Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. 24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Hebrews 10.19-25
… encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
Encouragement is a powerful medicine and one which anyone can administer and it is a medicine that we all need in greater or lesser doses as our life circumstances change.
Clearly the greatest encouragement of all is to know that, as men and women saved by grace, we have a God who loves us and cares for us and who is working out all things for our good and our blessing. However because we are fickle human beings it is all too easy to loose sight of that foundation truth and to allow things to blind us to it. So we all need encouragement.
The Week of Prayer in which we have been involved over the past seven days has been a great encouragement as we have come together to seek wisdom form our God and it has been special to pray with others and look forward in expectation to what God will do through the ministry of CFC in the coming days.
It is a great encouragement that an increasing number are meeting once again ‘in person’ on a Sunday to worship our great God and to sit under his word.
It was a great encouragement to welcome so many visitors during August, and to know that they pray for the work here.
It is a great encouragement that we are able to begin to meet ‘in person’ in our Growth Groups as Covid restrictions are lifted and so we could go on.
I hope that you are beginning, like me, to be encouraged and that you can sense from the above the source of that encouragement.
Of course it is first and foremost from God himself, for as we have reminded ourselves on a number of occasions, ‘Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down form the Father of the heavenly lights. James 1.17 but on the ground as it were, this blessing of encouragement is delivered by us, God’s people, as we come alongside and minister to one another and this is something which we can all do.
An arm round a shoulder in the name of the Lord Jesus, a thank you for some service rendered or blessing received, a contribution in a Growth Group, sharing a word of Scripture, seeking to know what is happening in our various church ministries and promising to pray, for such ministries can be hard for those involved with them.
These, and no doubt countless other ways of encouraging, are primarily church focussed but consider also the encouragement that you as a Christian can give to those who don’t know Christ and are burdened by the state of our world.
What an impact we will have as a church if we all embrace the call to encourage one another and as we do so in the light of the approaching day of the Lord.