A Building Program You Can Really Commit To
A BUILDING PROGRAM YOU CAN REALLY COMMIT TO
Hebrews 10:24-25
Recently, someone shared with me an article from an Ann Landers column. I’m not sure when it was written, but it said this, “In August of 1991 I was told that I had brain cancer and my chances of living another 5 years were, at best, 50/50. When word of this leaked out to my friends, two of them began a letter and card writing campaign and all the pilots employed by the airline got involved. The response was overwhelming. I received stacks of cards and letters every day. The doctors and nurses also let me know that they were interested in my recovery, gave me a lot of tender loving care, and the treatment I receive from the staff in the radiation department was incredible. All the female team in that department deserve special mention for their perpetual smiles and supportive attitude. My pilot buddies collected enough money to send me and my entire family to Disneyworld for a beautiful vacation. Surrounded by all that love, I couldn’t help but get better. I’m now classified as a cancer survivor, and the support of my friends continues to this very day. I am convinced that friend-therapy is the biggest factor in getting better.”
Friend-therapy. Isn’t that a great concept? What the world needs is more friend-therapy. What our churches need is more friend-therapy. Friend-therapy is a phrase that describes one of the great purposes of the local church. The local church is supposed to be a place that people get courage. And the process of giving them courage is called encouragement. I don’t know why you got to church on Sunday, but the writer of Hebrews commands us, “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” In other words, one of the major purposes we have for going to church every Sunday is to be an encouragement to somebody; to look for someone that we can have a ministry of encouragement to.
I don’t know if you realize it or not, but there are a great number of people who come to church from week to week, desperate for one word of encouragement. And in our culture today, that’s so fractured and frayed, encouragement is one of the greatest gifts we have to give each other. And I am convinced that it is a sin when we deny it from each other.
I was overwhelmed, as I prepared for this message, to discover the number of references to encouragement that you can find in this precious book, the bible. For instance, have you ever stopped to consider that every person in the Trinity is involved in the process of encouragement? You remember that passage over in Corinthians where it says that we are comforted with the same comfort, and then we give our comfort on to others? The word comfort there is the same word translated encouragement elsewhere. You can read that passage this way, “That when we are encouraged, we take the encouragement that we get and we pass that encouragement on to others.”
Did you know that one of the names for the Holy Spirit, we sometimes read or hear theologians refer to Him as The Paraklete, do you know why He’s called that? Because the Greek word for encouragement is the word para-keleo. It’s made up of two words; para - which means alongside, keleo - which means to call. Para-keleo, means to call alongside. The Holy Spirit is the One who is called alongside us. He is the Encourager. Thank God for the encouraging ministry of the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ, we are told had a ministry of encouragement.
And in the book of Romans, the 15th chapter, the Apostle Paul in one stroke of his pen gives us the real key to studying and understanding the Old Testament Scriptures. Verse 4 reads, “Whatever things were written before were written for our learning that we through the patience and encouragement of the Scriptures, might have hope.” In one fell swoop, Paul says that the entire Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, has been given to us for the purpose of providing encouragement to our lives.
I am convinced, my friends, because of the nature of our world that it’s not possible to make it very far without some encouragement. I know I don’t want to try it. The book of Ecclesiastes says, “Two are better than one, for if they fall one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up.” Have you ever had the experience of waking up on a cold winter’s morning to discover that your car’s battery died sometime during the night? Your car’s engine won’t even turn over because the battery is too weak. What do you do? You call friend with jumper cables to give your car a jump-start. His car’s battery provides yours with enough power to turn over and, once running, your battery has a chance to replenish its own charge.
Look around you and you’ll find people who are drained by the routine demands of daily living. Others are discouraged by some setback that has occurred in their life and they need a boost. And like that car that comes alongside ours to give us a jump-start, sometimes people need the strength of others to keep going. And I personally believe that there is no better place for that kind of thing to happen than in the church of Jesus Christ. And if it doesn’t happen here, for most people who come to church, it’s not going to happen anywhere. We owe it to one another to develop a ministry of encouragement that reaches out and touches people. It’s not only good for our human family, it’s absolutely, critically necessary for our spiritual family. We can have the greatest bible teaching in the world and be just as accurate as we can be, but if it’s done in a setting that lacks encouragement, and love, and a building up of the body, our teaching will fall on deaf ears. You know why? People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
So let me spend the next few moments that we have this morning giving you some practical expressions of encouragement that you can become involved in right away. This is a building program that you can really commit to; these principles have to do with the building up of one another.
I. PEOPLE ARE ENCOURAGED BY WHAT THEY SENSE FROM YOU
When it comes to encouraging others, you know what I have found to be true? Sometimes I am encouraged by what I sense from other people. One of the great stories in the bible for those who need encouragement is the book of Job. You’re familiar with the title character, Job. But do you remember Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar? I pray that God would help me never to have any counselors like that! Those guys are the epitome of the kind of visitors you don’t want to come calling on you when you’re in the hospital. They said all the wrong things. They told Job he was hurting because he was a sinner. And one of them said, “Job if you knew how bad you should be hurting, you’d feel better.”
