Now there are a lot of great E-words, such as: edify, exalt, encourage, excitement, excel, and my personal favorites, enthusiasm and EAT. But today, I am choosing to write on a word that Christians use that others might not understand.
You might be a Christian if you ...exhort one another.
Exhort? What in the world does that mean? While there is an element of both rebuking and encouraging, there is more to exhortation than you might suppose. It's really an invitation to live a higher life, to draw nearer to God.
We are often exhorted to obey scripture and told the consequences if we do not. A good example would be a mentor telling a person who is new to Christ, "Oh, brother, you don't want to try to get revenge on someone who has hurt you. I used to do that and I found it works so much better to let the Lord fight my battles. He says, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay." He knows so much better than we do what would be effective in that person's life. Where we would just be perpetuating strife, He can get to the heart of the matter and really get that person to think about what he's doing."
One of my favorite scriptures that talks about exhorting is this passage from Hebrews 10:25-26 (NKJV)
And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.
I think we can all agree that we live in times that are hard for people of faith. Now is not the time to pull away from fellowship with other believers; but, instead we need to be encouraging one another more and more to grow in the Word.
Have you ever had someone encourage you to live closer to the Lord by their example? Or, have you ever been impressed to tell someone about a time you obeyed scripture and in the end, you were really glad you did? If so, you have seen exhortation at work!
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I'm so glad you are here! Follow me each day as I attempt to define what a Christian is ... and isn't.
I'm always interested in your thoughts. Let me know if there is a word Christians use that you don't understand. I'd be interested to write about it.
This post was written for Day Five of my A-Z Blogging Challenge series, "You Might Be a Christian ... from A-Z." Go here each day to see all of my posts each day as they go live.
If you don't understand how a person becomes a Christian, you might want to visit my page, "A Ticket Home."
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I think you managed to exhort in your post about exhort! :)
ReplyDeleteSo true that this is the time not to turn away from each other and to encourage and exhort one another!
ReplyDeletebetty
Oh, I thought that word was unique to my faith! So happy to see that it's a Christian word, because it's so beautiful and uplifting to exhort one another. :)
ReplyDeleteJEN Garrett's Lexical Creations