Encouragement

A few weekends ago, I ran a half-marathon...and I would say the run was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life. It had nothing to do with working out, nothing to do with the accomplishment in the finish, and nothing to do with how I ran. I can honestly say that with the race, I have never been so encouraged in all of my life.

When you run a marathon, you have to wear a bib on your shirt with your number so that you can be tracked along the race, and also, if anything happens to you, they can find out who you are. On the bib for this particular race, they had our names printed on them. Everyone who saw me running, or looked at my bib, immediately knew that my name was Laura. Even knowing and saying my name meant a lot to me, people were encouraging me and not just writing me off as another runner.

Along the entire course, people were cheering my name and desiring for me to succeed. They weren't necessarily quiet or concerned about how big my head was, but they wanted to encourage me and to see me finish the race. To be completely honest, I was not even close to being a top finisher, the people cheering knew that I had a long way to go, but it just didn't matter. People running along side me we're encouraging too. We were all a team and that was clear.

In the last mile I felt my eyes welling up, partly because I was just so tired :), but also, a woman had been running along and just abruptly stopped. The woman exclaimed that she just couldn't go any farther, she couldn't make it. Two strangers, of whom I don't know and will probably never meet, came along-side the woman, grabbed her hands...and said that they were going to finish the race with her. The originally surrendured woman, started to run again and she finished the race.

I'm sure this little story of my race doesn't mean that much to you, but it meant so much to me. A few weeks earlier I had went away and heard a speaker talk about encouragement. The speaker asked anyone who had been encouraged too much in the room to raise their hand...no one did. In all reality, we should be encouraging each other. Imagine if we stopped thinking we might make someone elses ego huge and started letting go of our own!

It is God's desire for us to be encouraging each other in a similar way to my race experience. God wants us to be spurring each other towards him...no matter where we are on the course. It simply doesn't matter if someone is a mile behind you or a mile in front of you...we are all running the same race. Even more, how much does God call us to love one another? We are never told to stop encouraging and loving one another. If someone stops, God calls us to take their hand and run with them!

I have not been encouraged too much and I know you haven't either. Encouragement is one of the many blessings of fellowship and something I know I let die for far too long.

I feel like there are a million verses that command us to encourage and to run the race. Here are two that come to mind.

1st verse: Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. 1 thess. 5:11

2nd verse: (just a reminder that it's all about Jesus!): Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. hebrews 12:1-2

The Good News

Wow! I feel like it's been a long time since I've wrote on here. I've since moved back into the dorms, started school, and have been busier than I think I ever have been in my entire life. In sight of all this, today I was reminded just how important the story of Jesus is to me.

I was meeting with a good friend of mine and we had just went out sharing in a dorm, talking to people about Jesus, and about 4 or 5 doors in a row we walked into rooms of girls who 1.) had never heard of the organization I am a part of (which is a huge organization on campus) and 2.) they didn't seem to have ever really heard the story of Jesus. This breaks my heart. I could not believe or fathom, in one little dorm, and on one floor, all these five doors had never heard of Jesus. I then thought, I need to come back...there's so often that I assume that going and talking to people about Jesus is another task to me done...but truly, so many people do not know Him. These 10 or so girls, without knowledge of the love of Christ, live in spiritual separation of Christ, can never find satisfaction, live for the things of this world which the Bible refers to as "rubbish," and more important than anything else, they do not understand the love their Father has for them and desires so much to show them.

It is in the fact that God does love us so much, and he does so even because of the sin in our lives that makes us not even able to be associated with God, that he chose to send his own son to come and die to pay the price for our sins. God was not forced to save us, he was not pressured to do so, but because he longs so dearly to love us, he chose bear the burden of our sins for us with the brutal death of his son on the cross. It is in knowing this and turning away from my sin to trust in God that I can say I can experience the only one true love, the love of Jesus Christ...my ultimate savior.

So yada yada yada...right? You've heard that a million times...but no, that's not it. The point is that Christ paid that price for more than just one person. Christ did not die on the cross just for me. Christ paid the price for all whom he has chosen; therefore, all need to hear of the love of Jesus!

It is in denying the sharing of the gospel that my sin is most evident. If I really believed in Christ's love that much I would be sharing it with everyone in the world. Without Jesus, I have nothing; however, I do have Jesus, so I have everything.

Homeless

Yesterday, I moved out of my apartment. I would like to say that it was just a hard day of work and when I was done I just sat down and relaxed; however, this is not true. We moved out all day and when we were finally done I had most of my stuff in my car. I moved the stuff I would need with me so I could go stay in a friend's apartment for the next 10 days. I got to the apartment...sat there for probably 15 seconds and started to cry.

I can tell you for sure that I don't necessarily like having all of my stuff in my car, and I don't like not really having a place that feels like home that I can run back to if I need it. The friends that I am staying with are great and are already so accommodating...it is not them, it is most definitely me and my sinful patterns of needing control that have already been the problem in all of this.

I know that moving out of an apartment is not what made me upset...but it's the feelings of needing help or dependency. When I looked around at the apartment I was staying at, I had no other option than to clutter their place up and just push my stuff through the door. I had made a big mess, wasn't quite sure where everything was, and I didn't have all the control that I can normally create by being super organized. I didn't even like that when I looked around the kitchen, I had limited food...didn't own any of the dishes, etc. I knew that I would need to be dependent and allow others to care for me for the next week and a half without being able to have it the other way around.

