Encourage One Another Daily, as Long as It Is Called "Today"

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Hebrews 3:13 (NIV) But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. CONSIDER For the next fifty-nine days we are going to be digging a deep well of encouragement. We will delve into what the Holy Spirit has revealed to us about the practice and ministry of encouragement: how it works, how to do it, and so forth. In the process, we will “encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of [us] may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” I have become convinced that the greatest and most singular need people who want to wake up, follow Jesus, and become imbued with his supernatural presence and power in the everyday world—which is holy love—is courage. We need to have courage put into us. And we need it not just every now and then or before a big challenge or in the midst of a hard struggle or loss. So how often do we need to be encouraged? But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” . . . Every. Single. Day. A couple of years ago I created an acronym for the things I want to sow into my own life every single day in order to be more deeply whole in my physical body and alive in Christ by the power of the Spirit. The acronym is SEEDS. S = Sunshine and Scripture (outside and inside) E = Exercise ( just do something because anything is better than nothing) E = Encouragement (give and receive) D = Diet (fasted lifestyle with feasting rhythms) S = Sleep and Spirit (passive and active) One of these things is not quite like the others: encouragement. We all understand encouragement at a certain level. It’s the William Wallace speech to his fear-filled warriors in Braveheart. It’s Knute Rockne to the Fighting Irish in the Notre Dame locker room. On we could go. But encouragement, as the Bible reveals, is of another quality and order of magnitude. Here is my working definition: To encourage in the biblical sense of the term is to stand in the stead and agency of Jesus, participating in the work of the Holy Spirit, to minister grace to human beings at the level of their inner person, communicating, conveying, and imparting life, love, courage, comfort, consolation, joy, peace, hope, faith, and other dispensations and manifestations of the kingdom of heaven as the moment invites or requires. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” . . . As you can see, we are going in deep. This awakening practice of encouragement will change the character of your heart and the climate of your home. In fact, if you can get even a handful from your local church to join in with this kind of sowing work, it will change the culture of your community into one of encouragement, and if this gets loose in a small town or city—oh my! This work of encouragement comprises the core essence and ethos of what we call “banded discipleship.” PRAY God our Father, you are the God of all encouragement. Thank you for your Son, Jesus, who is the ultimate exemplar of both courage and encouragement. No one has encouraged the human race more than Jesus Christ of Nazareth, crucified and risen from the dead, ascended to your right hand, where he ever lives to encourage the saints. Come, Holy Spirit, teach and train us as agents of encouragement. It seems simple enough, and yet we know there is an art and craft and skill to anything your Spirit does through human agency. Come and encourage us that we might encourage others. We pray in Jesus’s name, amen.