Have you ever felt discouraged, down in the dumps, and someone tried to cheer you up with some kitschy phrase like, “You got this!” or “You are enough!” or “Girl, wash your face!”
It’s not that encouraging, right? Sure, it might sound nice in the moment, but when have these little self-help phrases ever actually encouraged you—ever actually strengthened and empowered you to do whatever you needed to do? If we’re being honest with ourselves, these cultural expressions are not truly encouraging. They do not help us when we are weary, and stretched thin, and don’t know how we’re going to make it through the day. Discouragement is a normal part of the human experience, and whether we want to admit or not, all of us need a little encouragement. But as Lindsey Carlson argues in her new book, we, as believers, are in need of a better encouragement.
In A Better Encouragement, Lindsey makes it clear that every Christian, even the godliest of saints, need to be encouraged in their daily lives. Discouragement happens to the best of us, and the world’s idea of encouragement isn’t doing anything for us. We can do all the Pilates, and cut out all the carbs, and practice all the self-care, but none of this will bring us true encouragement. Why? Because we are not and cannot be completely self-sufficient. We cannot encourage ourselves. We need God to provide for us every single day, and He is the only One who can provide us with a better encouragement.
“Only God is able to completely satisfy our desire for encouragement because only he is capable of fully understanding every desire of our heart and knowing how to lovingly provide exactly what we need.”[1]
How exactly can we find encouragement in God? It’s simple, really. We just have to read His Word. As we study the Scriptures, we see over and over again that God is faithful to keep His promises and covenants with His people. This means that every time we read a promise made to the Church, the people of God in the Bible, we can trust that it is true and that God will fulfill that promise in due time. This is so encouraging! And when our encouragement is rooted in God, amazing things happen. We are empowered by His Spirit to live in obedience to Him. We are able to trust in God and lean on His strength when we feel weak. We can find comfort and healing in Christ, who is all-sufficient. And we can have hope—a better hope than anything or anyone on this earth can supply.
“Better encouragement reminds sinners to hope in Jesus’s powerful peace when the winds and waves seem overwhelming.”[2]
Of course, finding encouragement isn’t all about us. We don’t run the race of faith alone. We run alongside our sisters in Christ, and the Bible calls us to encourage one another and build one another up (1 Thessalonians 5:11). When we see that our sisters are discouraged, it is our duty to encourage them, not through self-help platitudes, but through the truths of God and His Word.
“The most important need of discouraged women is not self-confidence but a confident assurance of their identity in Christ.”[3]
Overall, Lindsey Carlson’s A Better Encouragement is a great book. It was not quite what I expected when I first purchased it, but it is still a solid, helpful, and biblically based read. In addition to the book’s content, Lindsey also includes a guide on building a culture of encouragement in your own church, a note clarifying the differences between discouragement and depression, and a list of encouraging Bible verses to memorize. If you’re in need of some encouragement, true encouragement, a better encouragement, you should check out this book.
*As an Amazon Associate, I can earn commissions from qualifying purchases made through the affiliate links on this page at no extra cost to you.
[1] Lindsey Carlson, A Better Encouragement: Trading Self-Help for True Hope (Wheaton: Crossway, 2022), 39.
[2] Ibid., 124.
[3] Ibid., 136.
