Encouragement

Encouragement: Atmosphere for Spiritual Growth

Have you ever thought of paying attention to others (i.e., support, compassion, a helping hand) as a spiritual gift? In a Pauline list of spiritual skills that includes such notable functions as prophecy, ministry, and teaching is – depending on the translation you read – “showing mercy” (NIV) or being “compassionate” (NRSV). The same list enjoins the spirit of “cheerfulness” as the only appropriate attitude with which caring for others can be exercised as a spiritual, Christ-imitating quality of life (Rom. 12:6-8).

Do you remember the biblical character named Barnabas? He had this highly desirable gift. Devoted as he was to loving and honoring God, he dedicated himself to nurturing weak and struggling, cast-off and unwanted souls. This trait of his redeemed personality made him one of the more significant characters in the Acts of the Apostles. Interestingly, his original name was simply Joseph, but the apostles gave him the name Barnabas. The name means, according to Luke, “Son of Encouragement” (Acts 4:36). To call someone “son of x” is a well-known Semitic way of identifying the person’s most notable quality. That Barnabas lived up to his name is apparent from reading through Acts.

In chapter 4, Barnabas sold a piece of land and donated the proceeds for the apostles to distribute to saints in need. It was unthinkable to him that he should have surplus when others were lacking the basics. In chapter 11, he risked his own reputation to take Saul of Tarsus under his wing and involve him in kingdom activity at Antioch. It was unthinkable to him that someone exhibiting repentance and the desire to join himself to the church should be refused. In chapter 15, he parted company with the now highly respected missionary Paul in order to take a once-failed younger missionary, John Mark, on a preaching tour with him. It was unthinkable to him that the young man’s failure should be turned into permanent shame or that he suffer punishment beyond the anguish of heart he had already endured on account of his lapse of faith. When someone needed a boost of encouragement generated by sincere compassion, he was there.

Ever know anyone like Joseph Barnabas? Over the years, I have known several men and women cut from the same bolt of cloth. They encourage young preachers whose sermons are painful to endure. They show up regularly in hospital corridors, nursing homes, and funeral homes. They pay attention to children who don’t smile enough or easily. They sacrifice for missionaries, orphans, and people on hard times. They have such compassionate hearts that their eyes tend to moisten easily. When someone needs a listening ear, they make time to listen – no matter how busy they are. And when somebody asks one of these godly people to pray for him or her, you sense immediately that it will be done.

These women have the gift of caring for others. These men are encouragement. They are genuinely compassionate, kindhearted, and benevolent. And they tend to be very quiet and inconspicuous people whose behavior calls attention to others more than to themselves. Theirs is a genuine spiritual gift. The church is God’s community in which this gift is imparted, shared, and appreciated. It is the place where healing occurs through self-giving love that shows itself as concern (not nosiness), compassion (not pity), and comfort (not enabling indulgence).

Created as we were for relationship, it ought not surprise us to find that the disconnected lives most people live are unfulfilling and even unhealthy. Oh, we go to work along crowded highways and streets, work in sight of others, and sit in packed church buildings. But most of our relationships don’t have much quality to them. There is no real depth or warmth. There are lots of acquaintances but few friendships. And it is painful to have no one with whom to share your innermost self and your most private feelings, your severest heartaches and greatest joys.

Research done at the University of Michigan just before the end of the twentieth century studied just under 3,000 men and women in the United States, Finland, and Sweden. It concluded that a lack of social relationships heightens one’s susceptibility to illness and death. The researchers claimed that loneliness is as significant to mortality rates as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and obesity. The sort of isolation focused on in that study was characterized by having nobody with whom to share one’s private feelings, hopes, and fears. The lead researchers estimated that fully ten to twenty percent of people have close contact with others less than once a week. That percentage has probably grown rather than declined since their research was published. The same study showed that men are more devastated by loneliness than women – probably, researchers theorized, because women tend to create a higher quality of relationship than men.

Plato envisioned an ideal state in his Republic, and Sir Thomas More wrote of an ideal society he named Utopia. In the New Testament, God’s place of belonging is called ekklesia and the relationship among its members is koinonia. Yet we hesitate to translate the former “church” and the latter “fellowship” for the simple reason that we have cheapened these English terms to mean an innocuous Sunday gathering and pot-luck dinner or my group and its criteria for membership.

In its purest and best instances, the church exists in the world now as an outpost of the kingdom of God. The church is not the fully realized kingdom of heaven, but it is an inbreaking of that kingdom and is a group of its citizens in process of spiritual formation. Its presence in the world bears witness to the cross. It testifies to a view of reality that takes eternity more seriously than time. As a visible community of faith, it senses the call of God to bear witness to life in the midst of death, truth in the midst of lies, joy in the midst of despair, and good in the midst of evil.

Against the hellish isolation of our time, the church must be a group of people in congregation (lit, gathered-togetherness). The ekklesia of Christ has not only been called out of the world but has been called together for his purposes. This doesn’t mean that we are always together in large groups but that we are always together in spirit. Each of us must take the risk to relate to others who share the view of the cross, eternity, and virtue that we profess. Against a cultural reluctance to make commitments, we have committed to be God’s presence for one another.

So we assemble on the Lord’s Day, celebrate our call from God, discern the body of Christ at the table with our fellow-believers, and affirm one another. When we do so, we must allow the Spirit of God to quicken us by his presence, to renew holy zeal in our hearts. But beyond our times of spiritual renewal en masse, we must be willing to seek and open to experience contact with one another that allows spiritual intimacy. These are burden-bearing, joy-disclosing, service-sharing experiences that cannot happen in whole-church assemblies. They are too personal. They require small-group and one-on-one settings.

This is the venue that had to be created by Alcoholics Anonymous because of the church’s failure to be the church. They are settings in which men and women abandon defensiveness and lies in order to become vulnerable to one another. We open our hearts without condemnation from the rest of the group. With the pain of self-judgment already so intense it can hardly be tolerated, we bare our insecurities, addictions, infidelities, and failures to one another as the beginning point for recovery. Without fear of envy in such a community, we celebrate our triumphs, good fortune, temptations resisted, and successes. There is a healing mix of tears and laughter and applause as people who are included in the Bride of Christ recognize themselves in one another – and celebrate the Bridegroom’s love.

Content from RubelShelly.com