The Power Of Encouragement 

 “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 nearer.” (Hebrews 10:24–25)

I’ve been struck recently how powerful it is to be on the receiving end of a word of encouragement from a Christian friend. Where I was feeling quite flat about a situation and my emotions were bringing me down, just to sit and chat to them and hear their encouragement completely changed my outlook. Their prayer for me that day helped lift my eyes above my situation and instead view it in a way God does.

In this passage in Hebrews 10, the author invites us so clearly to cultivate encouragement with one another in the Church. We have a mutual dependence on one another so we can ‘stir up one another to love and good works’. I need you to stir me up to do good works and you need me to stir you up - we need each other! Yet often it’s really hard to do this – to find the time to encourage each other, or even ask God for the words to do so. Sometimes we struggle to see how we can find anything encouraging to say - our sinful disposition clouds our judgment and we tend towards the negative rather than the positive.

But first we are told ‘to consider’ how to do this, as I think the author understands that we as humans are be prone to do the opposite! I love this word ‘consider’. It takes time and imagination to consider something doesn’t it? We can’t rush it. Interestingly, the phrase ‘let us consider’ is also used earlier in the book in Hebrews 3:1 where the writer says ‘Consider Jesus’. That is, look at him; think about him, focus on him, study him, let your mind be occupied by him. So God’s call here is to think about each other in the Church like this – to look at one other, focus and study each other in order to think of ways to encourage others to love and good deeds.

Wow. It’s a real challenge to me! How often do I think about you all, and take time to listen to you and consider how I can encourage you? Just like a parent does a child, how much time do we spend thinking how to bless each other, make life easier for each other and serve one another?

The key to help us do this is found in verse 25 of Hebrews 10 – by ‘not neglecting to meet together’. We can’t as easily stir each other up if we are not seeing each other! They say that communication is made up by up to 93% nonverbal methods - which is extraordinarily high! It matters to sit with someone, to look them in the eye, to give them a hug or to lay a hand on them in prayer.

God doesn’t want us as a Church to stop thinking about each other. He has given us a ‘hope’ that we can ‘hold onto without wavering, because he who promised is faithful’ (Hebrews 10:23). Without this kind of hope sustaining us day by day through all the disheartening frustrations and crushing disappointments, we would not have any strength or energy or joy to stir anybody up to love and good deeds. But if we rely on God, there is always a way we can encourage: namely, “God can be trusted, I have no strength, but God can be trusted.”