Faith grows as we offer praise. There lessons that can be learned about praise. Here’s one to start with: language has a powerful effect on how we offer praise.

Learning From Educators

As an educator, I have learned that I need to carefully consider what I am praising and the reason for my praise of students. Words of praise such as “good job,” “well done,” “exactly right,” and “you got it” are not informative to the student and likely will have no impact beyond the student knowing they got an answer right. These types of comments are more evaluation than feedback. Carol Dweck, in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2007), says, “praise is intricately connected to how students view their intelligence” (p. 34), and therefore may produce a burst of pride, but may in fact encourage a “fixed” mindset.

Dweck suggests that praise should focus on efforts and actions. Comments such as “You really worked hard on this lesson” or “I can see you have pushed yourself to learn this subject,” are “more likely to encourage ongoing learning, risk taking, and the embracing of challenge” (Ron Ritchhard, 2015, p. 81). These are the actions that we want of our students. This is true of how parents should praise their children as well. Our praise should be specific, descriptive, and informative. Informative means providing information about what they should keep doing. 

Follow My Example

Let me give an example of a praise statement that follows this format. If you follow me on Facebook, you know that my granddaughter, Juliet, has started a YouTube channel. It is called Juliet’s Story Time. On this channel, she reads children’s books to her followers. When I post her stories, I always ask for viewers to leave her an encouraging comment. Recently, she read the book, “This Is My Hair.” It is a funny book and she does a “good job.” However, rather than leaving her the comment, “Good job,” let’s construct a comment together, starting with something specific: “I love the way you held the pages up to show the pictures.” Now, let’s add a little more description: “Doing this helped me follow along.” Finally, let’s make it informative: “Keep reading and growing your skills.”

Putting it all together it says, “I love the way you held the pages up to show the pictures. Doing this helped me follow along. Keep reading and growing your skills.” Yes, this is a long statement and you won’t provide praise this long every time, but you will find that the more you practice, the better you’ll get.

Learning to Praise God

How does this relate to our communication and the praises we offer to God. When we praise God, are we offering an “evaluation?” “God, you did a good job with answering my request.” Wow, think about that for a moment. Does God really need us to evaluate him? Of course not, that seems silly. Does our praise to God need to be “specific, descriptive, and informative.” Does God really need us to inform him of what he needs to continue to do? No, again, this seems silly.

What God does want us to inform him on is the thinking that is going on in our hearts. “God, when you sent the man to help jump start my car, it gave me reassurance that you truly care for me. Thank you.” Or, “God, I needed food and you sent someone to drop food off at my door. I appreciate so much your mercies that are new every morning.” These are the kinds of statements that inform God of what is in our heart. Equally important, these kinds of statements help us reflect on the things God is doing.

Yes, language has a powerful effect on how we offer praise. . . and the effectiveness of our praise. As we praise God for the specific answers to prayer, he will grow our faith. Thankfully, all we need is faith the size of a grain of a mustard seed and we can move mountains.

Also, see Talking About Faith.

Copyright © 2023 Chuck Locklear

I recently had a startling experience. Liz and I were having dinner with a woman, who was sharing a long list of struggles in her life. At one point in the conversation, I suggested that she think about her faith and I brought up the idea of developing a growth mindset. She became very angry with me. She said she was offended and I was not going to change her beliefs. It was amazing to me that she was not even willing to consider that she could learn something new about faith.

Carol Dweck

While I have experienced students with a fixed mindset in my career, I did not realize how prevalent this belief is in our country until I read the research done by psychologist Carol Dweck in her book Mindset (2006). As a young researcher, Dweck set out to study how people cope with failure. She setup an experiment that presented subjects with a series of increasingly challenging tasks that would, by design, result in failure. She was interested in how people experienced resilience in the face of adversity.

To Dweck’s surprise, she found that some of the subjects did not experience failure at all. These people viewed the challenges as an opportunity to stretch their minds and learn to do the tasks better. They did not equate incompletion of the task as a failure, but as an opportunity to grow. This launched Dweck into a career of investigating what was going on with these people.

Further research confirmed an important principle for Dweck. Individuals who see intelligence, talent, and ability as fixed, something you either have or you don’t, are much more likely to give up when encountering difficulty. They are also more likely to judge their performance more harshly. On the other hand, those with a growth mindset understand that talents and abilities can be developed through one’s efforts and learning. Dweck found that this was true outside of the field of education as well. Athletes with a growth mindset, for example, bounce back from defeat more quickly and continue to develop their skills. Regardless of the context, Dweck found this principle to be true.

Growing Your Brain

From the classroom to the boardroom, those with a growth mindset were not beaten down by difficulties and challenges, but remained open to new ideas and were able to adjust and develop their talents and abilities. This research confirms what many educators know; the brain does in fact grow as people learn, and people do get smarter. People can develop new skills and improve their natural talents and abilities as a result of the effort they put into learning. 

While this is an amazing finding, it only confirmed for me what I already knew. If this concept were not true, why even go to school? Why would we, as a nation, spend so much of our money and resources on education? What really shocked me were the results of a survey done by Dweck that found that 80 percent of people can be classified as primarily having either a growth or fixed mindset, with results evenly split between the two. What? How can this be true? The implications are that in any given classroom or any given church, about 40 percent of the people come to the experience believing that they cannot learn and grow. How sad!

Beliefs Are Powerful

Beliefs are powerful shapers of our future, and since people are not born with one mindset or the other, this means that these students have learned this from someone, most likely their parents. If you are a church leader, what this means for you is that in any given congregation, almost half of the people do not believe they can change the cards dealt them. However, I believe there is hope. I have learned that mindsets and beliefs can change. In fact, I have seen mindsets develop and change over time by subtle messages received from teachers, mentors, pastors, and other significant influencers in one’s life.

The question for us today is what is going on with you? Do you have a fixed or growth mindset? Are you open to learning and growing? This reminds me of the woman who said, “Don’t confuse me with the facts. My mind is already made up.” I pray that we would let the Lord transform us by the renewing of our minds.

Copyright © 2020 Chuck Locklear

Also, see God’s Will.