Shalom and hope you are having a blessed day up until now. We thank you for tuning in and joining with us in learning God’s word, meditating on His word. Through this week, we have been looking at encouragement and today and the days going forward, we are going to look at what encouragement does for us, what happens when we encourage one another. From scripture, we see that encouragement prevent spiritual hardening. Hebrews chapter 3, verse 13 reads, ‘But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.’ Encouragement is a powerful tool that really builds spiritual growth and prevents the hardening of the heart. When we encourage one another, it is just not a nice gesture but it is the support that can keep away our hearts from the deceitfulness of sin and from the hardening of our hearts or from stagnating spiritually. It emphasizes the role of community in Christian faith. When there is repeated and unrepentant sin, it can lead us into being insensitive and callous about the things of God. A heart that is hardened resists the commands of God and the Spirit’s promptings. For an example, for someone who has fallen into repeated addiction or into an unhealthy personal relationship, the shame that they are in, if there isn’t anyone to encourage, they would probably go deeper and deeper into that addiction keeping themselves withdrawn, socially avoiding others. But if we are to shun a person like this, they wouldn’t be encouraged, they would go greater and deeper into that area of addiction. But when we reach out and encourage them to seek help or to seek forgiveness and restoration, we are preventing the person from further spiraling into a hardened heart. So, by exhorting or by encouraging one another daily, believers can help each other recognize and resist those temptations of sin and prevent that spiritual hardening and from being deceived with that attraction of sin. We see an example of this in 2 Samuel, where the prophet Nathan confronts David at the point of time about his sin with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah. Nathan elaborates David’s sin and highlights how he has gone against what God wanted/ expected of him. This confrontation was just not a rebuke but a spiritual wake up call. Nathan not only exposed David’s sin but brought about a conviction of how David violated God’s commands and had to come to a place of repentance and restoration. And because of Nathan’s encouragement, we see of how David moved in to write Psalm chapter 91, that most heartfelt repentance that he came out with. Nathan’s role was pivotal in bringing David back to God. We need each other to thrive in our spiritual lives. So, let’s take time to encourage/ exhort one another if we do find people in need and lost in sin. Let’s pray together, Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of encouragement and the way that you would want us to build others up, for people who are lost in sin, who are broken, you desire of us to uplift them gently, to bring them to a place of restoration and repentance. May we do this by the power of your Holy Spirit, in Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.

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