Good morning ladies and gentlemen! How are you all doing? It’s been a long! Yup, it has. I am still learning to take directions from the Holy Spirit with regards to balancing my time. By God’s Grace, I am becoming a better listener. This week, we are pausing with the Genesis Story and focusing on issues that Christians struggle with; but are very important in this Christian walk.
Before we begin, let me ask,” How is your Sunday going so far?” “Are you preparing to go to church?” “Have you gone to church already?” If you have already been to church, what did you learn today? What was/ is the reason why you are going to church? This morning, I was planning on sitting in bed and watching a sermon by Michael Todd. The Holy Spirit woke me up and told me to go for a worship service at one of the campus churches. Honestly, I fought the instruction, but then I realized to myself that I am only harming myself if I do not go. From this encounter this morning, I realized that it is God first or no God at all! Which would you prefer?
Today, we would be looking at encouragement. On Saturday, God reminded me of how important encouragement is in a Christian’s life. Encouragement is the act of giving someone support, confidence or hope. This is the definition of encouragement in the dictionary. As I was searching for this meaning, God told me that there is a fault in the definition. For Christians, God said that Encouragement is the process to helping someone through support to boost their confidence and work ethic in Christ. I was like wow. I began to thinking about this definition and I was blown away.
Encouragement is a process for Christians because it is not a one- day thing. It is a continuous thing; the beautiful thing is that God is the one who encourages us. God always knows the right time to encourage us. He is always on time and on point. The reason why encouragement for a Christian is on-going is that, we all have particular “jobs” that we have to achieve The Mission. Our work for God on- going all our lives. It is a continuous thing. In the dictionary, the word “act” is used because encouragement is usually giving for a particular job and mission that happens once or an event. Do you see the difference?
Encouragement is helping someone through support. Yup! I wondered why the two words help and support are closely put. As I was researching more into the words, I realized that the two words are two very different things. Support is pushing someone to do something, however the person is still independent to his/her thoughts and actions. This means that with support, a person can decide to take it or leave it. You are sort of just there to push the person to move on. With help, you do something that makes things easier for the person. So you can influence the person’s thoughts and actions by actually doing their work on their behalf. When I got to find out in understood why God said encouragement is “helping someone through support.” Wow! Look at how awesome our God is. He is so wise. He is telling us, Christians that He will encourage someone by helping us to continue His work by not influencing us but by pushing us through His emotions and words. Wow! All in all, God is telling us that doing His Work is our (Christians’) choice. Wow!
The last part is to boost their confidence and work ethic in Christ. Here, God is telling us that by helping through support, it will boost our confidence and work ethic in Christ. When Christians are encouraged, they become very confident in God, Christ, The Holy Spirit, The Word and lastly themselves. Yup! In this exact hierarchy. If self comes first, then it is a huge problem. This is an issue for another time however thinking of yourself first before God is a recipe for disaster. Moving on, when our confidence is boosted, it enhances our work ethic. We become more devoted to the work God has given us. We become more enthusiastic about our work for God, that we begin to whole-heartedly do His Will.