Bringing Out the Best in Others

Church, I want you to grab these message notes out of your bulletins because they will help you follow along this morning. As you're taking those out, I have a question for you: Have you ever noticed how certain people always seem to bring out the best in you? Right when you are around these people, you just feel sharper, wittier, stronger, and cooler. When you're around them, you feel better. Then there are other people, and when you're around them, you feel clumsy. You feel like you put your foot in your mouth all the time. You feel nervous. It's just like two different kinds of people have different effects on you.

I'll give you one example. Before I became a pastor, I was in broadcasting. I worked for a while at the top music station in the Bay Area, an FM station. Our program director there was so encouraging but also so challenging. He would train us on how to do a good job. He would teach us about how to do a good job, and when I was around him and when I was working for him at that radio station, I just felt better. I felt smoother. He made me a better announcer. You might remember the station. I think it's still on the air over there: K-bay. You're tuned to K-bay FM 100 KBA Y Oakland, San Jose, San Francisco. That was K-bay. That was the station that worked out.

Then just across the hallway from K-bay, this FM station was a sister station in the same ownership group, and it was an AM radio station. You might remember it. It was KEN King, King Country. Occasionally, I did work for KEN as well, but my supervisor at King wasn't the program director; he was my immediate supervisor. I could tell he just thought I was an oaf. He thought I was a moron. Every time I walked into that building, I just instantly became all thumbs. He would look up from his desk and say, "Oh hi, Slept fur," and I'd go, "Oh hi, boss," and I'd trip. I got on the air one time, and I can't remember who was president, but I think it was George Bush the first. Instead of that, I said, "And I'm the news today, President Nixon." I don't know why I said that. I was all thumbs. I made mistakes.

Now, what was the difference? It was the same exact person, me, the same exact time of my life, the same exact industry, the same exact building, the same exact hallway off of which these two radio stations sat. The only difference was the person I worked for. One made me clumsy and brought out the worst in me; one just made me a better person.

Now here's a question for you: Wouldn't you like to be the first kind of person to everyone in your life? Because here's the truth: You are one or the other every week to everyone, to some degree or another. Every week, you are in situations where you really want to be building people up, whether you're giving a pep talk to your own children or grandchildren, encouraging a friend in their diet, fitness program, or career goals, coaching a team, dealing with employees, or working at camp as a cabin leader or on camp staff. Every week, you're in situations where you want to be a motivator, and the fact is you're either doing it poorly or you're doing it well.

My purpose today is to pass on principles that will help you do it well. Dads, this is going to apply to you and your relationship with your kids and your grandkids, your spouse. But this applies in some way to every single one of us in this room. So let's talk about bringing out the best in people. We're going to be in the Bible in 1st Thessalonians 2:19–3:13. Now, as we start, I want to make this very practical. You see the box on the top of your notes? I want you to write in that box right now some names that come to mind—one to three names—let's say people in your life that you would like to build up. Maybe write down the names of your kids or your spouse or your friends or somebody you work with, someone you go to school with. Maybe you want to write down the kids in my cabin throughout the summer.

All right, you got those names written down? Now, how do you build them up? Let's study the master motivator of all time, the Apostle Paul. We're in this series called Hope Agent. It's a study of the book of the Bible called 1st Thessalonians. Some brief background: Remember, the Apostle Paul wrote this short letter to some of the Christians in Europe in a city called Thessalonica. They had less than three weeks of teaching from him before he had to leave because of an anti-Christian riot. Not a very great start, yet they eventually become the model church for that first-century group of Christians. This morning, we're going to look at the way Paul coaches them. I call this the seven habits of highly encouraging people.

Now, as we start, I want to answer a couple of potential objections. Some of you might be thinking, "This sounds kind of light. I wanted some deep meat this morning. It sounds like self-help. This sounds Oprah-y." Well, I did try to give away a car, but this is actually an imperative from Scripture. Three times right here in the book of 1st Thessalonians alone, look at this: Chapter 4, verse 18: "Therefore encourage each other." Chapter 5, verse 11: "Therefore encourage one another and build each other up." Chapter 5, verse 14: "We urge you, encourage the timid." So are you doing that?

Imagine the impact of this church. Imagine the impact of cruise kids or Camp Hammer if people believed that they would be built up here instead of torn down. This is more important now than ever. Would you agree that we are in a contentious, divisive period in our culture right now? Would you agree with that? There's so much shouting, and there's so much refusal to see anybody else's point of view. There's so much toxic, angry tearing other people down. Guess what? Most people, maybe who don't attend church yet, believe they're just going to experience the same kind of negativity at church. Most people think that in church what they're going to hear is judgments. In church, what they're going to hear is bad dog sermons. People expect church to be negative. Imagine if people expected church to be a fountain of encouragement so that when they left, they would feel supernaturally equipped to be the person that God designed them to be. Well, that's the kind of church that the Apostle Paul started.

