Building One Another Up Through Unity, Prayer, and the Word
Encouraged in Christ
Colossians 4 verse 7 to the end of the book letter. There's a lot of names in this so forgive me. Tycheicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. And with him, Anisimus, our faithful and beloved brother who was one of you, they will tell you of everything that has taken place here. Arius Darkus, my fellow prisoner, greets you, and Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions. If he comes to you, welcome him. And Jesus, who is also called Justus, justice. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers of the kingdom of God, and they have been of comfort to me. And Paphros, who was one of you, a servant of Christ, Jesus greets you. Always struggling on your behalf in his prayers that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and Heropolis. Luke the beloved physician greets you as does Demas. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nimphah and the church in her house. And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans. And see that you also read the letter from Laodicea and say to Archipas, see that you fulfill the ministry that you received in the Lord. I pull right this greeting with my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you. Father, Lord we just thank you now that you have just granted words Lord a message unto Isaac's mind and his heart and how I pray Lord that as he as he speaks it Lord would you just give him a clarity in his words Lord of wisdom in his mind and Lord just a heart on fire for you would you help us and prepare our hearts to receive his word and in all things father would you speak to us through him today we pray in Jesus name amen I'm just gonna, we'll get into our passage for the day. um Matt read it out before, has like a million really hard to say names and places in it, which is really cool. And I'm very thankful for that, uh Matt, thanks for that. But that's okay, it's all good. um So if you wanna open your Bibles, because we'll be referencing the text. quite a bit throughout to obviously Colossians chapter four verse seven to the end of the chapter. So um Colossians is like kind of hard to find. It's like basically in most Bibles it's like pretty much two pages. So you know it's before Thessalonians so if you get there you've gone too far, go back a bit. um So this passage at first glance appears not to have like heaps that we can actually extract, right? Or at least that's what my first impression was when Matt gave it to me and I was once again like, thanks a lot for this passage. But as we read it carefully, or as I read it carefully, there is a theme that I actually noticed that you can notice. One that is... been intertwined throughout the whole letter. um And this letter, as well as to teach, is actually supposed to encourage its readers. um that's generally the aim of all of Paul's letters, except some of them are like, pull your head in. But a lot of them are encouraging. um and they all are at some point anyway. We can see hints of this purpose all throughout and very obviously if you just turn back to chapter two of Colossians verse one to three it says, for I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those that Laodicea. and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. So then we'll turn back to chapter four, sorry for the flip flop, but back to chapter four, verses seven and nine. So they once again, they speak of this encouragement that Paul desires for the church in Colossi. verse seven, I actually looked up this name, it's apparently pronounced Tichicus, okay? According to, I don't know, a random person. So I'll just say that. Tichicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord. I sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that he may encourage your hearts. And with him, Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you, they will tell you of everything that has taken place here." So this led me to wonder, what actually encourages me personally? um I was kind of sitting there wondering, like, what is it truly that encourages my heart? And it's probably a little different for everyone, like, what works best, but I was kind of just considering, is it affirming words? Is that what encourages me? Or is it just simply being noticed and, um you know, appreciated every once in a while or whatever? Or perhaps it's deeper than that. And I think it is, and we'll get into that, obviously. But this raises a few bigger questions. Why is it that we need encouragement at all? How should we encourage one another? And these are the questions I will aim to answer today. So why do we require encouragement? Or maybe the more important question is, do we actually require encouragement at all? And I the simple and obvious answer is yes. Obviously we need encouragement. But I was interested enough to do a little research and what I found was actually quite interesting. So I'd just like to share it with you. A couple of researchers, uh Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman, they wrote an article titled, Why This Word Is So Dangerous To Say Or Hear. And it was on the power of the word no, AKA discouragement. So in their article, they wrote, if I were to put you into an fMRI scanner, a huge donut-shaped magnet that can take a video of the neural changes in your brain and flash the word no for less than one second, you'd see a sudden release of dozens of stress-producing hormones and neurotransmitters. These chemicals immediately interrupt the normal functioning of your brain, impairing logic, reason, language processing, and communication." End quote. So the fact is... discouragement affects us in such a significant way that encouragement is not only clearly necessary but it's actually required in large, larger amounts to overcome the discouragement we experience on a regular basis. later on in the same article they write this, Barbara Fredrickson, a founder of positive psychology discovered that we need to generate at least three positive thoughts and feelings for each expression of negativity. If you express fewer, personal and business relationships are likely to fail. So, to overcome the flood of discouragement of discouraging words, actions and reactions that we will unfortunately inevitably face in our lives, we must counter-attack with three times the encouragement. I feel