Serve and Encourage Others – The Bible is Greek to Me
Over the past several days, we have been unpacking the P.A.U.S.E. method as a way to better engage with the Bible. So far, we have looked at Prepare, Ask Questions, and Understand. Today we will examine Serve and Encourage.
Serve—Let God’s word inspire how you love others. To do this, model the behavior of Jesus by loving your neighbors. An action step would be to find one person today and serve them in the spirit of God. The highest level of our journey as Christians is servanthood.
Encourage—We need to be encouraged by God’s word and give God thanks for it. The Bible can be encouraging during difficult times as well as during magnificent times. One way of showing our encouragement is by sharing his word with others who need to hear it.
James 1:22
But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves.
Once you’ve committed to hearing the Gospel message or reading the Bible, you aren’t done yet. Jesus is looking for doers and not just hearers of his word. The bottom line from last weekend’s message was God’s word is an inspiration for your transformation.
Romans 12:6-8a
6 In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. … 7 If your gift is serving others, serve them well. … 8 If your gift is to encourage others, be encouraging.
Spiritual gifts are not based on merit but, rather, the grace God has chosen to give us. Once we know the spiritual gifts God has given us, we need to use them to serve and encourage others.
Have you attended GrowthTrack? Its goal is to help you understand the spiritual journey and live it out each day by taking steps toward discovering your true redemptive purpose and the abundant life God has for you.
Do you know your gifts? Are you living out your purpose?
Questions:
How often do you read your Bible? Is the Bible Greek to you? Have you considered joining a Group to work through different books of the Bible and discuss what they mean?
What does serving others mean to you? Are you comfortable enough with the Bible to encourage others by sharing God’s word?
Next Steps:
If reading the Bible is something you keep putting off because it is difficult to understand, try reading a different translation (CedarCreek uses NLT, which is very easy to read). Or consider using a different format, like listening to Scripture instead of reading.
If you’re artsy like me, another avenue of staying engaged in the Word is with the use of a coloring or creative journaling Bible. I have found they give me a creative way to journal what a passage is speaking to me. It’s amazing how Scripture comes to life with a little bit of color.
Attend GrowthTrack if you haven’t recently. You’ll discover your spiritual gifts and craft a purpose statement around your personality, place, and passion to determine how you can make an eternal difference in the lives of others.
Prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father, help me transform my life so that I can experience more. Thank you for sending Jesus as an example of how we are to live. Grant me wisdom to know that you uniquely gifted me to serve and encourage others. Open my eyes so I may see opportunities to use my spiritual gifts. In Jesus’ name, amen.
This post was written by Jennifer Macke. Jenn has a son, daughter, granddaughter, and grandson, and she thanks God every day for them. She is enjoying retirement and feels blessed to be writing for LivingItOut. She was raised in an Evangelical Church, but her spiritual life awakened when she started attending CedarCreek.
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