The Ways We Can Encourage Others-
Purity 849
Purity 849 09/29/2022 Purity 849 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of the sky reflected in the waters near
Murray Bridge in South Australia comes to us from Dave Baun Photography (https://www.facebook.com/DaveBaunPhotography)
who shared this pathway on social media back on June 17th, stating: “Another reflection image from our
day at Murray Bridge. We spent hours hiking around the place and enjoying
scenes like this all day long.”
Well, It’s Thursday again and I
thought I would use Dave’s photo as a visual representation of the hope we have
for those of us who are “going from here to there” on the pathway of Christian discipleship
and it is my prayer that my fellow travelers on Christ’s narrow path will have
joy in their journey.
In Christian circles where people
are actively pursuing all that God has for them by following the Lord’s wisdom
and ways as outlined in the Bible, you may have heard the familiar testimony
that Christians may not be perfected like Christ yet but they are no longer who
they once were. Apparently this adage
was expanded upon and the following quote is attributed to Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.:
“I may not be the man I want to be; I may not be
the man I ought to be; I may not be the man I could be; I may not be the man I
truly can be; but praise God, I’m not the man I once was.” – (https://quotefancy.com/quote/864928/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-I-may-not-be-the-man-I-want-to-be-I-may-not-be-the-man-I-ought-to)
As a Christian, Dr. King knew about the transformative power
that comes through Christ and His dream was that people could get past their
differences caused by group identifiers such as race and be united in harmony
where people were not judged by the color of their skin but because of the
content of their character, knowing that Christ can change people’s hearts.
And so I encourage people to not just believe in Jesus but to
follow Christ in the way they live their lives, to compassionately love and
serve others by sharing with them what Christ tried to show us through His teachings
in the word of God.
I know you can’t push people into faith and so I just try to
encourage people to seek the Lord by “walking and talking with God” and being
open to the possibility to follow where He leads knowing that God is the one
that will have to break though the walls that people build between themselves
and his love and sometimes His “hard truth”.
So I just encourage, “go that way “and point to Jesus.
So knowing we can’t affect those changes in people for them,
what can we do to encourage them?
Well Dr. Charles Stanley just happen to send me a letter that
shared his wisdom on how we can encourage others. Okay it was a mass mailing from
his ministries and not apersonal correspondence from the good Dr. , but it was
addressed to me, in fact I got two copies, one to Marc Clark and another to “M.
t. Clark” (small t?, typo I guess). Anyway Dr. Stanley shared that we can
encourage others by:
1.
Giving people our time and attention
2.
Meeting their emotional or physical needs
3.
Building each other up spiritually
4.
And by trying to be a “motivator”.
So while,
I may not be doing all of the above perfectly in all situations, Dr. Stanley
and I have the same teacher, the Lord and His word, and apparently I was
following the right path in terms of how I try to be an encourager.
I do my
best to give my time and attention to others. I try to meet their emotional and
physical needs, where I can. I try to build people up spiritually and I try to
motivate others to seek the Lord and to solve their problems with His
help.
My “ministry
work” is all about showing others how the Lord can help them with these things
and how a relationship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ can help them “cross
that bridge from here to there”, to walk toward becoming the person God made us
to be and to leave behind the troubled person we once were.
So be
motivated by Dr. Martin Luther King’s quote, consider Dr. Charles Stanley’s “prescription”
for being an encourager, and follow the Lord in all your ways and you will discover
that when you encourage others, the person that is most encouraged is you.
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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible
Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verses are:
Isaiah 53:5-6 (NLT2)
5 But he
was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.
6 All of us, like
sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow
our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all.
Today’s Bible verses were shared in
our resource under the heading “When you wish that some else could carry
your problems…” so while this
passage of scripture can serve as evidence for Jesus fulfilling the Old Testament
prophecies regarding the Messiah, our simple devotional resource shows us that
we can also use today’s verses to find hope and comfort in our walk by putting
our current burdens on to the Lord just like the weight and punishment of our
sins were laid on Christ on the cross.
In our Christian walk we will go
through trials and tribulations and be rejected by men just like Christ did,
but just like Christ endured suffering on the cross for the joy set before Him
(our salvation, for the glory of God), we can bear the burdens of our sufferings
and rejections because of our communion with Him and we can do it as a
continual practice of our faith.
As the NLT Bible Promise Book for Men
indicates, when you wish someone else could carry your promise, you can look at
these verses in Isaiah and two things could happen.
1. In light of Christ’s sufferings on the Cross
to save us our earthly problems may seem somewhat insignificant. Christ’s
suffering may put out “suffering” in proper perspective, especially if our
problems aren’t as painful as Christ’s passion. So we could feel relieved and motivated to
endure because of Christ’s example.
2. We can “give”
the Lord our problems by going to the Lord in prayer and asking Him to give us
strength by “releasing” or “surrendering” the weight of our problems to Him by
making the choice to trust the Lord to help us, to do the best we can and to
leave the results up to God.
I have just suffered another loss and
disappointment in my life and at first I agonized over it and tried to “Monday quarterback”
the situation and contemplated what I could have done differently that could
have changed the situation to avoid this negative outcome. But after a far amount of thinking about the
situation, and the fact that it involved another person, I realized that some
of the factors in this situation were simply beyond my control and I took to
forgiving myself for anything that I may have inadvertently done to cause
offense and then I forgave the other person for the hurt of rejection that they
inadvertently caused me. Sometimes
people go separate ways and it isn’t necessarily because of anything we did but
our selfish view in life makes it all about us.
So after forgiving myself and the
other person, and knowing that everything I did was motivated by my desire to
help and encourage the other to follow the Lord, I prayed to “surrender” this
person to the Lord knowing that God’s plan for this person’s life is perfect
and it just won’t involve me anymore.
