Watch out, brothers and sisters, so that there won’t be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.
But encourage each other daily, while it is still called today, so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception. (Hebrews 3:12-13)
I was just thinking today how important it is, especially in these times, to encourage and exhort each other as Christians.
We live in times when moral decay is spreading like gangrene throughout society, and it is easy for we ourselves to start hardening our hearts to what God says about sin.
All you have to do is look at TV programs nowadays and see what is being pushed into our faces as “normal sexual behavior,” whether it is heterosexual or homosexual.
The same can be said for the things the media and society around us call “being on the right side of history.”
But just as dangerous, Christians can look at society and start to lose hope that God is truly in control.
Either way, our faith in God begins to dissipate.
And so the writer of Hebrews tells us to “encourage each other daily…so that none of you is hardened by sin’s deception.”
One of the most important exhortations we can give each other is found in verse 15.
Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.
The problem with a lot of us, is not that we don’t hear his voice. It’s that we harden our hearts to it. And the more we harden our hearts to his voice, the more difficult it becomes to hear it.
So one of the things we need to encourage each other to do the most is to soak ourselves in God’s truth.
And when God speaks to our hearts, we must encourage each other to not make excuses or to whine or moan as the Israelites did in the desert, but to soften our hearts to him and listen.
As brothers and sisters in Christ, let us make it a point each day to exhort and encourage each other in this way.
Who can you encourage and exhort today?
Moment to Moment (Bible blog) 