The Color of September::to encourage...

{Introduction - Although you are welcome to use my living in yellow list, please know that I wrote it for me. I share a few truths and thoughts not that I think you need them, but that I need them, and writing about them helps me do just that. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5}

Therefore encourage one another  and build one another up,  just as you are doing.  ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:11 ESV
Focus on Encouraging Others 

The definition of encourage is to inspire with courage, spirit, or confidence. An encourager gives us the words and tools to be courageous, passionate and confident where ever we are in life and in our calling. 

Sometimes encouragement is approval, but it can also be the correction we need in our perspective or behavior. Whatever encouragement is, we all need it, and though scripture is our greatest source, scripture also exhorts us to encourage one another. 

When I wrote this list of goals a year ago, this one was initially: Focus on Encouraging others - Especially Younger Women, but as I've mingled more with women of all ages online, my perspective has changed a bit. I need to encourage all women - younger and older, because sometimes older women need the most encouragement of all - to feel needed and fulfill their purposes and to continue to grow and learn and live the life we've been called to. 

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior,  not slanderers or slaves to much wine.  They are to teach what is good,  and so train the young women to love their husbands and children,  to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind,  and submissive to their own husbands,  that the word of God may not be reviled.  ~ Titus 2:3-5 ESV

It's been my life experience - as a young woman and a not-so-young woman - that most of us tend to seek advice and encouragement from women our age.

To segregate into age groups or stage-in-life groups is a natural tendency. Most of us have been doing that all of our lives - from kindergarten to marriage. We naturally and rightfully enjoy the fellowship of link-minded women our age - with common interests and situations in life - and it's good, but when we remain in age and lifestyle segregated groups {both on- and off-line}, the younger women pass up good-as-gold wisdom and encouragement, and older women begin to lose touch with the younger generations and the complexities of a rapidly changing society, and they begin to feel useless and unwanted.

My observation is that the combination of younger women who are teachable and godly older women who are willing to open their hearts gave us the privilege of obeying the Titus mandate.

~ Susan Hunt, Spiritual Mothering

The point is - we need each other - teachable younger women and willing older women - to encourage and fulfill our purposes in the body of Christ.

I'd love to hear from you - are you teachable and willing, and where do you see mutually encouraging relationships between younger and older women or where do you see it is lacking - online or off?