Encouragement

The spiritual gift or discipline of encouragement is one of the more neglected gifts in the current day. We are called to encourage others.

To encourage them in their faith, in their faithfulness to flowing Jesus, and in all matter of importance of life. We are called to up build others around us.

The church is a place for sinners to grow in grace and in mutual up building. We do not have or lives fully together. No one does.

To the degree the church acts as if everyone in it's membership either has their life together or really should have their life together the church fails its membership. The pressure for perfection in the church often doesn't lead to perfection but a hiding of issues.

It is difficulty to grow in a place where people hide their sin. If the church is not a safe place to be honest than the church is not a safe place to have authentic relationships.

And this is the flaw in many churches. In encouraging community the community often is hollow and lacks power. Because community is only of real powerful benefit if authenticity is safe.

We have a God in heaven who is not confused about our state. We he knows our faults and beckons us to him. The question is if the church has learned the nature of God and is willing to have the degree of grace and understanding that God has?

The Continuity of Righteousness

True righteousness is a state of living.  Often righteousness seems like doing big things in the moment.  We hear of large philanthropic donation or a large project.

We begin to think of righteousness in these terms.  True righteousness may include these things, but it also requires that we live consistently in a state of righteousness.

True righteousness does not rest at doing a few big things for God and then settle on that all else is irrelevant.  God is lord over all creation.

Righteous living requires that we give our whole life to God.  We tend to think in "large successes" when we should often think in terms of "continued faithfulness."

Doing large things for God is fine as long as we are determined to be continually faithful.  Doing large things can never be a replacement for continued faithfulness to God.

The Journey Matters

The world looks at where people are as a sign of success. In many senses spiritually where people are is far less important than how they got where they are.

The journey we take and the decisions we make to get there are more important than where we end up. Our faithfulness to live out our faith is more important than any status or position we obtain.

Ill gotten gain or gain obtained by walking over others is never good for those who get it. It may look like ill gotten gain has no significance today or tomorrow but we always tend to look at things too closely.

We tend to look at life in the moment instead of life in the face of eternity. In the moment many things look good that do not look good in the face of eternity.

The biblical math is that having God is worth more than all else. The math is of course fundamentally correct in the face of eternity.

Only one thing matters. All other things find their significance in relation to the choice to follow or fail to follow Jesus.

The choice is not between following Jesus and opposing Jesus. There are those who oppose Jesus for sure. But the choice is to actively follow Jesus or not. We cannot passively follow Jesus in a way which has no meaning.

We are saved by grace and not saved by our works. But the faith which justifies is never alone. True faith is always active.