To Encourage You

Romans 12:14 “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.”

One of the most distinguishing characteristics that should mark a believer in Jesus Christ is how that person uses his or her mouth.  Jesus said, “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks”(Luke 6:45). Believers indeed have a good treasure in their heart, for it is the treasure of knowing Christ, and the treasures that come with that knowledge, like forgiveness, peace, joy, imputed righteousness, and eternal life.  These treasures should produce words that bless others.  The believer can love, because Christ has loved us (1 John 4:19). The believer can forgive because the believer has been forgiven (Colossians 3:13). And the believer can comfort others because they’ve received comfort from Christ (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).  And the incredible thing is that we’ve received all of these treasures in spite of the fact that we were totally unworthy to receive any of them. 

It was while we were yet sinners and the very enemies of God that Christ died for us. We were totally unworthy to receive God’s grace (for that’s what grace is), or any of the gifts of that grace.  But beyond this, God has bestowed us with the ability to be vessels through which He can bless others – others that are just as unworthy of that blessing as we are.  Yet, it is so easy to lose sight of this. It is so easy to revert to the patterns of the world that once dominated our lives in spite of all that Christ has so selflessly and sacrificially done for us. 

It is for this reason that Christians are given commands like the one above from Roman 12, for although we have been given the ability to bless others, including those who would even curse us, it’s not something that we just automatically do.  While we live in these bodies that have been so affected by sin, we must constantly be reminded to be the Christians that we are in actual practice as we live our lives day by day.  And so, we are commanded by God to bless others with our lips, just as God has blessed us so wonderfully with the words from His lips. 

One example of this is in the instructions that God gave Moses in Numbers 6:24-26. Here God instructed him to have the High Priest, Aaron, bless rebellious and sinful Israel with the following words: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.”  Such wonderful words to such un-wonderful people!  Here God expressed toward them what His heart wanted for them.  He so wanted to bless them in such awesome ways – yet so often they were unwilling.  Nevertheless, He blessed. Nevertheless, He told them what He wanted to do for them. Nevertheless, He spoke words of life to them, blessing them when they deserved nothing more than a curse. And so He has instructed each and every one of us who know Him.  We are to use our members – our mouths, our arms, our legs, our possessions – to bring blessing upon those who may curse us.  Unlike those who don’t know Christ and are so quick to curse others, we are to speak well of others and to others as God gives us opportunity (of which He most assuredly gives us many)! 

If we are believers, it is our deepest desire that others know the eternal life that God has graciously given us.  And one of the wonderful ways that God has given us to make that possible is to use our mouths as a vessel of blessing.  May God help us to do just that. May He continually remind us that we can love – with our mouths, especially – because He has so loved us.