Do you have any idea how encouraging it is to hear your wife say, “You’re doing a good job leading me.”  My wife totally overwhelmed me with encouragement today while we were walking on the treadmill together at the gym this morning.  She gave me this encouragement with the sweetest smile ever, just out of the blue!  Wives, do you have any idea how much it means to your husbands to encourage them?  I told my wife later as we drove home that that sweet encouragement will stick with me for a long time.

It’s not that she doesn’t regularly encourage me, but the way it was just so spontaneous and refreshing.  We all want approval and encouragement along the way.  Being a husband or a wife is not easy at all, especially as you add children and others into the mix, seeking to serve others together.  For my wife and I, we both run our own small businesses, so we are by far each others’ biggest cheerleaders.  We get critiqued and get concerning looks and comments about whether we might be pushing too hard or doing too much.  That’s our path to walk and those are our decisions to make, but God has given us so much grace to do this TOGETHER.  As we co-labor in the Lord, and as we see each other as co-heirs of the kingdom of Heaven, we learn to encourage each other in more specific ways than anyone else could ever.

Thanks for humoring my lunch-time break note.  Thanks for humoring my use of my wife’s encouragement of me.  I want to encourage you all, my readers, to go and encourage your spouse/fiance/closer family members/close friends.  A little encouragement that’s heart-felt and that regards true grace you see in his/her life… Sharing this encouragement goes a long way to encourage all the more following hard after our Lord.  May our following of Jesus come from a response to what He’s done on the cross for us.  May our following be less about duty and more about joyous gratitude in response to the death of Jesus for us.

In the grace of God,

– Torrey