To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 1:21 “And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ . . .”

It seems almost everything in life, including our life, is so ephemeral.  As we look around us, we are witnesses to the physical law of entropy which is acting on all physical things.  This means everything tends to move towards a state of disorder.  Our cars rust, our homes need repaired, and our bodies wear out and eventually stop working altogether.  But it’s not only physical things that seem to go this way.  Institutions change as the people within them change.  And relationships; they change all the time. As children in a family, our relationships with our parents and our siblings are all the time changing because both they and we are changing. The same holds for relationships between spouses and between friends.  They grow stronger as we put more energy and time into them and they can fade if we don’t.  Sometimes these relationships change drastically, as one-time friends can become the worst of enemies, and vice versa, although less commonly.  And then, at some point, all people leave our lives, if not because of separation in space, separation by death. 

In contrast to all this, God is eternal.  He never changes.  It’s called immutability.  We have been told that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).  And when God touches a life, he brings immutable things into that life by His touch.  As we are told in the verse above, God “establishes” those who put their trust in Him.  He gives that life a stable nature – firm, eternal, it will never pass away.  Come what may, we are secure forever in our relationship with Him.  And as Paul tells the Corinthian believers, God had “established us with you.”  This wonderful truth applies to all true believers.  And because of that, those relationships are established, fixed for all eternity. As the words of the song by Michael W. Smith say so well, “Friends are friends forever when the Lord’s the Lord of them.”  Although we may be separated for a time here on earth, we never need say “goodbye” as a fixed state of affairs. We can say with certainty, “we will meet again” for that certainty is founded on the sure and eternal Word of the eternal God.   All who have ever known Him will be together with Him and each other forever, for “so we will always be with the Lord” (I Thessalonians 4:17). No wonder these wonderful words are followed immediately with these: “Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18). 

And the things we entrust to God are firmly established as well. Isn’t that what Jesus told us in these words: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19-20).   

Established, firm, founded on eternal things: that’s the reality of every believer’s life.  What an awesome thing this is.  May we be encouraged by this truth, and hold on to Him Who forever holds on to us. May He help us to endure all the trials, changes, and vicissitudes of this life while we fix our minds on Him, the One Who never changes.   May He help us to “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord (our) labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58). 

Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!