Encouragement, Edification, Or, Flattery?

Do you think that sometimes, when we encourage others, that we might be using flattery? I have wondered what the difference is between flattery and encouragement.

Flattery is sometimes referred to as 'buttering up' someone. The motive is to get the recipient to respond in such a way as to get what you want from them. It's kind of like bribery.

The reason why I am thinking about this so much now, is due to the fact that I have received criticism from some of my Facebook friends concerning my posts.

I posted my complaint about this to my friends, and one of them had a great point. He recommended that we encourage one another. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says "Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing."(ESV).

Encouragement and edification go hand in hand. We encourage one another and build one another up to help the body of Christ. The goal is for the church to be healthy. There must be spiritually healthy people to make up a healthy church.

The world uses flattery to gain friends. The world uses money to win people to themselves. The motive isn't based on love and wanting the best for others.

But flattery looks a lot like encouragement. That is why I am concerned. I want to be an encourager to people, but I don't want to be flattering them. How can I know the difference?

First of all, I will pray that God makes me an encourager. I want to think of others and encourage them to grow and develop in the areas where God has given them strengths.

Encourage means to give support, confidence, and hope to someone. Edify means to build up morally or spiritually. Note: Sometimes, people take a word out of context and use it in a wrong way, that ends up with a wrong meaning. An example of this is the word 'edify'. Some would erroneously teach that this is associated with building up someone's ego. That is definitely not what the Bible is talking about when it talks about edifying or building up. 

For the church to be 'edified', those who are in the body of Christ need to be edified. Encouragement helps people to be edified. Discouragement keeps people from growing spiritually and will keep the church from being spiritually healthy. Discouragement is a tool of the devil. We need to be aware of his tactics.

So they went out of the prison and visited Lydia. And when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed.
Acts 16:40 ESV