Encourage Each Other - 1 Thess 5:11

Do you make New Year's Resolutions? They seem like a futile effort don't they? We feel like we are at the mountain peak of a new and promising year, and we have grand plans for a new us. We set some goals and within days or hours we fall flat on our face and give up until next year rolls around to whet our goal making appetites all over again. Why is this?

I believe it can be explained very simply. We "bite off more than we can chew". We want to right all of the wrongs of our past dismal year of failures and so our list of reforms can be long. Or, we just pick a really hard thing to change and we're already know that we won't be able to accomplish what we've set out to do, so it isn't long until we're proved correct. Is it that way with you? It is with me. 

I have been talking through the book of 1 Thessalonians during my Sunday nights at church and most recently find myself in chapter 5. That chapter is divided into two sections with the last, starting at verse 11 and going until the end, being a series of short, practical, applications to what makes for a phenomenal Christian life. It is the ideal passage for a New Year challenge. It's overwhelming actually. It could make for instant failure if it weren't for one thing. 

Look at just the tip of the spiritual iceberg in verse 11, Wherefore exhort one another, and build each other up, even as also ye do.

Wherefore, because of the hope of the soon return of the Savior, exhort - the word means encourage and build each other up - strengthen, develop another person’s life through acts and words of love and encouragement.

Now, there ya go. Try that on for size and see what happens in this new year of 2020. 

As a Christian I am a part of the body of Christ, the Temple of God and the household of faith. Imagine how that looks when each part of that spiritual building is restoring, strengthening, and developing each other through acts and words of encouragement? It is a beautiful thing. It doesn't come naturally and really is the challenge of the year to put into practice. But when it is instituted it becomes the impetus for total reformation within the house of God. 

Here is the application - Point out, today, a quality that you appreciate in a person. 

Now, what is the guarantee of success? It is how we treat the Word of God and the fact that we have the power to make said changes because of the indwelling Holy Spirit.