Lift - How to Help Others Over Life's Humps, Part 1

There is an awesome, powerful, untapped resource in the body of Christ.

It's the difference between people having a great day or a terrible day, and the word is encouragement. You want to learn how to speak life into those you love. Stay with us and find out how. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. And in just a minute, we'll begin his series, Lift the Awesome Power of Encouragement. For the next several messages, Chip's going to teach through the book of 1 Thessalonians, unpacking the influence and necessity of encouragement in our lives and others. For this first program, he's going to highlight four specific ways we can help someone out of a hopeless situation. But before he dives in, if this is your first time listening to Living on the Edge, or you want to learn more about what we do, go to livingonthedge.org.

You'll find tons of resources on a variety of topics and countless programs to enjoy. Okay, let's join Chip now as he kicks off this series with his talk, How to Help Others Over Life's Humps, from 1 Thessalonians Chapter 1. When you really talk about how to get over life's humps, there's a number of things that you need. But one of the most powerful, powerful things that God has ever given us is speech. The power of an affirming word, given lovingly, authentically, as God leads, is absolutely beyond what you can imagine. In fact, the Bible is replete with multiple examples of the difference just a word can make. Proverbs 25, 11 says, A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.

What a picture. Or in Proverbs 10, 11, it says, The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked. And third, Proverbs 15, 4, The tongue that brings healing is a tree of life, but a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit. One simple word really makes a difference.

Now here's the question we want to ask and answer tonight. Put simply, how can we learn to speak into the lives of people that we love in such a way that it really encourages them? I mean, that it changes them. I'm not sure the apostle Paul, although he was an apostle and filled with the spirit, grasped how much he was going to encourage the Thessalonicans when he wrote the book to them. And so we want to look tonight at four ways to speak life to those that we love. And our model is going to be the apostle Paul and how he did it to the church of Thessalonica. We're going to look at chapter one, the first 10 verses. I want you to get a picture before we read this in one reading of the people that he wrote to and how they felt and what they were going through.

What was the humps that they needed to get over? Because then when you understand that, as we walk through the passage, you'll get an idea that God really understands the humps you're going through. The apostle Paul is on a second missionary journey and he's heading where he thinks God wants him to.

There's open doors and open doors and open doors and he keeps preaching and sharing. He goes to every synagogue and late one night he gets this vision, this dream, the Macedonian call. And he hears from God to go toward Greece.

And so he gets up the next morning and tells the guys, hey, there's a change in orders. And so he travels over to Philippi. That's in Macedonia. And there's not even a synagogue there. And so the practice of the day when there's not a synagogue is the faithful Jewish people would go to a riverbank and have a prayer meeting. You can pick up the story in Acts 16 if you want to read it later. And he shows up and there's a lady named Lydia and boy, she comes to Christ and a group of women. Paul lands in jail later. There's an earthquake and he and Silas are singing at night and the jailer and his whole household, they come to Christ.

The Philippian church is born. And I mean for about two months he's there and more and things really take off. He's politely asked to leave that city, which happens to him a lot. He travels by on the great Ignatian highway that connected the Roman Empire. And he goes by two big cities, but they weren't the right ones.

And he travels at least five or six days to Thessalonica. It's a harbor city. It's got about 200,000 people. It's one of the major ports.

It is a political, strategic, economic, cultural crossroads of that portion of the Roman Empire. Acts 16 and 17, we find he does what he always does to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Week number one, he shares it and they say, hmm, interesting. We're not sure. Come back next week. So he comes the next week and he teaches and preaches in the synagogue that all the hopes, all the dreams, all the prophecies about the Messiah, he came, he died, he's been resurrected and he's alive.

And they didn't go for that too much. A few people trusted Christ and he began to share with the Gentiles. By the third week, so many Gentiles were coming to the faith that the Jews got jealous and they said, get out of here. We know from this book that he stayed in Thessalonica for at least a few months because he received two financial gifts from the church at Philippi. He was there long enough to develop his trade because he says, I worked with my own hands, but it was a lot of persecution.

