh brain when I wake up to finish my writing. I feel like the Lord just allowed me to be in this season where I felt perpetually discouraged because he wanted me to see, I sustain you by daily mercy. I am the one who has called you. I am the one that will make a way. Right as I finished up this book—and it’s hilarious looking back, but it was not hilarious the week of—we were in Texas because I thought my parents could maybe help us with kids while I was wrapping up. I went down a waterslide and broke my collarbone. I’m almost 40 and I broke my collarbone on a waterslide.

Matt Tully
That sounds painful.

Lindsey Carlson
It was very painful. Then, I caught COVID in the ER, getting my shoulder treated. Instead of wrapping up my book nicely and neatly, I’m trying to type with my arm in a sling when I’m supposed to be immobilized. I just had this moment when I wanted to just be able to look at the Lord and say, What are you doing? How could you do this to me? I’m trying to serve you! I’m trying to do the best that I can! You know that I’m struggling. I was, thankfully, at the end of the book and had gained the traction that I needed to say this is not a reflection of how I’m doing. This is only another opportunity to turn and ask the Lord for help, to depend totally on him, and to say this is not about my identity. This is not about whether I succeed or fail. This is 100% about me knowing my need for Christ. It’s been a discouraging season in that there have been lots of obstacles, but the sweet thing about it is you’ll actually notice I dedicated the book to the women of our church plant. Those women were what sustained me through hard, hard days because they are a people who love to biblically encourage one another. We have grown a lot together in that. Even when life was discouraging, I knew I always had sisters that would send me a Bible verse or send me a prayer. Not in a phony way; not in a way that feels dismissive. In deep, rich ways where I felt like I was being lifted up to the throne.

23:15 - Seasons of Discouragement

Matt Tully
I want to come back to that in a minute, how we know how much to be looking for our encouragement in God himself and in the truths of the gospel and in our hope vs. looking to other people—even other Christians—to help us feel encouraged. I think sometimes we wrestle with knowing, Am I going too far relying on other people? But other times we can say, I’m reading my Bible everyday, but it’s not like it’s making this huge difference. But before we get into that, is part of the struggle that we have with feeling discouraged come out of the fact that we aren’t prepared that that is just sometimes going to be the reality, that we have to accept that there are seasons where we are discouraged? Is that part of our growth as Christians?

Lindsey Carlson
Yes. I think it’s part of the Christian life. I was thinking the other day about when Jesus is praying before going to the cross and he’s in the garden and he’s begging his disciples to stay awake and pray. How discouraging that must have been for him to come out of this immediate time where he knows he’s about to go to the cross and find his very best friends asleep. He’s saying, You can’t watch and pray for one hour with me? The discouragement that Christ would have felt in that. We assume that if we are living obedient lives and are fully submitted to the counsel of the word that we shouldn’t be discouraged. But if Christ was discouraged in his final days and was without sin, then we should expect to be discouraged. You look at Paul’s missionary journeys and how he’s going through all kinds of ridiculous storms and being shipwrecked. He’s constantly telling us to encouraged one another. Why might that be important? Because I think Paul expected it. Paul knew that we would be discouraged, and he knew that we needed to be upheld by people who were familiar and fluent in the language of the gospel and of Christ.

Matt Tully
Sometimes we hear encouragements to look at Scripture and to go to God in prayer as we feel discouraged, and we can kind of feel cynical that that’s not really going to help. It feels like any other self-help thing that we’ve tried and hasn’t really proved fruitful. However, other times I think as Christians the thought of going to God for encouragement feels like it’s the opposite of what we want to do, maybe because we constantly feel like we’re failing God, or we worry that God is always disappointed with us. The thought of going to him actually feels very discouraging because it feels like, I don’t want to go to him. I’m just going to feel worse. Have you ever struggled with that?

Lindsey Carlson
Yes, absolutely. I’ll go in further. I think not only are we afraid of disappointing him, we also can subconsciously think, God, you’re the one that made this happen. If I believe in a sovereign God, you could have controlled this and you chose not to. How comforting is it to go to God when you know that he is the one that allowed this really hard season of suffering in your life, and that he is also telling you that it’s for your good and for his glory? That’s extra hurtful. That’s something that I wouldn’t necessarily say to someone who isn’t walking with Christ at that moment because I know how that would land on them. I think that as Christians when we have the theology that is able to say, I believe that God is completely sovereign over all things, then we might not put that together at the time of discouragement, but deep down I think we know. Like, God, why? Why would you withhold this from me? That’s the thing that comforts me about Abraham. When Abraham is asking questions like, How is this going to happen? You’ve told me you’re going to fulfill the promise, but I haven’t seen it. Are you really sure? This wasn’t even my idea. What is going on?

Matt Tully
The promise of a son and of offspring.

Lindsey Carlson
Yes. And he’s not seeing it immediately. He’s not praying and then seeing it tomorrow, or even in the next year. I think that sometimes we think of encouragement in the same way where we think, If I pray for encouragement right now, then in two minutes my phone should ring and I should have a text message from a friend with an encouraging scripture.

Matt Tully
But so often, don’t we perpetuate that thinking because of the stories that we tell each other? I can think of a few examples from the last month or so of people saying, I want to just share this amazing story when God showed up. I prayed for this thing, I was struggling in this way, and then later that day I got that phone call, or I got that email, and things worked out. I feel like we set ourselves up to expect that, and when it doesn’t happen we feel discouraged.

