Encouragement Urging others to persist and persevere in their efforts to attain their goals; stimulating others toward love and good deeds. (1 Thessalonians 5:11, Hebrews 10:24)
Encouragement for Believers and Others – Part 1
Do you remember Bobby McFerrin’s song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” from 1988? That song was a huge hit propelling McFerrin to the Grammy awards with song of the year and album of the year, as well as, world-wide acclaim.
I believe that we human beings want to lead fulfilling, meaningful, happy lives. Don’t you? There are hindrances to living the kind of life each aspires to lead. I know that our Genesis 3 sin nature is one of those huge hindrances, but I also know that our Genesis 2 “aloneness” is another hindrance. Jesus encourages and provides a way to live an enviable life even though none of us lives a perfect or trouble-free existence. The question is “How?”
Your spouse, children, and fellow Christ-followers need to be encouraged to find this abundant life God offers and we all want.
Over the next two weeks, I would like to take you on a journey into the Beatitudes where Jesus explicitly tells us how. Want to join me? I’d love to have you along.
Though Jesus didn’t compose the verses from the Sermon on the Mount into a song, to my knowledge, He did let us know how to live a “happy, enviable” life by making profound statements recorded in Matthew 5: 1-12 known today as the Beatitudes.
I know that Jesus was not offering peace, prosperity, and a wrinkle-free life by following a few rules, but by personal experience, investigations, and decades of observations I have concluded that doing these things in a loving relationship with God, brings satisfaction and purpose, that most of us would agree, provides a foundation for a joyful life, and puts us in a truly enviable position.
Observation #1: Life Worth Living is Available in Jesus Christ Simply put: Jesus offers a “24-carrat gold” life (abundant life and heart-felt joy even in the midst of troubles), while Satan offers “fool’s gold” (life that looks like “only happy times” but ends in a crumbled heap of disappointment and regret).
Question Set #1: After reading Observation #1 please answer the following questions privately then discuss the answers with your spouse, children, or friend.
- How did Jesus’ life and ministry illustrate this observation?
- Where in the scriptures do you find examples of this observation?
- From your own experience how have you seen the observation illustrated or refuted?
Introduction to Observation #2:
In Matthew 5:3 Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. I believe He is saying that the person who realizes and admits his/her desperate need for God’s love and provision is “blessed”. In other words, true happiness by God’s standard is found when we realize how needy we are but also how loved we are.
God meets our needs by supplying all the resources we need, but He is not “all we need”. 2 Peter 1 makes it clear that God gives us everything we need for life and godliness. Genesis 2 makes it clear that He designed us so that we need other people as well. God is the ultimate “need meet-er”, but He has chosen to give us human relationships for love, for help, for support, for encouragement, for family, for doing all the “one another” passages He included in His Word. He meets many needs through parents, spouse, friends, and a host of other people we may never know.
Take a look at your food the next meal you have. Ask this question: Who is responsible for this meal? In your honest answer you will conclude that ultimately God Himself is responsible for the raw materials but others got those raw materials to you, probably lots of others. God uses His own methods to get His provisions to us, and He uses many other people to provide for us too. His plan is wonderful.
Simple put – we need God and others because God chooses to use others to meet some of our needs and us to meet some of theirs. He “freely gives to us” so we can “freely give” to others. He commands through Jesus the first and greatest commandment – to love God with all we are and then gives commandment #2 that we are to “love our neighbor as our self”. On these two commands all the law and prophets depend.
In fact He said in 1 John that if we say we love Him yet we hate our brother…we are a liar. So, do we need God? Yes, 100% of the time. Do we need others? Yes, we are designed to be interdependent with others so love and relationships can happen and others will know the heart of God is for us to love others as He loves us. Read John 17:23 to see what Jesus prayed for us.
Observation #2: Universal Need: We are 100% needy of God’s love and provision 100% of the time, and He uses human vessels to get some of that love and provision to us.
Question Set #2: After reading the intro and the statement of Observation #2 please answer the following questions privately then discuss the answers with your spouse, children, or friend.
- How did Jesus’ life and ministry illustrate this observation?
- Where in the scriptures do you find examples of this observation?
- From your own experience how have you seen the observation illustrated or refuted?
Introduction to Observation #3: Many of us are not comfortable with being around grief and sadness. Jesus gave us a clear path to find comfort in our pain and to offer comfort to others in theirs. Jesus said it in Matthew 5:4: ” Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Seems a bit illogical, doesn’t it? So I am to mourn in order to get comfort? Why couldn’t I ignore the pain, try to drown it, or try to out-run it?
When you and I are wronged, disappointed, or hurt in deep ways, the feeling we experience could be described as being “alone” and that can be frightening, truly sad, or make us really angry. That person that disappointed us no longer seems close to our heart but has moved or run away. That person who died has left us behind, and it hurts. We are away from them, no longer with them. Who will join us in our pain to help comfort us and remove our aloneness, hurt, fear, and anger?
Observation #3: Deep Comfort – Only when another person enters our painful circumstance to let us know we are not alone will comfort come to our broken heart. We are no longer alone in our pain. Someone has joined us to care about us. That person is now “with” us. Jesus is “God with us”; he is our Emmanuel.
Pain and disappointment and loss in life don’t automatically go away. They must be faced, acknowledged, and exposed to others, including God, in order to be truly healed and for comfort to come. Aloneness is removed as a person who cares about us enters the grief of our heart. That takes away some of the sting.
Question Set #3: After reading the intro and the statement of Observation #3 please answer the following questions privately then discuss the answers with your spouse or friend.
- How did Jesus’ life and ministry illustrate this observation?
- Where in the scriptures do you find examples of this observation?
- From your own experience how have you seen the observation illustrated or refuted?
Let’s pick up next week where we left off this time, so this doesn’t get too long. Hopefully it isn’t already too long.
We are called to love and serve others well, whether the people we are called to serve are believers or not. In that light, let’s use this and the next installment of the 52 Week Plan to think of how we can share “not only the Gospel but our very lives as well” to encourage believers toward love and good deeds and unbelievers to consider Jesus Christ as the only way to forgiveness and eternal life.
(I Thessalonians 2:8 – So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us.)
To Be Continued…..