it important to let you know that these two men are not Christians as far as I'm aware. But this study of theirs is fascinating for understanding the human psyche. You might be tempted to think, who are we to listen to these secular people, know, lecture us on how our relationships are going to fail and blah, blah. you know. I don't think it's a healthy approach. uh I think it's beneficial to take what we can actually learn from and grow in our relationships with each other and even with God, we take that and leave the rest behind. So I think there is something to be taken out of that. Now while positive thinking has shown to have scientific... evidential real results in countering negative or discouraging thoughts of an individual. It's got nothing on the power of encouragement from others. Positive thinking will only get us so far as we are still, as usual for us, trying to rely on ourself. While again, I think we could benefit from a more positive mindset, whatever you want to call it. Michael talked about optimism this morning. I think we could benefit from a more optimistic mindset, but of course, that's not the end of it, obviously. um It is not listed in the Bible as a fix-all. The Bible very clearly prescribes encouragement from others as the treatment for faint-heartedness in 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 14. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idol, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. So the idol needed admonishing. Get off your butt. The weak need help and the faint-hearted need encouragement. So now you may think, it's a bit dramatic to think that we are so severely discouraged so often that you need to listen to me ramble on about it for ages, about encouraging one another and blah, blah. But just consider the last couple weeks, three or four weeks maybe as an example. Fuel prices skyrocketing is a stressful situation, okay? Diesel is over $3 per litre now. That's insane. um Shortages everywhere, wars happening, you know, ongoing for a long, long time. Look at last couple of years, protests on protests about anything you can think of. People out in the streets hurting each other and screaming at one another over, you know, differences in opinion about things that, in my opinion. probably don't really matter, the slow increase in resistance to Christianity in this country and then the overt and aggressive resistance to Christianity in other countries. These are just a few of the things that may discourage us, but let's zoom in a bit, okay? Have you ever tried to start something only for people to kind of stomp on it seemingly just because... Yeah, they want to? I don't know. Seemingly, um... Sorry, I've lost my place. Seemingly just because they like to. Have you ever been hurt by a close friend or family member? Have you ever tried your hardest to run something or do something only for it to collapse after a short time? Perhaps you faithfully served a ministry or something for some time, but you just never seem to have your efforts appreciated or noticed. We are discouraged so casually and commonly and unfortunately encouraged so rarely. Author and pastor Des Smith says in his article, encouragement must be sufficiently rare that the Bible lists it as a spiritual gift. um And that's from. That's in Romans chapter 12 verse 8. So why is it that we struggle so much to say an encouraging thing, yet the first critique we can think of is so quick to leave our mouths? And we'll look further at this a bit later. So yeah, anyway, what is the point of even bringing up this depressing topic? um I'm not trying to get you to dwell on your hurt or become bitter or something because obviously we understand as Christians we have hope in Christ and we also know that we need to forgive one another as we've been forgiven. So oh it's not like I'm not sitting here like, you poor you, it's okay that you're still mad. No, you do need to forgive one another. That still needs to happen. But instead of... um Yeah, instead of staying here and feeling sorry for ourselves over it, okay, um we ought to do something about it. Okay? Leading us nicely to question number two. How should we encourage? As mentioned before in the quote from Des Smith, encouragement is listed as a spiritual gift in Romans chapter 12 verse 8. The ESV translated as the one who exhorts. Now the definition of exhort is to strongly encourage or urge someone to do something. This means that for some Christians, encouragement might be a lot easier than it is for others who are gifted in other ways. Maybe it comes naturally or supernaturally, I guess, to you by the Spirit's work in you. But we know that we all receive different spiritual gifts from God, each of us making up the body. And so I think it could be helpful to look at some examples of encouragement from the Bible and see what we can learn from them. So if we take a look back at our passage, which is hopefully still uh open in your lap, for today we can already find one example of how Paul himself has been encouraged in verses 10 and 11. Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you. And Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions, if he comes to you, welcome him. And Jesus, who is called justice. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me. So this word comfort, em in Greek, is actually, I don't know how to say it properly, it's like paragoria, em which can be translated as comfort and most often is, em but it is basically a similar idea and actually is translated in some translations as encouragement, so comfort encouragement. em So what exactly is Paul being encouraged by? What is he being comforted by? He does not mention that these men have actually done or said anything specific to encourage him. Only that these men have been with him. Encouragement can come from simply being around those who care for you and who are on the same mission as you. Think of something like a footy team. The lads all together, you know, working, or ladies, sorry, working towards a common goal to win the game. There's a reason people seem to gravitate towards sports and other team environments. And that's because of the comfort or the encouragement that can be found in it. Having people around us that both care for us personally, but are also working toward something outside of themselves is a perfect place to find comfort and to