Ben Pettit

Come home
Jesus is waiting
Come home
He’s waiting with open arms
and open eyes, he’s the King of Kings
Oh Glorify! Come home!

New chorus I wrote tonight. The verses are the traditional hymn text. I was excited to sing it really loud in my living room tonight. I like things loud. haha

It’s been a pretty good weekend. Spent most of it in Charleston with family and some friends of old and new! The Lord is calming me this weekend telling me to be patient. Slow it down and focus in on him. I have a hard time doing this sometimes because I can be at times a social bird. Bird sounds better than butterfly, don’t you agree? I feel when I am not on the go I’m not quite as happy. I love being busy. That whole “idol hands are a devils tool” applies to me big time. I’m most exposed and weak to sin when I’m bored.

The lesson for you and me this weekend is encouragement. How can you and I encourage someone better?

1. Fall in Love with Jesus Christ. He loves you so much.
You cannot encourage someone if you do not know the great encourager. Jesus is so in love with you. He is constantly pursuing a relationship with you. I’m begging you, to come home.

2. Talk to them.
It’s amazing how many people want to be a better encourager but they are scared to talk to people! [seems obvious but it's not to some] Make it a point to call people, write people, encourage people on a daily basis. When your bored open your email and send that friend an email you haven’t talked to in awhile. Tell them what has been going on in your life, tell them your struggles and how the Lord is molding you and shaping you. If the Lord is not molding you and shaping you then refer back to number one.

3. Pray for them.
I can’t tell you how many people are hurting and would love to have someone pray for them. BUT I’m going to go a step farther. Stop what you are doing, listen to them, and pray with them. Pray for them on the phone, in an email, in a blog, in an IM. We as Christians have got to stop saying “yeah, I’ll pray for you” and instead say “hey, lets step over here, I’d love to pray with you about this right now”. For to long we have sat on the sidelines and we are not active in our pursuit of love. We are called to love.

4. Be Real
Be yourself. No one else. Expect and ask people to be real with you so you can be real with them. It’s amazing what can happen when we change our mindsets, take off our masks, and become ourselves.

5. Follow Up
The worse thing you can do as an encourager is forget about someone. If someone is hungry we feed them, buy them groceries, make sure they have enough. A lot of times we’ll get through numbers 1-4 successfully but we forget about the most important one! You have to be persistent about loving someone. Call them back, email them back, IM them back and ask them a week later “Hey, so how are things going now?”. Pray with them again, love them again, show them Jesus with skin on.