You walk down town Thessalonica, there's idols everywhere. These people came to Christ in the midst of a great persecution. And when they came to faith, if they were Jewish, they were separated from their homes. So you had people whose moms and dads said, don't bother coming home. You had wives who came to Christ, whose husband said, hey, you know what?

Don't bother coming home. You're disinherited. For Gentiles, they had friends and they would go to all these temples and were involved in all kind of immorality and worshiping of all these idols. And when they came to Christ, they turned from those idols to serve the living God. And all of a sudden they're not getting invited to parties anymore. Not only they're not getting invited to parties, but they're messing up the economy.

Now people are mad at them. So they're isolated and they're alienated. In fact, Paul really gets beat up on this one. So he gets run out of town. Silas is sent back to Philippi to figure out how they're doing and encourage them. Paul gets run out of town. He ends up in Athens by himself. And we hear in second Corinthians, he's as discouraged and despondent as ever. Finally, he gets refreshed by one of the fellas he's close to, Titus, ends up finally in Corinth. He came through here about sometime in about 49 AD. It's about 18, 24 months max when he writes first Thessalonians.

By this time, Silas has made the circuit. Timothy has made the circuit to check on the church and they've met him back in Corinth and he's gotten a report. And he's writing this letter to a group of people that there's a high price tag for being a Christian. That it's tough.

That life, economics, family relationships, social acceptability, it is all very, very difficult. And so he writes him a letter to encourage him. Now just follow along.

We're going to read, not study it yet. Just listen and imagine you being one of those people. Imagine what it was like if this had happened to your life and that little apostle guy. Of course, you've got all this joy and God's changed your life and you're forgiven and you have peace. But day to day, it's tough.

And you haven't seen him in about 18 months. And there's probably a few days that you get so discouraged, you start doubting, you know, could this be true? Other days, you just think I can't take it anymore.

Other days you say, you know, what's the use? You know, we're sharing our faith, we're doing what he said, but it's not making any difference. Listen to what your mentor Paul would say to you. To the church of Thessalonica from Paul, Silas and Timothy and God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, grace and peace to you. We always thank God for you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your works produced by faith, your labor prompted by love and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers loved by God, that he's chosen you.

How? Because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators or mimics of us and of the Lord. In spite of the severe suffering, you welcomed the message with joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaea.

That's Greece. The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaea, your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we don't need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell us how you turn to God from idols to serve the living and the true God and to wait for his son from heaven whom he raised from the dead Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. Would that be an encouraging word? Wouldn't it be good to hear that when things get really, really tough? Now as I've looked at that and studied it and examined it, I think there's four clear things that the apostle Paul does to encourage people whose lives have lots of humps. They all have to do with speech. And what I'd like to do now is go through and study it with you and briefly look at each of these four things out of these ten verses. And we'll use them as our example about how we're going to talk to one another, how we're going to talk to our mates, how we're going to talk to our friends, how we're going to talk to our bosses and employees. We're going to learn how to communicate with our mouth in such a way that every person that you and me get around, we're going to encourage. So let's look at verse one.

First of all, I think we need to learn to bestow a blessing. Did you notice how he started it? Paul and Silvanius and Timothy to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now notice what he says.

That's the introduction. Grace to you and peace. The root word for grace is the word joy. It's God's blessing and goodness that comes apart from our merit.

And we think of peace as the absence of conflict, but this word for peace means the wholeness of God, the shalom of God. And so the very first thing he does, the first words out of his mouth are, hey, how are you doing? Are you hanging in there?

You know, are you getting with the program? Huh? What is it? He bestows a blessing. Grace God's unmerited, unlimited love for you. Grace to you and peace, his wholeness, his blessing, all of who you are in Christ.

That's what I long. Now for us culturally that fit well with Paul, but I don't know about you, but don't try this one. Don't go to work and say grace and peace to you. They'll think you drank something or ate something funny over the weekend. In fact, probably not even a good one to go home tonight and say my children, my wife, my friends, grace and peace.

That's probably not going to work. So how do you bestow a blessing? I'd like to encourage you to think about blessing people whenever you leave them, when you leave your home, when you leave work, when you leave a friend. Some specifics might be just a look in the eye and you say, I'm praying for you. I'm praying for you. Or you might express God's going to use you today.

