Encourage each other

DEVOTION HEBREWS ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER Heb 3:12-15 12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. 15 As has just been said: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion." NIV It is rather difficult to encourage one another daily if we only see each other on Sunday. But then maybe by some of you reading these devotions which I share with whoever would read them is a form of encouraging you, but then how do you encourage me? That was rather personal, wasn’t it? But the truth is how do we encourage each other on a daily basis? For the most part are we all out here on our own to fight the battle against an unbelieving heart? Surely in those days of old it was necessary to see each other face to face daily in other to comply with this standard. Today we have so much at our fingertips, cells phones, texting, the social media, such as facebook and twitter as well as the ability to jump in the car and make a visit anytime we what. Yet are we in the business of encouraging each other on a daily basis? Then just what consists of encouraging? The Greek means to invite or invoke which would imply not just telling each other how well we are doing as an encouragement, but to encourage each other onward to do more, do better, be more Christ like. Do we even do that on Sunday, or do we just go to church, sit listening to a sermon and then go on our merry way? Oh sure we may greet each other, or at least some of each other, shake a hand, maybe even share a hug with a few, who we like and then go our merry way. We might even ask that dumb question, “How you doing”? and hear, the dumber answer, “Great and you”? What is that all about? Is any encouraging going on? Maybe all this surface contact is because we really do not want anyone else to see our heart because just maybe a little hardening is going on. If we are having problems with our faith, with believing right now, we surely do not want anyone to know, after all they might think badly of us, instead of loving us and encouraging us. The other issue about the rebellion which strikes a chord about encouraging is that those people’s rebellion was not wanting to cross the river into the place God was leading them, so today do we not want to go where God is leading? Do we refuse to be honest with each other and open and transparent about our lives so that we might actually encourage one another? Even when we are struggling with a certain temptation we surely would not dare share that with each other, for what would others think. Are we missing the mark here? Are we falling short? Let’s encourage each other.