But, to their credit, those three guys did one thing that was right. The bible says that when they first saw Job seated there on the ash heap, they went and sat down beside him and didn’t say a word. Now, it would have been better for Job if they had just kept quiet. But those first seven days must have meant a lot to Job.
Have you ever had somebody encourage you just by their presence? Just by the fact that they were there for you. They don’t have to say a lot. In fact, most times you don’t want them to say anything. You can just sense when people really care, can’t you? And people can really sense when you care. And one of the things that’s a blessing about being wounded, whether it’s in your family or in your physical body, is that once you’ve been wounded, God opens up in your life a new sensitivity to the hurting people around you. I preached a number of funerals the first five years I was in the ministry. But it wasn’t until my own father died in March of 1988 that I really became sensitized to the process of grieving over the loss of a loved one. Eugene Peterson paraphrases 2 Corinthians 1:3 to read, “All praise to the God and Father of our Master, Jesus the Messiah! He comes alongside us when we go through hard times, and before you know it, he brings us alongside someone else who is going through hard times so that we can be there for that person just as God was there for us.” Sometimes we can encourage by just being there for them as they go through a difficult time.
II. OTHERS ARE ENCOURAGED BY OUR WORDS
Sometimes we are most encouraged simply by the presence of friends who care. At other times, we are encouraged most by what we hear. Some people have a knack for being able to say the right things at the right time and communicate their love best with words . Proverbs 12:25 in the Living Bible reads, “Anxious hearts are very heavy, but a word of encouragement does wonders.” Haven’t you found that to be true from your own experience? Haven’t you ever been weighed down with anxiety and someone came along and said just the right thing that you needed to hear and your spirits were lifted?
I received a call this week from someone who phoned just to tell me what a great job they thought I was doing at the church. She stated how impressed she is with my integrity, and how obvious it is that the Lord is blessing my ministry. She said she felt I was the best preacher she had ever heard. Now, I thought she was overstating it a bit . . . but I’m glad to know my mother feels that way. It’s nice to know she’s behind me! Recently a man who became a part of our church family in 1995 was in my office, and he commented on how pleased he was that the Lord led him to ESCC. He commented on how my sermons are helping him to grow spiritually, and how thankful he was to be a part of a church like this. Now you may think that preachers don’t need to hear that kind of stuff, but we do.
You know, what we hear so often makes the difference, doesn’t it? Have you said a good word to somebody recently? The Bible says in Ephesians 4:29, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Have you thought about how you could encourage somebody with the right words? Sometimes you need to study a little bit ahead of time so that you’ll be prepared with just the right thing to say. Proverbs 25:11 reads, “A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.” It’s a real treasure.
Sometimes we’re encouraged by what we sense. We’re encouraged often by what we hear. And we’re also encouraged by what we read.
III. PEOPLE ARE ENCOURAGED BY WHAT WE WRITE
I’ve shared with you before how I keep a special folder in my filing cabinet. I’ve labeled that file my “Is It All Worthwhile?” folder. And inside are letters, notes, and cards that I’ve received over the years that have been a great encouragement to me. It’s kept near the front of my cabinet drawer because I have often accessed its contents. On days when I desperately need an encouraging word and no one calls on the phone, I’ll read a few of the notes that some of you have sent me in the past. When I get discouraged about the ministry and wonder if what I’m spending my life doing is really making a difference, many times my purpose in life has been confirmed in the written notes and letters I have received from the people I’ve ministered to. And as I thought about how important that file has become to me, the thought came to me that of all the ways we can encourage other people, written encouragement may be the strongest thing we can do to help somebody who is hurting. Just think about a few of the advantages of written encouragement with me for a moment.
First of all, when you write a note to somebody to encourage them, it’s deliberate. You have to sit down on purpose and do it. And the fact that you’ve done that is communicated along with the card or note that you send. It’s not just the paper and ink that are important, but the fact that someone took the time to sit down, as they were thinking of me and express appreciation in one form or another.
Another benefit of written encouragement is that you can say what you really want to say. Did you ever get next to somebody you wanted to encourage, and you didn’t know exactly what to say, so you said something, and as soon as you walked away you thought to yourself, “That didn’t really come out like I had planned. I wish I had done better.”? When you write a note, you can sit down and think it out. And you can edit an rewrite until you get it right! I love Paul’s transparency when he wrote to the Corinthians. He said, “I am weak when I am face to face with you, but I am bold when I m absent.” I know a lot of folks like that, don’t you? You get a little weak when you’re face to face with someone, but when you’re absent, you get bold. The beauty of written encouragement is that you can write the note when you are bold! You can say what you really want to say.
Another benefit of written encouragement is that it is durable. I’ve got some notes in my file folder that are 13 years old. They are durable reminders of encouragement. You can write something to someone else that they’ll never throw away.
And you know something else about written encouragement, this is really cool, they’re distance-proof. You can’t say something to somebody that’s not there, but you can write a note to someone who is half-way around the world. I understand that in the remote mission-stations in the world the most important day of the week is mail day. These folks don’t get a lot of encouragement. They don’t receive a lot of communication. But they go to mail day with a lot of anticipation that someone will have written them a note to lift them up. I love having access to email on the computer. Several times a week I can send a word of encouragement to my friend in Caracas Venezuela, and he can receive it instantly. And on a regular basis, there are encouraging email notes from others waiting for me. We strengthen people by what we write to them.