You know, they're taking off or they're leaving or you're leaving. Hey, I want you to know God's going to use you today. Or even, you know, may God's peace really reign in your heart.

I'm going to pray that for you today. Another possible example that I've used in my house, just the blessing of tell someone, you know, it's a privilege. I want you to know it's a privilege to be your friend. It's a privilege to be your mate.

It's a privilege to be your dad or to be your mom. See, it's a blessing. What you're saying is, you matter.

You matter to me and you matter to God. Second time I encourage you to give a blessing is not only when you leave someone, but at bedtime. I see this primarily for those of you that are married and have children. You know that old thing of tucking your kids in? If you're not doing it, start doing it. Don't send kids to bed with TV's on and sit on their bed, look them in the eye, pray with them, touch them with your hands and ask God's blessing upon their life.

Do it every night. Bless your children. Evoke God's blessing and favor and grace on them.

The security will be incredible. Third is you can bless people through notes, email. You know, it's a blessing to say, I'm thinking about you today.

I'm praying for you. It's a blessing to say, hey, hey, as I was praying this morning, Psalm 37 four, just want you to know I'm asking God to give you the desires of your heart. Do you get the idea?

Have you got it? I want to encourage you this week, if you want to speak life into those that you love, bestow a blessing, but it doesn't stop there. Notice verse two and three, Paul's appreciation. He says, we give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers, constantly bearing in mind, notice this, your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of God, our Father.

Notice the structure here. First of all, he gives thanks. He lets them know I'm praying and when I pray, you pop up on the screen.

That's what he says. When I'm praying Thessalonians, you pop up on the screen and it's none of this vague God bless you. Aren't you kind of nice people? I think of the specific things that I've seen in your life. He says, I thank God specifically for three things. Number one, he says your work produced by faith. The word work here, we get our word energy or activity from. He says, I thank God specifically for the activity and the love referring probably to evangelism because we hear later how it's gone out and also of their good deeds and kind acts toward one another.

But that's not enough. He says, I thank God for your work that is produced by your faith in Christ but I also thank him for your labor of love. The word labor here prompted by love denotes extraordinary effort. It literally meant to cut, to toil.

It's a picture of someone taking bread and hitting it and trying to get it in a certain form to be usable. Ryrie says, it's toiling to the point of exhaustion out of affection for another person. How would you like someone to pray and thank God that when they look at your life, they see activity that is other centered because of your faith in Christ and they see you with a self-sacrificial toil because you agape, love God and love other people.

That'd be pretty encouraging, wouldn't it? Third thing he says, though, is he says he also thanks God for their steadfastness of hope or really it's patience or I like the best translation is endurance. The word is a compound word, hupo meno. It literally has the idea of kind of a man with weight on his back. It means holding up or remaining under pressure. It has the idea of when things get hard, when things get difficult, when everyone else cops out, you hang in there. It means to be aggressive, to be courageous, to not give up, to not fall into self-pity. You hang in there and keep on doing when you don't feel like keep on doing.

Why? Because you're inspired by the certainty of hope. Christ is returning. God is good. God is sovereign. And then notice the last phrase.

In the presence, it literally means before the face of our God and Father. He expresses his appreciation for who they are and for what they've done. Do you do that? Boy, I think about this as a father. I hope you have a different personality than mine. I really do. My personality is fairly analytical. And when I see something, the thing that pops out immediately is what's wrong or how it can be improved. You know if you're a kid, you know what you hear a lot of? Oh, yeah, that's real good except for or the but, you know. Do you know how demotivating that is? You see, people who are constantly expressing appreciation, thanksgiving.

Boy, those are people that motivate and lift up and build up. You know what Paul basically did? He said, this is what you're doing right. And I thank God for it. And I'm not being vague and I'm not blowing smoke.

I'm talking about these three specific things. And by the way, it's happening. You want some encouragement? It's happening before the very face of God and he sees what's going on, too. Boy, wouldn't that be encouraging?

