Hebrews 3:12-14 (ESV)
12 Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.
Mike Bickle has been talking a lot about encouragement in his recent sermons at Forerunner Christian Fellowship. In one talk, he described the three primary accusations that the devil is constantly bringing against every Christian:
- Your work doesn't matter.
- Your spiritual life is a failure; in fact, you're going backwards instead of growing.
- No one would even notice - let alone care - if you gave up.
Mike commented that he has shared those three accusations in various contexts over the years and people have come up to him afterwards and said, "That was prophetic - those were exactly what I was being attacked with!" He replied that it doesn't take a prophetic gift to know that people are being attacked with those three accusations - because that's what the devil is telling all of us all the time!
The enemy's goal is simple - he wants us to quit. He wants us to make a ceasefire with him; to quit trying to strive against sin; to quit praying for the world and for the lost; to quit trying to share our faith in Jesus; to quit expecting God to actually help us and answer our prayers; and maybe even, after a while, to give up on Jesus altogether.
If this is the world in which we live - one in which demons are constantly whispering in our ears that we are insignificant, hopeless, and alone - then what should we be doing? Here's what the apostles said over and over again:
Encourage each other!
What does it mean to encourage each other? In short, it means to speak the truth to one another to build each other up. It means to have a merciful and generous attitude towards one another so that our words can strengthen them... so that they will want to not quit.
The first way we encourage one another is simply speaking the positive things that we see in others. Encouragement begins with simple compliments. For many of us, this does not come naturally. Most of the time, our culture takes the positive for granted and highlights the negative as grounds for complaint. When was the last time you overheard co-workers talking about what your boss was especially good at?
This may seem obvious and we may even feel silly giving compliments, but it can be very profound. The things which are obvious to you about your friends and family members may not be obvious to them - especially since there are demons whispering the opposite to them all the time!
The second way that we encourage one another is to speak truths of scripture over each other. For example, for a believer who keeps falling into sexual sin, it really may not look like he is "accepted in the Beloved," (Eph 1:6), but it is nonetheless true. We declare truths of scripture over one another by faith, knowing that they are true because God says so, not because of what the situation looks like on the surface.
Finally, we speak out truth to encourage others that we have gotten directly from the Holy Spirit in prayer. This is primarily what Paul is talking about when he talks about the gift of prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14.* He writes that the purpose of prophecy in the Church is "upbuilding and encouragement and consolation" (1 Cor 14:3, ESV).
The way this normally happens is that when we are praying for another believer, a Bible verse will spontaneously come to mind, or a phrase, or a mental image. These things are given to us by the Holy Spirit to use for the encouragement of our brothers and sisters. We are under no compulsion to share them (1 Cor 14:30-32), nor should we share them without sufficient interpretation (e.g. if I am praying for someone and get a mental image of a coffin, I must ask the Holy Spirit to tell me what it means before I share it. There are many ways that that image might be very encouraging - such as Rom 6:11 - but without the interpretation it will probably be the opposite of encouraging!)
It is incredibly important that we encourage one another. There is not one of us who is immune to the hardening effects of sin's deceitfulness, and the devil will take every opportunity to push us one step further away from wholehearted obedience to Jesus. Let us take the Apostles' counsel seriously, humble ourselves, take some risks, and learn to encourage!
* I rely on Wayne Grudem's definition of the New Testament gift of prophecy:
Although several definitions have been given for the gift of prophecy, a fresh examination of the New Testament teaching on this gift will show that it should be defined not as “predicting the future,” nor as “proclaiming a word from the Lord,” nor as “powerful preaching”—but rather as “telling something that God has spontaneously brought to mind.”
Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology : An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine, 1049 (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Inter-Varsity Press; Zondervan Pub. House, 1994).
