Are you a leaner or a lifter?
Has God given you the chance to touch somebody’s life this season? Can you spend some time with them mentoring and helping coach them through challenging situations? Can you use your talents to help encourage and lift someone today? It may be your family. It may be a friend or even a stranger. But our attitude must be: such as I have …I give to you. That kind of person is a “lifter.”
“Leaners” on the other hand are always taking. They tend to ask, “What’s in this for me?” If there is nothing for them, they don’t get involved.
But lifters are always looking for a way to make to make a difference. They will find some way to care, some way to share: write a note, call you on the phone, encourage you, say a kind word. This kind of person will always find a way to boost the people who are around.
Ella Wilcox said it better than I ever could. She said,
“There are two kinds of people on earth today,
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.
Not the good and the bad, for ‘tis well understood
That the good are half-bad and the bad half-good.
No! The two kinds of people on earth I mean
Are the people who lift and the people who lean.”
Christmas is about a God who is a “lifter.” He entered this world to lift us out of our pit of sin and plant our feet on a rock. He came to give something you could never buy with a Macy’s charge card. In fact, His Salvation can’t be bought. But it can be received. And when you receive Christ He begins to change you from the inside out. And that’s when you know you’re truly changing!
Insight for the Journey 
To the concept of a lifter always looking, I would only add that the lifter is always ‘listening’. My experience has been that I need to focus on what someone is saying to me (or not saying) in order to be able to ‘lift’ them up. As God has many, many times listened patiently to me (sometimes I complain) and then has lifted me up out of some very dark times. He then unexpectedly allows me to hear the need of someone else and then use what He has done for me to lift up another. Why in all honesty He chooses to use me in this way from time to time is a mystery to me. It is only through His grace and mercy that He sees something in me that He (when I’m willing) chooses to use. I am humbled when this occurs, and I rejoice that I have this privelege to help another person; whether they are a Christ follower or not. Again, from my own experience, I do not know how He might be using any ‘lifting’ I do through His power to draw another person to Him. I firmly believe that one day I will know, when I see Him face to face. To Him be the glory and honor.