be built up. But it requires one important thing to be effective. and that is unity. A team without unity is a team destined to lose. We must be united under one goal, under one thing that is above any of us, and that in our case, of course, is Christ. Our goal is His glory, and for others to come to know Him the way that we know Him. We must be united in this goal, and united in purpose for the glory of God to find real encouragement from the Christians around us. This is exactly what Paul had in his life at this time, like-minded men, united in purpose and mission, and this he found to be a great comfort. So unity is encouraging. There must not be a divide between our brothers and sisters in Christ, simply because of denomination and our differences in... opinion or interpretation of the Bible over secondary issues and race, gender, worship style, loud, quiet, whatever. uh These things are not tools to bring each other down. They are beautiful differences to be found in the body of Christ. We are to be united in Christ Jesus towards one common goal, glory to our God and King. Okay, so let's venture a bit further, shall we, toward the end of our text. Verses 12 and 13 um say, Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God. for I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you and for those in Laodicea and in Hierapolis. Notice here these words, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers. What exactly does this mean? The word struggling obviously means that this prayer is not like a quick, like, you know, thank you Lord for everything and before sleep, right? That's not what it is. It's not a quick before you go to sleep thing. um This is a long, intense, like hard work kind of prayer, right? uh The text says that Epaphras, the one who's doing this intense praying, is um one of them. So this man is praying his heart out for his church. When was the last time we put aside a decent amount of time and effort to pray for this church, for your church? We can talk about encouragement all we want. But if this is not coupled with prayer for one another, for Matt and Michelle, for our elders, our board, our epic band, for every member of this church and visitor, we're fighting an uphill battle, Prayer for your church is crucial to deepen your love for the people in it and therefore the motivation to encourage one another. Prayer is like the hammer that drives love deeper into our hearts. And at the end of the day, encouragement comes from love. Do we really love our church the way we ought to if we never pray for them? Now, I can't tell you what to do, okay? I don't have the right to tell you what to do. That's Matt's job. I don't have the right to give you homework, but I'm gonna. I'm gonna give you homework anyway. um So some of you... uh Yes, so take, here's your homework, take five minutes a day, at least five minutes a day this week to pray, seriously pray for this church. Pray specifically for things going on in this church, for people in this church, for groups and members and leaders and everyone, okay? Five minutes a day. Some of you, I'm sure, are already praying for this church. Of course, I'm sure a lot of you... are already doing that. And probably more than five minutes a day, possibly. And that's really great. But some of us, me included, by the way, we actually need reminding of the simple power of prayer for one another. So if you want to, you know, set a reminder on your phone or, you know, if you're a bit more old school, put a sticky note on your mirror, I don't know, whatever, tie ribbon on your finger, I don't know, whatever people used to do before phones to remind themselves of things, I don't know. um Whatever reminds you the best, okay? That's your homework. But again, if you don't do it, nothing's gonna happen, because I can't really give you homework. So yeah. But let's spend this week struggling in our prayers for one another, okay? Alright, so I also want to talk about maybe the most obvious way to encourage one another, and that is through our words. So the way we speak to one another is possibly the easiest way to encourage, and yet this is the one we actually struggle with the most in a way, and I feel like especially in Australia, in an Australian culture where it's kind of funny and cool to... bring each other down all the time and that's fine sometimes it's funny and when it's all in good spirit it's fine but I think because of that we find it really weird to say nice things to each other and actually build each other up when we actually need it. em Yeah. So it's the easiest one to do and yet it's the one we struggle with the most. And so if it's so easy, why do we not do it more? Think about it. When we get involved in some sort of ministry, so often we can easily find ourselves talking about all the things we would change and all the things we don't like and whatever, and rarely, if ever, encouraging and appreciating the ones who actually put it together or served you in some way. I'd like to think we are not such negative people that we just hate to give out a compliment, but it can almost seem that way. The reality is there are many reasons for this. One of them being that we can see how this or that, you know, whatever you think would make it better and instead of focusing on what was already good, we get caught up in what about it was, in our opinion, not so good. Another reason is that sometimes there is the assumption that those people or whatever, they already know how you feel about them and what you think of their work and their ministry and, you know, whatever it might be. But remember the massive list I rambled on about earlier of all the things that are currently and actively discouraging us. Remember that. And remember that it takes, apparently, three times the positive to overcome the negative. We should strive to think in a different way about others and the work they do. It's too easy to go along with everyone else and be exceedingly critical. But of course, this is an impossible task if you don't have the Spirit working in you. Thankfully though, we have a God who is working in and through us constantly. We must begin to ask God to change our hearts and our minds to be bent toward encouragement and building up rather than tearing down. We need his help to speak words that build up and to acknowledge and be grateful for all the good that people