CHRISTIAN ENCOURAGEMENT (The right way to do it.)
May 30, 2018 12:44:42 GMT -5
John, frienduff, and 3 more like this
Post by tlsitd on May 30, 2018 12:44:42 GMT -5
All Christians need encouragement in their walk with the Lord. We live in a world that opposes us---a world which embodies and exalts everything that contradicts the teachings of Christian doctrine and which influences us constantly with the same. We have inward struggles against temptation, and stumblings into sin, and trials of faith that the world cannot understand or sympathize with or give us encouragement for. We need God and His word to encourage us in our battles and struggles, but He is also pleased for us to do this for one another.
So how do we do it? What is the right way to encourage our precious brothers and sisters in Christ in their faith?
The human instinct and temptation is to tell others what they want to hear, in order to make them feel better when they're in distress or feeling down. But that's not the way we should encourage one another as Christians. Why? Because the goal of Christian encouragement is not to make the other person feel good, first and foremost, but to encourage them to do whatever is pleasing to God, for whom we live, and who loves us and has our best interest at heart, and who we are supposed to reflect and glorify in all our doing and being---which may or may not be what the other person wants to hear, and may not make him or her happy.
Oftentimes the things that God wants us to do are not pleasant or convenient for us. They involve self-denial, self-control, self-sacrifice, patience, loss, humility, and even persecution. We know this. Christian living is hard living if the living is right living---and I don't mean in an ascetic way, or in the sense of having constant hardship or persecution of one kind or the other (which may be the case for some, but probably won't be for most), but rather in terms of obedience to Jesus against ourselves and against the world.
Christians who think that walking with Jesus Christ is effortless and fun probably aren't following Him as closely they should be. And I'm not suggesting that Christians should be miserable, but personal comfort and pleasure and having what we want in life and doing what we want to do is not the purpose or focus of the Christian life. The New Testament does not teach that the purpose of our life in Christ is happiness, or that happiness is our guarantee in this life. It actually teaches the opposite: Joy in the Lord and in the life to come, temptations, trials and persecution in this life. (When I read the New Testament, personal happiness in this life is not a theme of it, but the love of God is.)
So as Christians, we need to be encouraging each other in the things that the Scriptures encourage us in, and in the way that we believe the Lord would have us to do, whether that encouragement is well-received or not. If we are thinking about the favorable reception of what we share with other Christians, our motives are selfish. We don't have what pleases the Lord at heart, or what is best for the other person, but what will make the other person feel good and so make us feel good because of how what we share with the other person is received. That's not a righteous motive.
Instead, we should bear in mind, in our encouragement of our brothers and sisters, what God's goals and desires are, what His word says about a particular matter, and what will benefit the other person spiritually. We should encourage them with godly wisdom, point them to God's word, encourage them to trust and obey and to do what is pleasing to the Lord (at whatever cost), as the apostles did in their epistles and instructed others to do.
An example:
A brother tells me about the boat he's planning to buy and asks me to pray that God would help him to get a loan for it, because he's been wanting this boat forever and he and his family will have so much fun on it.
My response would probably be something to the effect of, "Do you really think that the Lord wants you to go into debt for a boat, brother? I don't believe that God wants us to go into voluntary debt for things; the Bible says 'owe no one anything, except to love each other' (Romans 13:8), and I believe He meant that and that we should abide by that precept. God provides us with everything we need to do His will, and even good things to enjoy, and we should be content with what we can afford without going into debt for things. Do you think that it's the Lord's perfect will for you to go into debt for a boat? Do you think that's the best use of His money? I would pray about that."
Now that brother might hate my advice, but I would have been giving him the advice that I believed was pleasing to the Lord and best for him. He might have gotten some personal happiness out of buying a boat, but I wouldn't have had the peace of God to encourage him to do it, or to agree to pray for what he had asked me to pray for him. This was a valuable opportunity for me to prompt him to consider his desires in the light of the Scriptures and to pray about whether what he had his heart set on was what the Lord wanted him to do, which will hopefully do him some spiritual good---even if it only planted the consideration in his mind and nudged his mind in the direction of God's mind. Now he'll have to think about that and to reconcile his desires and plans with God's word and his own conscience, and will hopefully choose not to violate either one---an invaluable practice for a Christian to hone.
The issue is bigger than the boat: It's a matter of mindset---thinking about what pleases the Lord and what His interests are vs thinking about how to get something that will make him happy. A Christian who makes a habit of choosing what pleases the Lord will have his or her mind increasingly renewed by God to discern and desire the same, and will reap spiritual blessings from Him, while a Christian who does not will not.
We can obtain happiness in lots of ways by getting what we want and doing what we desire to do, but the true joy of the Lord---which Jesus promised would be in us if we obeyed Him (John 15:10,11)---comes from our doing what pleases the Lord, just as Jesus delighted in doing the will of the Father. (Why would we have the joy of the Lord when we don't love the Lord and aren't living for Him but for ourselves? We might be happy doing that, but that happiness is not the joy of the Lord, because Jesus isn't happy with Christians who live that way. (See 2 Corinthians 5:15; Revelation 3:15-19).)
