Week 16: No Corner For Me
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.
1 Thessalonians 5:11
I have a dear missionary family that has consistently modeled Christ. Years ago while serving in a small town in Mexico they discovered a family that was overwhelmed. The local family already had several children. When the next child was born they simply put her in the corner of the room. They couldn’t afford another, and the best they knew was to simply set the baby down to die. When my missionary friends heard this, they went and asked the family if they could have the baby. Today their daughter Sarah is a grown woman, married with children of her own, and a missionary to the country of her birth.
So many who profess to be Christians are in similar situations. In the Christian life God’s desire is to conform every believer into the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). The goal of the Christian is not simply to become a believer. The goal is to walk with Jesus all the way home (Colossians 1:23). It usually takes a moment to be born again, but a lifetime to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). We begin with the milk of the word and should move to the meat (1 Peter 2:2). So many think that the goal is to profess a prayer and all has been done, but stopping there is like birthing a baby and setting it in the corner. Your day of salvation is the beginning, not the end.
One key element in your growth is other believers. You cannot be set down toward the corner and expected to thrive. Other believers who have been ahead of you, who have battled sin, and walked with Jesus need to come and pick you up. God will use them to guide you, teach you, and encourage your faith. Perhaps you can instantly think of believers who have been that means of God’s grace in your life? Paul so often talked about his children in the faith. We all have spiritual mothers and fathers who God used to build us up.
The church is the natural setting that God has designed for you to find people who will pick you up so you will thrive. When the Apostle Paul addressed the church at Thessalonica he urged them to keep doing what they had always been doing. What they always had been doing was building one another up. That is, they helped one another reach spiritual maturity. Do you have a church that is more than a locale, but one that encourages other believers to build one another up? It cannot be left to the sermon alone. The local church is a family that strengthens one another.
The plague in the Chrisitan church today is that discipleship has been forgotten and replaced with a stage show and a Ted Talk. You can go to that, but you won’t be built up. In some larger churches you won’t be able to know everyone, but you have to be known by someone! Maybe it’s a Sunday School class, a small group, home group, or Discipleship meeting. The point is to be known so that you can mutually edify others as they edify you.
One of the sweetest meetings of my week is a weekly discipleship gathering of a few men who have joined the church. We meet at the coffee shop and walk through Scripture. We talk about marriage, spiritual life, and struggles. We always pray. Those men save my life most days because what is done together is real. I go to be discipled by them, and they go to be discipled by me. That is replicated with other men and women doing the same thing within the local church. One group meets at 5:30 am, another in a home at 8:30 each Tuesday night. You know the church is getting healthy when people gather to build one another up. One woman who teaches all day gives her Tuesday night to shepherd about 20 young women who think she holds the moon (and she does). Women and men are gathering to build one another up in love and good deeds. Unless you plan on being set in the corner, then you have to have someone pick you up.
Christian Education takes a lot. To teach each day is challenging enough, but to have the responsibility to couple our teaching with our spiritual journey is a joyful work. How can we do that work without others to gather around us and build us up? How can we do our calling well without the church body strengthening our heart? The challenge is this: if you have this kind of relationship with fellow believers in your church, cherish it. And if you don’t, thirst for it. Thirsty people find the watering hole. God has someone to pick you up and nurture you, or he has you to pick someone else up.
Discussion Questions:
Who has been a spiritual mother or father to your faith?
Are you part of a small group that builds you up? How has it benefited you?
What are examples of “building up” that believers can practice on one another?
