“Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”
A lot of insight is packed into just a few verses, so today’s passage is shorter than some days. I love versus that start with “Let us…” because they are inspirational. What does it mean to live out the Christian life? All the verses with “Let us…” give us the answers. First, “let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm.” I don’t know about you, but when circumstances look bleak I waver. Is God really good? Can I really trust him? Those heart questions go all the way back to Eve in the Garden of Eden, and it was the open door that allowed Satan to work his way into that situation and bring sin into the world.
Second, “let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.” I love this one! It’s a call to creativity — think of ways. There are endless possibilities to motivate each other and there are countless options for loving and doing good works. Every culture and time in history gets to do what works for them. Finally, “let us not neglect our meeting together.” This is hard sometimes, and some of us never imagined that we could face a global pandemic that could halt our church services. We’ve still found ways to honor this verse, but I think we can do more.
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The key reason we get together is to help each other hold on to the truth of the Gospel. It’s so easy to forget who Jesus is and what he has done. After a while in isolation, it’s easy to think, “Why does any of this matter anyway?” Verse 25 gives us a key instruction: encourage one another. We gather because we need to encourage and to be encouraged. In times of crisis when getting together in person is hard, we have to get creative about how we encourage each other. What’s one way you can creatively encourage someone today?