Mar
13

Empowering Others is the Key!

Featuring Darlene Zschech Posted on March 13, 2010

Empowering others is the key here.

And once you start to share the workload AND the responsibility, AND the credit, well, you light a fire deep on the inside of others, giving them experience and helping them to work out what on earth it is they are even good at. Encouragement is a truly powerful force and when it is done sincerely and often, the creative dynamic within the act of encouraging someone over a lifetime has the ability to see the seemingly ordinary rise to become more than they could have ever imagined.

There is a powerful lyric found within the Delirious song, OUR GOD REIGNS that says, ‘He’s a Father who loves to parade you’ – it gets me every time.3

Imagine that?

That God who created the heavens and the earth actually gets a kick out of every one of us!

I know the pride and the swelled chest that became my husband’s stance after the birth of our first daughter, Amy Jaye. After she was born, he and my mum finally went home after no sleep that night, and they stayed up ALL the next night as well while Mark talked about just how beautiful and perfect and divine and lovely be- yond words Amy was (and is!!). The heart of our heavenly Father is even SO much more besotted by each of us, that He gave His son to ensure our salvation.

That’s a crazy, out of this world kind of love.

There have been countless times however that I have seen a crippled sense of self worth overcome so many, causing their expressive hearts to become misguided and lied to. When passion for life is disillusioned, it will often erupt in areas of anger and resentment, or simply result in lives being minimised merely to fit in or be ac- cepted, living way below God’s intended purpose.

My prayer is that our willingness to encourage would be fuelled by an agenda that is clean, and motivated by love.

An unselfish, unspoiled, generous-hearted LOVE.

For it is in the knowing that you are loved that gives voice to a Holy assurance in our lives.

The atmosphere and grossly misled worth systems of our world can so easily stuff the wrong values down our throats, so that if you are not wealthy, well known, if you don’t feel beautiful enough or thin enough, accepted enough, or even normal enough, if your friends are not in the IN crowd etc, then the courageous person you KNOW is inside feels so inferior, that it seems easier to stay small than to go against the tide of our culture. Or if those in your immediate surroundings are saying ‘you’ll never amount to anything, who do you think you are?’ etc, etc, that is one heck of an atmosphere to have to continually rise above.

But words carry life.

Proverbs 15:4. ‘The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes
the spirit.’

This is exactly what happens - when a spirit is crushed, so is the emotional energy required to see potential released, but when the words coming from you are filled with support, the tree of life is at its finest work to bring forth beautiful fruit.

I personally spent most of my childhood SO internally struggling with the torment of insecurity, that the effects of that almost caused my own body to shut down due to a bulimic lifestyle, and a continuously troubled spirit that seemed to overwhelm my naturally happy heart.

I grew up singing, grew up being encouraged by a mum who thought the sun shone out from me (she still does, that’s a mothers love!!), but despite it all, it was as if the enemy himself would try to tear my soul apart. Aside from my own family who tried their best to console me, there were two women in my local church, Beth and Desley, who literally came alongside me, accepted me, encouraged me, welcomed me into their homes, who happened to be the leaders of the music department (how lovely is God to set that up!!), and loved me amidst all my tender- hearted but very misguided baggage.

I am ever grateful to them for loving and inspiring me as they did...

Cheering me on in my dreams, encouraging me in my areas of gifting, but more importantly, showing me the way to God.

What I do see in the Bible, is that it appears that children and infants, just young but filled with God-designed purpose and potential, have always been targeted by the enemy to see their lives cut short BEFORE they learn for themselves that the name of Jesus is greater than any trial. Psalm 8 declares the power that is released from the mouths and hearts of praising children as they literally SILENCE the en- emy with their own stance of faith.

I remember one day, many years ago now, when one of our incredible worship leaders who was only young, was meant to be leading a service... and he was nowhere to be seen at the venue where we were rehearsing, even though I knew I had seen his car. I went outside and started looking as I sensed that something was not quite right. I followed my instinct, and sure enough, there he was, sitting in the gutter on the side of the car park, just staring into space.

After a little while of chatting, he started to open up to me and say that he felt that as a leader, he just did not have what it took.

It was at a period of time when a few well known ministers around the world had made foolish choices, and as a young man of God, this guy who suddenly faces the fact that some of his mentors had fallen, well, my young friend said that he had NO right to lead anybody if this was the only way forward. I felt so sad that day, and wished I could take his disillusioned heart and just put it all the right way up for him. But what I did discover was that the simple but powerful way of encouragement was enough to put a young man back on his feet, and by the grace of God he is well and truly on his feet today. He’s now one of the finest worship leaders and writers that I know, generous to the core, and so tenderhearted toward broken humanity that his life is a great inspiration personally to Mark and I, and I know to countless others.

Encouraging words, fuelled by the Word of God which is ALIVE, is like a cold drink of the finest water to the desperately thirsty soul.

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