When our relationships break down in any sense,
in order to move on we need to say “good bye”, and the faithful men and women
of God that have contributed to my maturity in my Christian walk have taught me
to “let go, and let God” by “surrendering” people, things, and situations that
are beyond my control to the Lord.
So if you wish that someone else could carry your problems and you have placed your faith in Jesus Christ, there is good news. Christ took all our sins on Him on the Cross and at the time all of those sins of ours were “future sins”, that means that any sins, problems, or burdens, that we encounter now or in the future can likewise be given to God through Christ. We can surrender our sins, our pains, and our problems to God and endure.
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As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I
always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to
assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s
“Discipleship”, also known as “The Cost of Discipleship”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase Bonhoeffer’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available on
many websites for less than $20.00.
Chapter Four
Discipleship
and the Cross - continues
The cross is neither
misfortune nor harsh fate. Instead, it is that suffering which comes from our
allegiance to Jesus Christ alone. The cross is not random suffering, but
necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural
existence; it is suffering that comes from being Christian. The essence of the
cross is not suffering alone; it is suffering and being rejected. Strictly
speaking, it is being rejected for the sake of Jesus Christ, not for the sake
of any other attitude or confession. A Christianity that no longer took
discipleship seriously remade the gospel into only the solace of cheap grace.
Moreover, it drew no line between natural and Christian existence. Such a
Christianity had to understand the cross as one’s daily misfortune, as the
predicament and anxiety of our natural life. Here it has been forgotten that
the cross always also means being rejected, that the cross includes the shame
of suffering. Being shunned, despised, and deserted by people, as in the
psalmist’s unending lament, is an essential feature of the suffering of the
cross, which cannot be comprehended by a Christianity that is unable to
differentiate between a citizen’s ordinary existence and Christian existence.
The cross is suffering with Christ. Indeed, it is Christ-suffering. Only one
who is bound to Christ as this occurs in discipleship stands in seriousness
under the cross.
“… let them take up
their cross …” From the beginning, it lies there ready. They need only take it
up. But so that no one presumes to seek out some cross or arbitrarily search
for some suffering, Jesus says, they each have their own cross ready, assigned by God and measured to fit. They
must all bear the suffering and rejection measured out to each of them.
Everyone gets a different amount. God honors some with great suffering and
grants them the grace of martyrdom, while others are not tempted beyond their
strength. But in every case, it is the one cross.
It is laid on every
Christian. The first Christ-suffering that everyone has to experience is the
call which summons us away from our attachments to this world. It is the death
of the old self in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Those who enter into
discipleship enter into Jesus’ death. They turn their living into dying; such
has been the case from the very beginning. The cross is not the terrible end of
a pious, happy life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of community with
Jesus Christ. Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death. Whether we,
like the first disciples, must leave house and vocation to follow him, or
whether, with Luther, we leave the monastery for a secular vocation, in both
cases the same death awaits us, namely, death in Jesus Christ, the death of our
old self caused by the call of Jesus. Because Jesus’ call brings death to the
rich young man, who can only follow Jesus after his own will has died, because
Jesus’ every command calls us to die with all our wishes and desires, and
because we cannot want our own death, therefore Jesus Christ in his word has to
be our death and our life. The call to follow Jesus, baptism in the name of
Jesus Christ, is death and life. The call of Christ and baptism leads
Christians into a daily struggle against sin and Satan. Thus, each day, with
its temptations by the flesh and the world, brings Jesus Christ’s suffering
anew to his disciples. The wounds inflicted this way and the scars a Christian
carries away from the struggle are living signs of the community of the cross
with Jesus. But there is another suffering and another indignity from which no
Christian can be spared. To be sure, Christ’s own suffering is the only
suffering that brings reconciliation. But because Christ has suffered for the
sin of the world, because the whole burden of guilt fell on him, and because
Jesus Christ passes on the fruit of his suffering to those who follow him,
temptation and sin fall also onto his disciples. Sin covers the disciples with
shame and expels them from the gates of the city like a scapegoat. So
Christians become bearers of sin and guilt for other people. Christians would
be broken by the weight if they were not themselves carried by him who bore all
sins. Instead, by the power of Christ’s suffering they can overcome the sins
they must bear by forgiving them. A Christian becomes a burden-bearer—bear one
another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ (Gal.
6:2). As Christ bears our burdens, so we are to bear the burden of our sisters
and brothers. The law of Christ, which must be fulfilled, is to bear the cross.
The burden of a sister or brother, which I have to bear, is not only his or her
external fate, manner, and temperament; rather, it is in the deepest sense his
or her sin. I cannot bear it except by forgiving it, by the power of Christ’s cross,
which I have come to share. In this way Jesus’ call to bear the cross places
all who follow him in the community of forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is
the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all
Christians.[1]
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
Join our “Victory over the Darkness”, “The Bondage
Breaker”, "Freedom in Christ" series of Discipleship Classes via the
mt4christ247 podcast!
at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts
(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available
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Audible.com.
These teachings are also available on the
MT4Christ247 You Tube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTxjSNstREpuGWuL0bF3U7w/featured
Email me at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and
to be encouraged.
My wife, TammyLyn, also offers Christian
encouragement via her Facebook Group: Ask, Seek, Knock (https://www.facebook.com/groups/529047851449098 ) and her podcast Ask, Seek, and Knock on
Podbean (https://feed.podbean.com/tammalyn78/feed.xml)
Encouragement
for the Path of Christian Discipleship
[1]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship,
ed. Martin Kuske et al., trans. Barbara Green and Reinhard Krauss, vol. 4,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 86–88.