IV. PEOPLE ARE ENCOURAGED BY WHAT THEY FEEL
We’re encourage by what we sense. We’re encouraged by what we hear. We’re encouraged by what we read. And, finally, we’re encouraged by what we feel. Do you have any idea how much encouragement can be conveyed through human touch? Maybe that’s why everywhere Jesus went, he touched people. Did you ever notice that?
· Jesus reached out his hand and touched the leper, saying, “Be clean.”
· So he touched her hand and the fever left her.
· Jesus had compassion and touched their eyes and immediately their eyes received sight.
· And he touched his ear and healed him.
· Paul touched people.
Now, some of you would say, “Andy I don’t need someone to touch me. Just say the word to me and I’ll be okay.” I love the story about the little boy who got out of bed late one evening and was standing at the top of the stairs crying because he was afraid of the dark. His father called up to him and said, “Son, just go to bed. God’s up there. He’ll be with you.” And the boy replied, “Yeah, I know dad. But I need somebody with skin on!” Most of us are like that, aren’t we? We need someone with skin on. Someone who can come up alongside us, put their arm around us, and let us know they care.
Without a doubt, my favorite story of encouragement that I heard last year comes from preacher and Christian author David Jeremiah. David Jeremiah was conducting a seminar in North Carolina, and during some free time his wife drug him to the mall. He found a Lemstone Christian bookstore in the mall and David Jeremiah went into that store to see if any of his books were there. He found his books were prominently displayed right out front. So he went to the cashier and said, “I just want to thank you for putting my books out there. I don’t know if you understand what that means to me. I’m a writer and if no one put my books out there for people to see, chances are no one would buy them.”
The cashier said, “You’re David Jeremiah?”
“Yes.”
“Would you talk with our manager?”
Jeremiah said, “I’d be glad to.”
She led him to this little office back in the warehouse. She introduced Jeremiah to her boss, the store’s owner. That store owner told Jeremiah, “You know, this is really an incredible thing for you to be here. Let me tell you my story.
I gave my life to the Lord 10 years ago and I worked for the Coors brewery, and I had gone clear to the top of the organization. I was making all kinds of money and I’ve got two kids in college. When I gave my life to the Lord, I got real uncomfortable with what I was doing with my life. The Lord was really working on me, and I kept saying to God, ‘I can’t give this up. If I do, what will my kids do?’ But the Lord kept convicting me until one day I went to work and turned in my resignation. I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do next. I took a trip to the mission field. I thought maybe God wanted me to be a missionary. I found out real quick I’m not ready for that!
When I came home, three was an ad in the paper about a new bookstore that was going to open in a brand new mall, and they needed an owner. I went an filled out the application. I was sure this was what God wanted me to do. So I bought into his franchise to be a bookstore owner and sell Christian books. We were supposed to be in the store by Thanksgiving,” he said, “but something happened and it didn’t get done. We didn’t get into the store until after the first of the year. I lost all the pre-Christmas trade, all the end of the year business which is about 60% of your income. I have put every penny I have into this business including my children’s college money, and he said, Pastor Jeremiah, I don’t know what to do.
He said, “The other day I was so discouraged. And as I drove to work I was listening to the Christian radio station and I heard you preaching on that station. And you were talking about encouragement;, how God wants to encourage our hearts. And he said, “I pulled the car off he side of the road and I prayed, “God I’m so discouraged. If you really mean what that man is saying, please send someone to encourage me.” And he said, “Good night, pastor, I had no idea he would send you!”
David Jeremiah asked that man if he and his wife would attend the seminar he was conducting that night, which he did. And at the conference Jeremiah had this man come to the platform and share his testimony. You know what happened? The 1200 people who were at the seminar went to that man’s bookstore and bought just about everything he had in stock! The owner reported it was the single best week he’d ever had in his life!
You see how encouragement works? A preacher encouraged a bookstore owner. The bookstore owner attended the conference and encouraged those in attendance. All the people of the conference went to the owner’s bookstore and bought all his books, and now he’s encouraged again. Encouragement is like throwing a rock into the water and watching the ripples keep expanding. It’s a never ending process.
And my challenge to you today is simply this:
1. find someone this week that you can build up through your presence;
2. find someone who looks like they could use a kind word, and give it to them;
3. write a note of appreciation,
4. or through a warm embrace or a pat on the back let someone know you think they’re special.
That’s the kind of building program that we all need to commit to! Let’s not give up meting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us consider how we might spur one another on towards love and good deeds, and let us encourage one another, and all the more as we see the Day approaching.
Now, if you’ve never surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, we want to encourage you to decide today to make him Lord and Savior of your life. Some of you may be sitting beside someone today who needs to make a decision like that, grab their hand put some courage in them this morning. Tell them if they need to come forward, you’re willing to walk with them. As we stand and sing our hymn of invitation, won’t you come . . .