So it's a scriptural imperative. Now, the second objection you might be thinking is, "Seven points? That's too many for a hot day." Listen, there's really only one point to this message, and it's build up the people in your life. These seven points are seven ways we see Paul doing it here, and they're transferable to us. If you remember just one, two, or three of these, it can completely alter the trajectory of the life of some people that you know. So jot these down.

Number one: Expect the best. Expect the best. Paul was so great at this. Watch this. He tells this baby church, the Thessalonians, "For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and our joy." Now remember who these people are. They barely know anything. They barely had any training by Paul. He hardly knows them. He's been there for less than three weeks, and then he just lays it on and expects the best from them. In fact, circle all the words he uses to describe them: hope, joy, crown, and glory. What he's saying is, "You're great now, you guys. You're our joy. But I have complete confidence that one day you'll be our crown." In other words, you will be our crowning achievement. You will be our greatest legacy.

When's the last time somebody said to you, "When I stand in the presence of God, you're going to be my greatest legacy"? That's what Paul's saying here. By the way, this is no exception. This is how Paul rolls all the time, and it's such a great example for us. Watch this now. Look at what he says later on to the Corinthian church. Now, the Corinthians lived in this crazy commercial seaport city, and they were infamous as the Christians that gave him the most trouble. They were getting drunk on communion wine every week in church. They had rampant sexual immorality going on. The Christians were suing each other in court, behaving in all kinds of crazy ways. 2nd Corinthians 7:4: "I have great confidence in you. I take great pride in you. I'm greatly encouraged in all our troubles. My joy knows no bounds." A couple verses later, "I'm glad I can have complete confidence in you" in this bunch of knuckleheads. Yeah, because Paul sees not just their present; he sees their future.

Somebody said the best leaders are more than optimists; they're futurists. So can you play this role in somebody's life? You know people have enough people telling them why they can't make it. But like Paul says in 1st Corinthians, love always hopes for the best. So look for the signs of future potential in your children, your friends, and the kids you're in ministry with—not just what's going on with them presently. Did you mean Jesus did this with Peter? He looks at Peter and says, "You're the rock on which I'm going to build my church," and at the time, Peter was an impetuous, emotional guy. He was anything but a rock. But Jesus sees his future. God did this to Gideon. It's a great story. Do you remember Gideon? He's hiding from the enemy, even though the enemy is nowhere near his house, and he's hiding in a pit in his threshing floor building on his farm. While Gideon's hiding in terror, God sends an angel who appears before him. Do you remember what he says? "Greetings, mighty man of valor," while he's being the biggest coward in the world. Mighty man of valor! But that's what God does for us.

So crucial question to ask yourself: Am I expecting the best or the worst from the people around me? Honestly, a famous pastor named Dwight Moody once said, "People have a way of becoming what you encourage them to be, not what you nag them to be." So expect the best.

Second: Explain that problems are normal. I love the Dr. Seuss book, "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" You know, it's given a lot this time of year as a graduation present, and it's easy to think of it as kind of a sugary kids' book. But the best part of this book is the part where he goes, "You'll be on your way up. You'll be seeing great heights. You'll join the high-flyers who soar to great heights, except when you don't, because sometimes you won't. I'm sorry to say so, but sadly it's true. The bang-ups and hang-ups can happen to you. You can get all hung up in a prickly perch, and your gang will fly on; you'll be left in a lurch. You'll come down from the lurch with an unpleasant bump, and the chances are then that you'll be in a slump. And when you're in a slump, you're not in for much fun. Slumping yourself is not easily done. And when you're alone, there's a very good chance you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants." What kind of a graduation gift is this? It's a great graduation gift because a lot of times these graduation speeches are, "You guys are all awesome, the end." But really the truth is you will hit rough patches. Going through problems does not mean you're a loser; it means you're normal.

This is what Paul says to the Thessalonians in verses 2 through 4 of chapter 3. Watch this. This is exactly what he says: "Isn't it in this verse? You know quite well that we were destined for these troubles. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you we would be persecuted, and it turned out that way, as you well know." See, Paul knows they could have been really demoralized by all that persecution that Sarah Bentley talked about in her great message last weekend. So he says, "Hey, it's normal because you're swimming upstream." Then Paul does a very interesting thing in verses 6 and 7. That's point 3: Expose their strengths. Expose not their weaknesses; expose their strengths. Watch this. I love this. Remember the Thessalonians weren't the greatest scholars. How could they be? They'd had just three weeks of instruction from Paul, so he doesn't focus on their many weaknesses; he focuses on their strengths. What could that be?

But Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. Therefore, brothers, in all our distress and persecution, we were encouraged about you because of your faith. As Mark pointed out a couple of weeks ago, they have great faith. They have great love. Those were their strengths. And so Paul focuses on those. A great example of this: One of our pastors here at TLC, Steve Craig, used to teach second grade here at Twin Lakes Christian School. One year, he did something great for those second graders when they graduated from second grade. He had his second graders write one sentence about what they liked about every single other kid in their class, and then he put it together into a book called "Our Loving Class" and gave a copy to each kid. So each page has a student's name on top and about 20 sentences written by each kid in the class about them.

I want you to listen to how these kids knew how to focus on strengths. I'll just read you three of the kids' pages. Under Kaylee's name, they wrote things like, "She can swing on the bars. She is elegant." I love that about a second grader: "She is elegant. She is good at monkey bars. She is good at picking stuff out." Now, I don't even know what that means, but she's good at it. Here's a boy, Jason: "Jason is a good candy saver." Now, you know that's putting the positive spin on "He never shares his candy with me." He's a good candy saver. But I love this last one: "Emily is good at making people feel good, a good friend, good at being nice." And then listen to this: "I like Emily because she sits at my table." That's full of meaning, isn't it? Remember what it was like to be a little kid and you're at lunch, and you're just wondering if anybody was going to sit with you? But I love how they focused on strengths.

Dads, moms, when's the last time you wrote a specific note of encouragement or made a specific comment to your kids about a strength they have? You know, their creativity, their honesty, their compassionate heart, or they're good at picking stuff out. Whatever it is that you want to say, focus on a very specific strength. But look at what Paul does next. This is crucial because you can expose strengths, but you got to express your praise. That's point four: You got to say it out loud. Praise is amazingly motivating. You might not know, I took violin when I was a kid for a few years, just enough to be absolutely amazed when Trent or Rebecca Jackson play violin up here. But my teacher used what's called the Suzuki method that was started by this teacher, Mr. Suzuki. This is the program that trains little kids, like three or four years old, to play violin. Here's the Suzuki method secret: The first thing the students learn is a proper stance, and then the second thing they teach the kids in the first lesson, before they even pick up a violin, is how to take a bow. Why? Because when little children bow, the audience invariably applauds, and applause is the best motivator they found to make children want to do well.

So listen to Paul applaud: "For now we really live since you're standing firm in the Lord. How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you?" Now again, I just want to point out that according to the book of Acts, he spent less than three weeks with them. This was a very baby church. He's not talking about people who've been doing this for 20 years. Phenomenal! When's the last time somebody said to you something like, "How can I thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that you give me when I pray to God and I give praise to God because it gives me joy to do that"? So I need to thank you for that. I need to thank God for that. That is laying it on thick, isn't it?

So why don't we say this kind of flowery stuff about other people? Well, I think there are three reasons we don't express praise. Number one is we're just embarrassed, right? Tell me if this isn't true: We say bye when we mean, "I'm sorry that we have to part because I really love hanging out with you, and I'm going to miss you when we're apart," but we're embarrassed to actually express that. We say, "Oh, thanks," when we mean, "This means so much to me coming from you. You are one of my favorite people." There's another reason we don't do this: We're distracted by all the other things in life, right? I mean, I know I think these things in my head about other people, and then I just get too busy, too tired, too stressed, focused on all my to-do lists, right? And then there's a third reason we don't do this: We're unskilled. We just don't know how. Would you agree with this? Even when we try to express praise, it just comes out wrong sometimes, right?

For example, and I'm taking a risk talking about this because I don't want to seem ungrateful. I do appreciate how often many of you say encouraging things to me after sermons, but it's funny. I gotta admit, sometimes I'm not quite sure where you're coming from. I wrote some of these down. A lady said to me one time, "When you speak, I think, boy, René's never going to get any better." Thank you for that! This was just a couple of weeks ago. A woman came at me; she was celebrating her birthday. She said, "I'm so old, I remember your first sermon here." Thank you so much for that! But this one was my favorite: A guy came up, and I just couldn't laugh because he had tears coming down his face. He said, "René, sometimes your sermons are like water to a drowning man." I'm so happy!

