Learning to encourage

My small group leader usually calls everyone in the group once a week to pray for us. If you're home, he'll ask you if there is something specific you need prayer for. If you're not there, he'll leave a generalized prayer for you on your voicemail. Both he and his wife are awesome godly people, and I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to be mentored and encouraged by them. The other night I had to do my grocery shopping after work, and I was tired. It had been a long day. But when I got home, I got to listen to a message from my group leader, where he referred to me as "his fellow encourager", and he said he was proud of me because he sees that I'm starting to walk in my spiritual gifts. That was so uplifting to me, and helped me to realize that despite difficulties and stress, I'm still on a path that's leading somewhere. We had a talk earlier about spiritual gifts, and discovered that we share 'exhortation' and 'teaching' as our top 2 spiritual gifts. So, God knew what he was doing placing me into this small group. He's given me an example to follow.

But I still need to develop my gifts a great deal before I'm truly walking in them. That's why I decided to take some classes that my church is offering, called Encourager Training I, II and III.
I attended the first class in Encourager Training I last night. It covers topics such as how to provide comfort to those that are hurting, how to recognize and remove aloneness, and how to be an active listener. Last night, when we were going through the class material, I realized some areas where I need to improve. Sometimes when someone is obviously hurting, I'll avoid that person because I'll feel a sense of inadequacy, and think "What could I say that would make any difference?" Other times, I won't even notice people around me who may be hurting, because I'm too wrapped up in my own stuff. These are things I need to work on, and the training should give me methods to overcome these things.