If we don't provoke one another to think as the Lord does and to see as He sees, and exhort one another to pursue what is good and to avoid what is evil, and remind one another of what God's word says---who is going to? The world?
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:12,13)
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works... (Hebrews 10:24)
And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. (1 Thessalonians 5:14)
So how do we do it? What is the right way to encourage our precious brothers and sisters in Christ in their faith?
The human instinct and temptation is to tell others what they want to hear, in order to make them feel better when they're in distress or feeling down. But that's not the way we should encourage one another as Christians. Why? Because the goal of Christian encouragement is not to make the other person feel good, first and foremost, but to encourage them to do whatever is pleasing to God, for whom we live, and who loves us and has our best interest at heart, and who we are supposed to reflect and glorify in all our doing and being---which may or may not be what the other person wants to hear, and may not make him or her happy.
Oftentimes the things that God wants us to do are not pleasant or convenient for us. They involve self-denial, self-control, self-sacrifice, patience, loss, humility, and even persecution. We know this. Christian living is hard living if the living is right living---and I don't mean in an ascetic way, or in the sense of having constant hardship or persecution of one kind or the other (which may be the case for some, but probably won't be for most), but rather in terms of obedience to Jesus against ourselves and against the world.
Christians who think that walking with Jesus Christ is effortless and fun probably aren't following Him as closely they should be. And I'm not suggesting that Christians should be miserable, but personal comfort and pleasure and having what we want in life and doing what we want to do is not the purpose or focus of the Christian life. The New Testament does not teach that the purpose of our life in Christ is happiness, or that happiness is our guarantee in this life. It actually teaches the opposite: Joy in the Lord and in the life to come, temptations, trials and persecution in this life. (When I read the New Testament, personal happiness in this life is not a theme of it, but the love of God is.)
So as Christians, we need to be encouraging each other in the things that the Scriptures encourage us in, and in the way that we believe the Lord would have us to do, whether that encouragement is well-received or not. If we are thinking about the favorable reception of what we share with other Christians, our motives are selfish. We don't have what pleases the Lord at heart, or what is best for the other person, but what will make the other person feel good and so make us feel good because of how what we share with the other person is received. That's not a righteous motive.
Instead, we should bear in mind, in our encouragement of our brothers and sisters, what God's goals and desires are, what His word says about a particular matter, and what will benefit the other person spiritually. We should encourage them with godly wisdom, point them to God's word, encourage them to trust and obey and to do what is pleasing to the Lord (at whatever cost), as the apostles did in their epistles and instructed others to do.
An example:
A brother tells me about the boat he's planning to buy and asks me to pray that God would help him to get a loan for it, because he's been wanting this boat forever and he and his family will have so much fun on it.
My response would probably be something to the effect of, "Do you really think that the Lord wants you to go into debt for a boat, brother? I don't believe that God wants us to go into voluntary debt for things; the Bible says 'owe no one anything, except to love each other' (Romans 13:8), and I believe He meant that and that we should abide by that precept. God provides us with everything we need to do His will, and even good things to enjoy, and we should be content with what we can afford without going into debt for things. Do you think that it's the Lord's perfect will for you to go into debt for a boat? Do you think that's the best use of His money? I would pray about that."
Now that brother might hate my advice, but I would have been giving him the advice that I believed was pleasing to the Lord and best for him. He might have gotten some personal happiness out of buying a boat, but I wouldn't have had the peace of God to encourage him to do it, or to agree to pray for what he had asked me to pray for him. This was a valuable opportunity for me to prompt him to consider his desires in the light of the Scriptures and to pray about whether what he had his heart set on was what the Lord wanted him to do, which will hopefully do him some spiritual good---even if it only planted the consideration in his mind and nudged his mind in the direction of God's mind. Now he'll have to think about that and to reconcile his desires and plans with God's word and his own conscience, and will hopefully choose not to violate either one---an invaluable practice for a Christian to hone.
The issue is bigger than the boat: It's a matter of mindset---thinking about what pleases the Lord and what His interests are vs thinking about how to get something that will make him happy. A Christian who makes a habit of choosing what pleases the Lord will have his or her mind increasingly renewed by God to discern and desire the same, and will reap spiritual blessings from Him, while a Christian who does not will not.
We can obtain happiness in lots of ways by getting what we want and doing what we desire to do, but the true joy of the Lord---which Jesus promised would be in us if we obeyed Him (John 15:10,11)---comes from our doing what pleases the Lord, just as Jesus delighted in doing the will of the Father. (Why would we have the joy of the Lord when we don't love the Lord and aren't living for Him but for ourselves? We might be happy doing that, but that happiness is not the joy of the Lord, because Jesus isn't happy with Christians who live that way. (See 2 Corinthians 5:15; Revelation 3:15-19).)
If we don't provoke one another to think as the Lord does and to see as He sees, and exhort one another to pursue what is good and to avoid what is evil, and remind one another of what God's word says---who is going to? The world?
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:12,13)
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works... (Hebrews 10:24)
And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. (1 Thessalonians 5:14)
Amen! It is so true, and proven true.....and I am smiling because even just a few days ago the Lord answered a prayer for help and He has healed a breach that the devil was intimidating me with and exploiting. Praise the Lord, He is SO good and faithful! i love His ways! 