Encouragement vs Admonishment
Last week we learned about holding each other accountable and confronting our brothers and sisters in Christ when a sinful action is noticed (click HERE to read "Accountability and Admonishment"). Today we are going to learn the difference between encouragement and admonishment.
We will begin by defining these two words:
Encouragement - to inspire with courage, spirit or hope. To attempt to persuade, spur on. Hearten, cheer, embolden, boost, give confidence.
Admonish - to warn or reprimand someone firmly. To give friendly or earnest advice. Rebuke, chide, reprove, reproach.
It's really quite simple:
Encouraging has to do with positive characteristics and supporting or building up our family/friends/neighbors in doing good. Whereas, admonishing has to do with the negative or sinful actions - confronting and gently restoring that person to righteousness or removing the bad.
Encouragement and admonishment are equally important. See the verse below - we are to encourage and rebuke "with all authority." Also, encouragement with admonishment is the perfect combination. As an example - maybe you notice that your friend is constantly losing his/her patience and temper with his/her spouse but also notice how patient and kind that friend is to a neighbor. You could point out the wrong while complimenting the action towards the neighbor.
We should constantly be encouraging one another. In Hebrews Chapter 3 (see the first Scripture feature on this post above), we see that we should encourage each other DAILY. As long as the day is called Today - that means always! And in these same Bible verses we see the reason - when there is encouragement in righteousness, then bitterness and deceit will not happen. When we are holding each other accountable for our actions and encouraging one another in good, then we will not fall back into old and bad habits (sins).
The final featured Scripture below is just wonderfully simple:
Warn
Encourage
Help
& Be Patient
By encouraging others daily, you will see that you yourself will be lifted up.
Finally, I want to leave you with an "encouragement equation":
Encouragement + Admonishment = Accentuating the positive + Eliminating the negative
A special thanks to "singalong" for sharing this with us on YouTube
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Angie,
ReplyDeleteI love all of your posts. Hope you stop by Over The Moon Linky party since you are being featured.
https://eclecticredbarn.blogspot.com/2019/03/over-moon-linky-party.html
Hugs,
Bev
Hello Angie,
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post. I can't agree more with your "equation". I will reference it on an upcoming episode of my podcast that will be launching November. Maybe we can have you on sometime!