Lindsey Carlson
Yes. I think that’s probably just because who is going to read Facebook timeline that’s filled with people saying, I prayed today and God didn’t answer? That’s not newsworthy. We don’t post about that. But that doesn’t mean it’s not happening to people all the time. I remember when my kids were little they each went through a phase where I would say, I know you’re scared. I know you don’t want to stay in your bed in the dark, but you need to pray and ask God to help you. They would say, He’s not listening. He won’t even do anything! Those are the moments where faith meets doubt, and we get to challenge it. We can say, Lord, I don’t believe this about you. I need you to convince my child that you are God and that you are going to help him. And I need you to help him feel your presence. I’ll pray with my kids when they go through that. But I think that encouragement and our lack of it is very similar in the way that it kind of exposes doubts that are actually there, fault lines that exist in our faith, where we just think, I know that God is good and I know that he provides. But I think he only provides it to her. I think he only gives good to that person because they lived a perfectly righteous life. They were born in the church, so God must give more things to them. I think we are all sort of like little kids that want our Father to prove himself to us. God allows doubt to come in so that we have to push up against it and say, Oh, this is not honoring to the Lord that I still don’t believe what he said is true. I have to come before him and say, I’m sorry, Lord. I don’t trust you. I don’t believe you’re good. This pain is too much. Even if it’s something that’s not sinful, just when there is suffering, to be able to come to the Lord and say, I know that you are with me when I’m suffering, and I don’t feel that actually. I’m going to need you to show me and to convince me. It’s not going to be something that we necessarily are going to blog in five seconds like, And then the doorbell rang and it was this. We want it to be immediate. There’s a scripture that says the Lord waits to be gracious for you. That is so hard to take in and say, But why would you wait, Lord, when you don’t have to wait? You could give it to me now. But for some reason he waits to be gracious because he knows what’s better for us.

30:37 - Relying on Other People for Encouragement

Matt Tully
How do we know when we are relying too much on other people—even good Christian friends—for our encouragement rather than, fundamentally and first and foremost, seeking encouragement from God?

Lindsey Carlson
For me it probably began when I at some point noticed—and it was probably when my kids were really little—that anytime anything happened that I was upset about our worried about or even just curious about, my first instinct was to pick up the phone. It was always, I need to ask so-and-so. So-and-so would know the answer to this. So-and-so could help me with this. Oh my goodness! I don’t have the money to pay this bill! I need to tell so-and-so to pray! I regularly see women that will text groups of women asking for prayers, but I’m quick to observe that their prayer lives do not seem robust at home. When we’re only asking other people to pray for us and we’re only seeking other people to encourage us, I think that’s sometimes a sign that we don’t know the words to say sometimes. I don’t mean that to sound shaming. I was like that for a long time just because I had not learned how to ask the Lord for what I needed, and I had not been in the Bible long enough to understand even what to think or say. If our desire is to go to people and to hear their words, I think that’s a pretty good sign. The other thing is that we can look at the encouragement that we provide to others. When other people come to us, is our first instinct to say, This is what I would do. Let me just tell you. I know the solution. Well, you know, I always said . . . . I think if the encouragement that we regularly provide is not the counsel of God’s word, we also probably don’t highly value that as the most encouraging thing we could possibly provide someone. But you and I know that the word of God is the counsel that we all need, so I think that’s one of those tools that as we grow in our knowledge of the word our ability to encourage one another is strengthened just because our vocabulary is growing in the word of God.

Matt Tully
Scripture can just come to mind in those contexts, and it can be so encouraging when it’s just sort of there. But if we don’t have it in our minds on a regular basis, it’s not going to rise to the surface as often.

Lindsey Carlson
Which is why I think women do tend to reach out to one another a lot because if they’re going to the word—and this is a real problem—if they’re going to the word and they’re opening it and they’re not finding understanding, and they’re not finding that warm, fuzzy Wow! I feel so encouraged and comforted right now, then they are naturally going to want to go to a person that does deliver those feelings. Even if you have a friend that you know that they’re going to give you the biblical counsel, you might be drawn to them because you like that they tell you about what the Lord has to say, or they might be giving you good biblical advice. I think that when we are lacking in a robust understanding of Scripture, I think that we do naturally crave more encouragement from people because we’re trying to learn to digest the word for ourselves.

Matt Tully
Your comment a minute ago about prayer and how we will share prayer requests with other Christians and genuinely get prayer, and that’s a great thing that we all want and need to do, but it is very convicting because I think about my own life and the way that I share prayer requests. I think about how often I might share something with a group, but I haven’t actually prayed for that myself. You do start to wonder, Why are you really sharing that? Is it because you really are seeking God in that, or is it because I want the encouragement that other people are going to give me, even just by praying for me? But I’m not actually going to God first and foremost.

Lindsey Carlson
I think there are good in both of those things. Sometimes I think we share prayer requests out loud like that on the fly and then you go, Oh man, I didn’t even realize that was bothering me until I said it out loud. I think sometimes people are just verbal processors and you notice and think, Oh wow, I should be praying about that. But then I think there are other times when the Spirit may do that kind of thing in you and prick your spirit where you say something you didn’t really even have on your radar, and then the Spirit does invite people in the group (that are filled with the Spirit too) to speak into that in ways that are specifically tailored and unique to encourage you. Paul also says that if we’re beside ourselves, it’s for God; if we’re strong, it’s for others. So, we are taking encouragement that the Lord has granted us and using it to provide courage to other people—one another. I think sometimes those prayer circles are not just a time for listening to our own voice and the words that we are saying, but to listen to the prayers of the saints and to be encouraged in ways that might not have come into our mind and heart if we were alone.

Matt Tully
Lindsey, thank you so much for taking some time today to talk to us about not just our discouragement, but how we can find encouragement from God and his word and his people. We appreciate it.

Lindsey Carlson
Absolutely.

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