How can the gift of exhortation affect someone's life?
The gift of exhortation enables a believer to push and encourage others in their walk. Such encouragement can lead someone to leave a university for Bible school and enter the Lord's full-time work, making that life productive. Exercised wrongly, it can provoke rebellion; exercised rightly, it transforms lives.
Les explains that exhortation is a gift that means to push and encourage someone. He notes that not everybody can exhort somebody without making them mad, and if it comes from the wrong person, people will rebel. But if you have the gift of exhortation, you should use it to push people and get after it. He illustrates this with a young lady named Marilyn who encouraged a tremendous athlete at Iowa State University to leave and attend a good Bible school. Years later, Les learned that the young man was in the Lord's full-time work. Les concludes that this is what it takes, and as a result, a life became productive.