are doing and all the good that God's doing through them, despite the things you think you would do differently. Now, just to be clear, I'm not against like fair criticism, that's fine. um Just don't, you know, I'm not trying to say you can never say anything bad about anything. That's a dangerous way to go, but I'm just saying. We often find ourselves wanting to say the negative more than we want to say the positive. And I'm just saying, say both maybe. So lastly, and most importantly, when we talk about encouraging each other, we have something to point each other to as the ultimate source of encouragement. All throughout the Bible, it commands us to encourage one another. It does not, however, always say specifically how we are to do that. But it is absolutely full to the brim with encouraging messages from God to us. Verses like Romans chapter 8 verse 38 to 39. How good is this? For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God. Christ Jesus our Lord. How good is that? Or John chapter 16 verse 33, this is Jesus talking, I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation but take heart I have overcome the world. I could of course go on and on, there's literally hundreds of encouraging verses in the Bible. uh and all of them, even if they don't seem encouraging, can actually be encouraging in certain seasons of your life as well. So, pretty much the whole Bible is encouragement. um God is the ultimate exhorter. um But here is the point. We have only so much to offer in the way of encouragement, because we're only humans. But the Word of God has much more power to uplift our spirit. We need to point our brothers and sisters to the Word. In times of trouble and hardship, point them to the Word. When their plans don't turn out the way they wanted, point them to the Word. If they fail, point them to the Word. The power of the Word, and specifically of the Gospel, will always uplift us. It will always combat any discouragement because it is through the Gospel that we have become sons and daughters of God. And by Christ alone, We are truly strengthened and made whole. And I'd love to see positive thinking go up against that, right? So you see, we can get so caught up in what's going on in our ministries and in the world around us and in our church and whatever. And you know, we wanna be seen, we wanna be appreciated, but we forget that our efforts at the end of the day are not really what matters. I know I just said all this like, it was like a big like. It matters guys, and now I'm saying it doesn't matter, like look at the big picture, right? Their efforts are not really what matters. Yes, we should strive to serve well and work hard for the Lord, but at the end of the day, the real work worthy of any and all attention and appreciation was done by God himself. Christ, suffering and dying on the cross for you. That was the work. that needs our appreciation. More than that, he should have more than our appreciation. He should have our worship because of it. When we view our ministries or our lives even, uh not as something that is ours, but as something that is both for God, from God, and belongs to God, we get some real perspective. While encouragement is so important, and I truly believe it is, at the same time, the glory is entirely for God. We must live out of a thankfulness for Jesus and his death on that cross for us. and rest entirely in the work that he has already done. So you want to encourage someone else? Point them to who this is all for. You want to be encouraged? Remember the one who gave up his very life for you. So as a bit of a recap, I've just got some dot points. So our brain has been created in a way that means we need much more encouragement to overcome discouragement. And then we learned that the world is very discouraging. We are constantly being discouraged. Hence, we need a lot of encouragement. We are often discouraging toward each other. and especially actually when they're not around. Our passage is a final greeting from many of the other people involved with Paul's work in their church, and it's designed to encourage the readers. It provides an example of encouragement by unity and community. um Next point, the Bible commands us to be encouraging, as it said in Thessalonians about encouraging the faint-hearted. We should pray that God would help us to be more encouraging. We should pray for one another in this church. Don't forget your homework. And we should focus less on the bad and more on the good. In summary, basically. We should encourage each other by pointing each other to the Word and to Christ. So I'd like to leave you with the words we actually started with in communion from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 verse 9 to 11. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up just as you are doing. Just pray with me. Lord, I thank you so much for your word. I thank you Lord that even in these passages where it seems there's not a lot to get out of that your word is still living and powerful and that you can still teach us things through it. Lord, I thank you that you love us and that the ultimate source of encouragement can be found in you and in the death of your son on that cross and fill us with hope. Lord, I pray that you would help us. by your spirit, Lord, empower us to be encouraging to one another. As Matt said, not only cheering each other on, but also getting beside one another and helping one another. Help us, Lord, to have a bigger focus on the positive than the negative. Help us, Lord, to not be so critical as the world can be so critical and to be encouraging as you want us to be. Lord, I pray that these words and that this teaching, Lord, would just stick in our minds throughout the week and that we can go out and be encouraging, Lord, and just shine your light in this community and to each other. Lord, I pray that we would pray for each other more fervently and more often. Lord, I pray that we would struggle in our prayers for this church and for the leaders and for everyone involved, for all the members, for every visitor. And Lord, even bigger than that, I pray that we would struggle in our prayers for salvation of the people in Chinchilla. Lord, I just pray that you would continue to teach us more about encouraging. Convict us when we're being too critical. And show us how you want us to live. In your name I pray, amen.