To Encourage You

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

Do you realize the continual nature of spiritual life?  Think of it as a parallel to physical life.  Every person on the face of the earth was born at one time.  It was at that time that they began to breathe, to eat, to drink, and to grow. They didn’t breathe once and rely on that one breath for the rest of their existence. Nor did they eat their first meal and stop.  They didn’t drink once and see no need for liquid nourishment ever again. And on it goes.  For life to be maintained, there must be a continual nature to it. 

Another example: how often do you look in a mirror? If you looked at yourself a week ago, did you see no need to do so again?  If you washed the dirt off once in your life, did you see no need to ever wash again? There is very little in this matter of sustaining life that can be viewed as a one-and-done thing.  Isn’t it exactly the same way with spiritual life? Or do we see spiritual life in a completely different light?  Are you relying on a one-and-done born-again experience as the reason you are a Christian, but does that thing that you say happened to you long ago have little bearing on your life now? Have you “been there and done that,” so you see no reason to do much else? If so, you should be aware that God most certainly doesn’t look at it that way.

One example is demonstrated by what is told to us in the Scripture passage above. Notice the continual nature of what it tells us, i.e., “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.”  The Christian life is spoken of as a “walk” in the Bible, or even a “race.”  But it’s not a short stroll or a 100-yard sprint. Rather it’s a life-long commitment, a marathon if you will. It has a life-long, day-by-day, faithful nature to it.  A Christian faith that is anything but this is a Christianity that is foreign to the Scriptures.  We pray, “give us this day our daily bread.” It’s a prayer that’s meant to also be prayed the next day and the day after that.  The Berean Christians were commended for the fact that “they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). And then these words from Jesus recorded in Luke 9:23: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”  The fellowship of the believers is, likewise, to be considered as a continually occurring thing, as Christians are commanded in Hebrews 10:24-25 to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”  And about this matter of looking in a mirror, the Bible tells us that as we peer into its pages, we are doing just that; but it’s an inner look at our own heart rather than an external look at our face as we do in a physical mirror.  It’s described like this in James 1:23-24: “For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.”  This wonderful mirror of God shows us who we are on the inside.  It continually exposes the dirt in our heart like a mirror exposes the dirt on our face.  But unlike a physical mirror which simply exposes the dirt but can’t do anything about it, the Word of God both exposes the dirt and washes us with spiritual water by the power of its cleansing stream (Ephesians 5:26).

So, if you call yourself a Christian, do these things describe your walk of faith? Is it a daily thing or is it more like a “one-and-done”? Have you prayed today? Have you peered into God’s Word? Are you striving to walk with Christ continually, or was what you did for Him yesterday, last week, or ten years ago good enough?  May God help us to see our life in Christ as a continual thing, an abiding thing, a daily walk of faith.  You see, that’s the nature of true spiritual life. Anything else doesn’t have the nature of life, no matter what we might say we believe.