We want to be positive; it just doesn't come out right sometimes. So here's some tips: Three keys to praise. Number one: Be public. Compliment publicly and correct privately. Number two: Be specific. "I like the way you use the colors for the tree in your picture" registers with a five-year-old way better than "What a pretty picture." Be specific and put it in writing, please. Do this! You know, every single time somebody writes me a kind note or card or sends me a kind email, I file it. Even if it's mildly encouraging, like "Nice try," it goes in the encouragement file. This is true on days that I feel discouraged. I go to either my desktop encouragement file or actually have a physical file folder with some of these, and I look at the letters and the emails I've gotten over the last 24 years here, and it pumps me up. I read both of those over and over again. I'm really excited. I'm so glad Mom wrote me those birthday cards.

No, seriously! Express praise. But point five may be the most important of all: Excel in prayer. The most meaningful thing in the world people ever say to me is, "I'm praying for you." Paul says it in verse 10: "Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what's lacking in your faith." Now, Mark went into depth on this, but I just want to say if you tell somebody you're going to be praying for them, often they are going to be inspired because then you're not just giving them a pep talk. It's become something personal and something powerful. When people are praying for me, I can sense it. Sometimes I literally feel like I'm on a cloud. So when your kids or your spouse leave for school or you guys are both going off to work or whatever it is, tell them, "I'm going to be praying." In fact, ask when to pray for them. When's your test? When's your PE class? When's your presentation? When's the interview, if that's what they're stressed about?

Now, the sixth point may surprise you because it goes against our grain: To bring out the best in people, excite them with a challenge. Excite them with great challenges. Bringing out the best in people doesn't mean flattering them because challenge really does bring out the best. I want to show you one of the most effective advertisements ever written, and it appeared in a London newspaper about a hundred years ago. The Smithsonian has the actual ad, and I got it. I want to put it on screen. Here it is: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success." Do you recognize the name on that ad? Ernest Shackleton, the famous explorer of the South Pole. So how did people respond to this ad? Shackleton said, quote, "It seemed as though all the men in Great Britain were determined to accompany us." Exciting challenges attract people.

So excite the people in your life with challenges. Honestly, this is one reason I'm so excited about phase two of the 2020 vision plan: building that College Ministry Center and that Chapel. Will it be a challenge to build it, to pay for it, to staff it? Yes, yes, yes! But a church that doesn't keep challenging itself gets weak, just like people. By the way, there's an informational dessert next Saturday night after church. You can sign up at TLC.com/desserts, or Gina can sign you up this morning at the info desk. I'd love to see you and just share the challenge with you. But look at the challenge Paul lays down in the next couple of verses: "May the Lord strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when the Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones." Talk about a challenge! I pray that you'll be blameless. Now, if you are familiar with Paul, you know that even he says this side of heaven, blamelessness is impossible. But it's his goal. We're saved by the grace of God, not by our holiness, but for our holiness, and Paul lays out that vision. Lay out the challenge.

A great example of this just recently: You might know Trent Smith, who led us in worship this morning. He just returned a few days ago from an outreach trip to Ukraine, where he and Connie Fortunato and their team did a music camp. What they do is they take kids, most of whom have zero experience with music, zero experience with instruments, and they tell them, "Within five days, you are going to be performing live at a concert venue downtown with a professional symphony orchestra." It's an incredible challenge! It's crazy! But it's exactly that challenge that excites kids and brings them out of the woodwork for these music camps. That's so important. Excite with challenges.

Now, all six of these habits are very important, yet they are nothing, nothing without the final of these seven habits: Exhibit real love. Let them know they're loved. Paul says this over and over in verse 12, for example: "May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you." This is key to the people in your life, in your ministry, your friendship group, your family. Do they really, really know you love them? Because if they really know that, their ears will be open to all this other encouragement.

Now, what does it look like to really live according to these seven habits? I want to show you a video I saw just this past week of a high school physics teacher who demonstrates this in spades. Watch this.

Test question alert! Test question alert! Nope, from the big giant head. I don't fall asleep in this class. I just don't. It's weird because I can remember falling asleep in every other class. I've never had a teacher like him at all. Like calculus, every day, just I pass out. He's probably one of the teachers, like probably when I'm 75 years old, that I'll still remember. RCS, I fall asleep in there all the time. He's the epitome of what I think a teacher should be. You see a huge fireball burning my hand and go up to the ceiling and all the matter. I'm not going to have any kids sleeping, and every one of those people are out there asking, "How? How? How?" As soon as you get the kid asking how or why, I can rope them in and get that intrigue going. Let's get it! It's a love of Murray. He says, "I could care less about Newton's third law. I want to teach you something for you to take outside of school." That's what he's told us before.