Let me give you a practical application. Ken Blanchard, he's the author of The One Minute Manager and a number of other books. In fact, raving fans is one that would really flow right out of this passage. And he says in that, tell people what they're doing right. Wander around and catch people doing stuff right and then praise them.

And then he says, make it progressive. Don't wait until they have it perfect. When you see people making little inclinations toward doing better, praise them and appreciate them for the progress they're making. Some of us are waiting till people get it completely right.

They're never going to get it completely right because they're a lot like us, right? How are you doing expressing your appreciation? Have you told a friend that lately?

Have you told your parents that lately? Have you told fellow workers, people that you do ministry with lately, how much you really appreciate? You've been listening to part one of Chip's message, How to Help Others Over Life's Humps, which is from our series, Lift the Awesome Power of Encouragement.

Chip will be back with us in studio shortly to share some helpful application for us to think about. In this 12 part study, Chip opens the book of 1 Thessalonians and unpacks the Apostle Paul's game plan to encourage fellow believers. He shares practical ways we can love and bring hope to those we care about and explains how when we help, support and just do life with one another, our faith grows too. For more information about this series or our many resources, visit livingontheedge.org.

That's livingontheedge.org. Well Chip's joined me in studio now and Chip, as you dive into this series, give us a brief idea of where we're headed in the coming programs. Well, we're actually going to do a teaching that takes us all the way through the book of 1 Thessalonians. And as I love, I love to study whole books and then sort of break up what are the major themes. And this is a book where it's one of the most amazing churches in all the New Testament. And Paul talks to them about how he encourages them, but also how they in turn encourage others.

That sounds great, Chip. And if we're honest, we could all use a healthy dose of encouragement every day. And why is that? Why is encouragement so important? Well people are afraid, people get discouraged, people give up, people are tempted, and what they need is courage.

And in courage is an inflow of the Spirit of God. God will use people who listen to this as agents of grace. There are people that are listening right now that have a mate, a son, a daughter, a friend, someone at church, a neighbor. They're down, they're depressed, they're hurting, they've lost perspective, they've strayed from the Lord. They're going to learn how they can actually use words of life and some actions to give them courage. And they'll make it because of the people listening right now.

Well I don't know about you, but I'm really looking forward to this series. So I hope you'll join us for each message and invite a few friends to listen with you, either through the Chip Ingram app or at LivingOnTheEdge.org. Well with that, let's get to Chip's application for today's message. Who might need a word of encouragement from you? You know, is it a wife, is it a husband, is it a coworker, maybe one of your kids, or maybe it's a mom or a dad or a grandparent. It is so amazing to me that God has entrusted to us this opportunity to encourage, to speak life and to give love.

People are more desperate and they are hurting more than we'll ever know. And get this second thought, you have more to give than you can ever imagine. Your word to someone today can make all the difference in the world. And so as we close today's program, I'd like to take just a minute and let you think with me. Is there someone in your relational network that needs a word of appreciation?

Who are they? And then let's remember how we're going to do it. It's not just thanks a lot.

That doesn't communicate a lot. Let's do it the way the apostle Paul did. Let's make it very specific, very objective, and if at all possible, let's separate what they did from who they are. Let's say thank you for what you did, and that means a lot, but let's affirm who they are. You see, the focus is on character.

It's not just on their performance. And so can I ask you right now to come up with a mental list of one or two people? Have you got it? Someone you know, someone you love, someone that just a word that would lift them up, a blessing or an appreciation. And now I want to ask you, what would be the best way to do it?

You do it when you get home. Could you make a phone call? Could you write them a quick note? Be a blesser today. Encourage someone for the glory of God.

Great word, Chip. Thanks. Let me take just a second and thank the generous people who make monthly donations to support the ministry of Living on the Edge. Your faithful gifts help us inspire Christians to live like Christians. Now, if you haven't partnered with us yet, would you prayerfully consider joining the Living on the Edge team? Now you can set up a recurring donation by going to livingontheedge.org or texting donate to 74141. It's that easy. Text donate to 74141 or visit livingontheedge.org. App listeners tap donate. Well, join us next time as Chip picks up in his series, Lift the Awesome Power of Encouragement. Until then, this is Dave Drewy saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.