STAY ENCOURAGED!

4082

My wife and I attended a relatively large church in Tampa, Bethel Temple, during my tenure as a personnel clerk at MacDill Air Force Base. We had taken advantage of several nightly revival meetings, and as the final service concluded Pastor Matheny invited the congregation to ‘q up’ and say our ‘farewells’ to the visiting evangelist.

While I have long since forgotten the name of the itinerant preacher, I will never forget one especially peculiar trait which he displayed on a recurring basis. For you see, at times he would get ‘so wound up’ that it seemed he needed to release his emotional mainspring. And thus, after this admonition or that bit of spiritual insight he’d kick out his right leg like he was punting a football, and shout, ‘Hallelujah.’

Be that as it may, as I finally neared the somewhat quirky evangelist, and reached out to shake his hand, he looked me in the eyes, and offered me what was perhaps the two most singular words in all of my life.

“Stay Encouraged!”

Though almost half a century has come and gone since that evening, and though this dear man may have, by now, passed from the earth, I have never forgotten his words, and they have buoyed me up, and afforded me courage when I might have, otherwise, simply given up. 

And I often share these words with others who God places in my pathway, and who seem to need them so badly.

And I think there is no more fitting manner in which to conclude what I have begun, nor anything more crucial I could offer than to pass that proverbial baton on to you; the one I received when I shook the preacher’s hand.

“Stay Encouraged!”