So he really makes me feel like he really cares about me. I know he does. I think, "Oh, a mommy who's going to see my mate Abby is perfect in every way." She's actually 15, not 14. She's 15 going on 25. She's one of these people that can't stand her dad because he's stupid and a little bit nuts and so forth. So I love her to death. When Adam came along, though, we didn't think it was going to be a boy, and all of a sudden a boy pops out, and I'm thinking, "Wow, this is cool. Now I got a grown-up boy." Not that I really cared, but you get all the dreams of, "Wow, I'm going to be going to football games. I'm going to be going to baseball games. If they're not any good at sports like I am, we'll be going to plays or something like that, whatever it be." We then found out he was completely blind. He was born with something called Joubert syndrome. Only 417 people in the whole world have it, and what it is is an autosomal recessive disorder where my wife has to have a gene, and I have to have a gene that puts us together, and it causes us to happen. So when I started getting a wrap on what all this was about, all those dreams of ever watching my son knock a home run over the fence went away. Talk about getting pissed at God! I was pissed! Because you know the whole thing about where the universe came from? I didn't care. What I cared about is why. You can pick on me all you want, but when you pick on my little boy, that's wrong—a totally innocent little baby, and you're making him do that. I started asking myself, "What was the point?"

So as we went through all this, it was Abby that taught me why. One day, I went to her room, and she had Adam in the middle of all of her dolls. I'm thinking, "What are you doing?" She's done playing with my little brother. I'm thinking, "He didn't know how to play." And she said, "Adam, she said, 'I came, me a dollar something.' He just smacked it." I'm thinking, "Wait a minute! If you smack that, he can see? When did you find out he can see?" She's like, "I don't know. He just started smacking dolls." I'm thinking, "Holy mackerel!" And so then we started working with him and trying to teach him a little sign language. There was nothing more incredible than the day you see this: "What's that mean, Daddy? I love you!" So cool! That's when I knew it didn't care about how things work anymore. It's the reason why things work is because of love.

So there's something a lot greater than energy. There's something a lot greater than entropy. It's the fact that what's the greatest thing? Love! That's what makes it all—the why we exist. So in that great big universe that we have with all those stars, who cares? Well, somebody cares about you a lot. And as long as we care about each other, that's where we go from here.

I know, I know. You okay? He's worried about you yesterday. I'll see ya. Wait, okay? You say juice. You didn't say this; you said play, right? Yeah, I say play. Okay? What do you want to play? Huh? What do you want to play? Pull up, pull up! Use those abs!

That is a great dad and a great teacher and a great example of what we're talking about today. But I want to keep on the freeze-frame there for just a second. There's a clue in that picture of where he finds the strength to be the kind of encourager that he is to his family and to his students. You know, this wasn't a religious video made by a religious company, but his faith definitely leaked out, didn't it? And what do you see on the wall behind him? Jesus on the cross. And that's where you find the power and the motivation to do every single thing that we've been talking about today. Because you see, as Christians, we know that God loved us so much that he came down himself in Christ, and that Jesus Christ did all of these things that we've been talking about. He challenged his disciples. He saw the best in his disciples. He told them to expect trouble for his disciples. And yet at the end of all, he exhibited real love. Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. And that's what Jesus, what God did for us. It's when you let that capture your imagination, when you let that just slay you to the core, that's when you just want to radiate that kind of love to everyone around you, and you want to tell them, "Let me tell you not just the how but the why beyond it all. Someone loves you! Someone cares for you! And that's why I want to show you I care for you too."

So let's bring this full circle. Go back to the names that you wrote down on the top of page one and just look at those names for a second. This weekend, we have looked at seven very practical steps you can take that might change that person's life. So let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me?

You know, with your head bowed, would you just commit yourself, with God's help, to bringing out the best in the people God has placed in your life? You know, there's a word for bringing out the best in others: Discipleship. Would you commit yourself to that kind of discipleship? Say in your heart, "God, I know you've placed people around me that you want me to build up, someone I need to encourage, people that I need to develop, help develop into the people you designed them to be. And Lord, I know the kindest thing I can do for somebody is to introduce them to you." So show me who I can invite to church. And some of you just need to start that process yourself right now and say, "Jesus Christ, come into my heart and help me to be what you made me to be." If you've never done that, do it now. Make your decision right now. Why not? Jesus, come into my life. I want to know you and follow you, the one who died on the cross and rose again, who laid down his life with great love so that I could be the one you made me to be. I receive that with joy. In Jesus' name, Amen.