Honor Leaders, Help the Weak, Pray and Rejoice

Help them. The word help. Again, so many of these words in this passage have such interesting pictures that go along with them. The word that's translated help here in the English literally means to hold against. It's a picture of putting your arms around someone and holding them tightly against your breast. And that's what he says when he says, help the weak. Put your arms around them. Love them. Give them strength that they don't have. They may be spiritually weak. They might be physically weak or emotionally weak, And he calls on the church to help take care of them. [00:45:47] (39 seconds)  #HelpTheWeak

But you can always be in a spirit of communing with your heavenly father. You can always be aware of the fact that his presence is with you. He is with you. And and you can just kind of have have a running conversation. Whatever comes up, whatever situation, anything. Lord, thank you for this or that or whatever just happened. Lord, help me in this situation to say the right thing or to do the right thing. You can have this constant idea of being in fellowship and communion with the heavenly father. Excuse me. I think that's what it means to pray without ceasing. [00:58:29] (41 seconds)  #PrayWithoutCeasing

Now you may be thinking, but what about righteous indignation? What about when I'm wronged and it's unfair and it's not right and don't I have a right to respond just like Jesus did when he overturned the the the, money changers tables in the temple. He was he was exhibiting righteous indignation, and you're right. That's exactly what he was doing. But I did a study of that one time, and I discovered something. The Lord Jesus never responded in righteous indignation when the affront or when the attack was directed toward him personally. [00:49:47] (40 seconds)  #RighteousIndignationBoundary

When the flock loses its shepherd, the thief will try to come in and kill and destroy. That's that's where we are as a church right now. You're you're under shepherd, pastor Allen, as as we saw in in in first Peter. He has gone to be with the lord and so one of the biggest dangers right now is that Satan will try to use this time in the life of this church to sow discord, to sow non peace in the life of the church. You need to be warned about that. [00:40:54] (36 seconds)  #ProtectTheFlock

So, we pray. We thank god in all things and we thank god for all things. Now, you say, how on earth can I thank god for all things? Because all things are working together for good will to make you more like Jesus. If something really bad happens, you might say to the lord, lord, I don't understand this but I know you're going to use it to help me be more like Jesus. We can give thanks in and for all things. [00:59:55] (34 seconds)  #ThankGodAlways

Paul is telling us that we should pursue the good. The seriousness of the offense against us is not the issue. My response is the issue. In fact, I was thinking about this point in light of what Greg read this morning from Romans chapter eight. All things work together for good, for those who love God and are the called according to his promise. Now does that mean that everything that happens to you is good? Not in a certain sense. No. Some things are bad. Some things are hurt. Some things are harmful. [00:53:05] (46 seconds)  #PursueGoodness

And you know what? As a church, you need to fight against that. First of all, we fight primarily the battle is waged in prayer. Amen? Amen. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. That's what Paul told us. So we fight the battle in prayer. We fight the battle in the way that we think about others within the body of Christ. The way that we determine regardless of what they do, regardless of who they are, regardless of how they act, I'm going to love them anyway. [00:41:30] (29 seconds)  #FightWithPrayer

That word fainthearted is it's an interesting word in the in the original language. It literally means small soul. Small soul. And and the likelihood of what Paul is addressing here with the fainthearted and the weak is people who have who are not handling the persecution that's coming to the Christians very well. They're getting afraid. They're getting upset. They are they're worried. And and you've known people like that in your life. And and and what Paul says is rather than condemning these people rather than fussing at these people, he says, encourage them. [00:45:02] (44 seconds)  #EncourageTheFainthearted