This really had me thinking when I woke up this morning. I know as a Christ follower that I am called and blessed to love on all of the people around me. I know that I am asked, in doing that, to take care of my brother's and sister's, and to live in an unselfish way; however, when it comes to me accepting that same love, I have a hard time. I don't like the idea of allowing someone, even another Christ follower, to love me in helping me do things. I think that it is my job to love those around me and I don't need love...and that is simply not true. If I were the only person who could love and help others all the time and didn't need anyone's help, then the glory and power of Jesus in all of us is not what the bible says it is. We all, as Christ followers, are called to love one another, and to be able to love others is just as important to be able to accept love from others. Love can be a one way street, but especially among believers, it is sinful for it to be. Scripture tells us to be constantly loving one another, so denying that love, is denying the body of Christ and unity among believers.

If I do not accept Christ love (which can be shown to me through a variety of many things from scripture to acts of other believers, etc.) then I am de-valuing what Christ desires to give me and show me. Also, if I can't accept the love that other believers can give to me, why would I expect the same of them?

Loving one another is a privilege we have in becoming more like Christ. Also, accepting love from one another is a privilege we have in being the body of Christ. I think this is the lesson I am learning right now...

Condemning and Encouraging

I am at a point of disgust. I am at disgust with myself and am at disgust with many of the relationships I am in and this is because of the sin of condemnation. When we condemn one-another, and point-out all of the sin we have with each-other (including in ourselves) and we do this not because of Christ or because of His love...we are living in sin. (Can condemnation really be in Christ's love? I think not. Correction and rebuking, yes, but condemnation?) I am being reminded of a few conversations I have had recently and all they have been are conversations of condemnation. With people I hold dearly, I cannot remember some of the conversations I have had with them where I have encouraged them or felt encouraged myself...this is scary!

I am reminded of a sermon I listened to a month or two ago and the pastor was talking about how the way we think about ourselves, or the person other people tell us we are, is very influential because that is often the person we become. This is scary because I am noticing how true it is. I am thankful and blessed because I have a lot of close friends and I notice I act differently around some of them because of the way that they think I am. I can think of a time or two when I was told that I lived a life of no grace, and all truth. I was told this as a matter of joking, but unfortunately, started to believe it whole-heartedly. Thankfully, later on, a friend approached me and encouraged me in battling that lie and commenting that was not true of life. Sad story short - when I am with that friend that did encourage me, I am more likely to encourage them and approach their life with both truth and grace...but when I am with the "only truth" friend I have become just that...only truth, and I hate that about myself...and struggle with condemnation in that.

So what's the point in me saying all of this? I condemn other people all too much and when I do so and it is not out of love...I'm sure that these people condemn themselves, and sometimes become a person who is NOT true of who they are if they have Christ. Likewise, I need prayer because I have felt condemned all too much and struggle with giving my life over to Christ, living as His child, and living knowing that my sin does not define me; nor am I who or what other people tell me I am.

My prayer is for encouragement...to encourage others and to even understand that I need encouragement myself. It is right to correct one-another in love...for sure (and I know I need that much of the time) but if all we're doing is condemning there is no encouragement! Also, correcting in love and condemning are not the same tasks and I think I need to learn that. I need to learn to encourage those around me in Christ because if we are not encouraging and loving one another it is a scary place for us to be. Let's face it...the world is a hard place to be as a believer, and as Christ followers we need each other and that definitely means loving one another and pointing each other to Christ!

"For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing." - 1 Thess. 5: 9-11

PS Sorry, I know this is confusing, I was rambling, and I am not spell/grammar checking...

Hope it makes some sense!

Taking Up Our Cross

Today I was spending some time preparing a bible study and came across the verse "whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). This verse is not something that is new to me and actually something that I have used in talking and encouraging others with. When I was; however, asked the question of what it means to take up my cross I was in shock at how long and confusing of an answer I attempted at providing. Later on in the chapter, Jesus continues to describe the cost of discipleship in saying, "so therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33).

The first circumstance I was convicted in would be in not knowing or understanding what the verse really means when I use it and refer to it so often. I got lost in what it meant to have a cross....I thought "Is Jesus telling me to take up my own sin? No...definitely not it" "What is Jesus trying to tell me I need to be burdened with?" Thinking and reading more and more of the scripture, Jesus is emphasizing the gospel here....that He died for my sin, bearing the cross, so that I could have eternal and true life with Him! Jesus is NOT telling me I need to live in a life of burden or trapped in my own sin but that I need to be living a life of understanding the cross...understanding that if I'm not renouncing everything in my life for Him, taking up my cross, then I'm not following Him and am not even able to be a disciple if I'm stuck in my own selfish ways and living for myself rather than Him.

I went back to thinking of gospel "but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by by His blood, much more shall we be saved from the wrath of God......More than that, we we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation" (Romans 5:8~11).

Okay, so here's the basic points I think I am learning. I am a sinner but since God loves me He sent His son to die for me so that by His grace I may be saved from an eternity of separation from God. I do not have to feel burdened by this....God doesn't want that...He wants me. He wants all of me, meaning that in order for Him to have that, I need to give up all of my selfish desires, wants, needs, material things, love for things that are not of eternity, etc. etc. Living for God means living for God. It does not mean giving Him half of me, or taking up part of His gospel, or renouncing part of my life...but everything. After all, if God wants me....the most perfect God wants the dirtiest of sinners, me, why wouldn't I want to give Him all of me?...there's no better love than that!