Tag: edification

Posted on

The gift of encouragement

don t quit message

The gift of encouragement is just that–it’s a gift! It’s a gift that we can and should give to others. God created us to respond to positive encouragement. Think about the way Jesus asked people to pray. He didn’t reprimand or shame them into praying. Instead, he said, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). He encouraged them to have faith in God. Jesus was constantly encouraging his disciples and never stopped doing so.

Encouragement in the Bible literally means to call someone near (for the purpose of imploring, entreat, or comfort them). 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” The word for building up (one another) comes from two words, house and rooftop. It means to build someone (as a house), brick-by-brick until the house reaches its fullness to the tipy top. In other words, your building one another up isn’t completed until that person is whole. It’s not a partial encouragement. Instead, we are edifying the person until they become whole again.

Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” In both this passage and 1 Thessalonians 5, the motivation for encouraging one another is that the Day is drawing near. Judgement day should not catch us off guard. We need to always be prepared for it and we need to always prepare others for it by encouraging them and building them up to serve in the Lord.

Posted on

Building up one another

photography of black power tool

Lots of scriptures talk about edifying others. The word literally means to “build up,” as in to build a house from the ground up. Building others up has a very specific purpose in the scriptures. In Ephesians 4, the word is used several times in succession. For example, Paul says that God gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (vs. 12). This is to take place until everyone attains the unity of faith and grows up into Christ, “from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (vs. 16).

A few verses later, Paul says, “Let no corrupt talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (vs. 29). 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” Romans 15:2 says, “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” Paul uses the same word when he says that we are God’s fellow workers, God’s field, and God’s building (1 Cor. 3:9). Paul told the Corinthians that the spiritual gifts they seek should be for the building up of one another.

In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul said that “it is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved” (2 Cor. 12:19). There are plenty more times that this expression is used. The Bible is clear that we are to build each other up with both our words and actions, and when we do, a beautiful house of the Lord emerges!