Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

Over the past couple of weeks I have been talking to several of my friends and what started out as good intentions to encourage each other, left me scratching my head, because of the amount of discouragement both of us were facing.  It’s happened like this a few times.  I have gone to someone to encourage them, and ended up being the one who walked away encouraged, and other times has sought to be encouraged, and somehow managed to encourage them instead.  Have you ever experienced this?  Sometimes I really feel like I was just taken over into the “Twilight Zone”.

So we are left with a question…Who encourages the discouraged encouragers?

Apply at your local church today!

I know so many people who are discouraged right now.  Most of them are in ministry.  They are being persecuted by other believers within the church. If we were still in the business of crucifying others in our world today, I believe the Church would be the crowds that were ready to crucify Jesus.  The ones who are the most passionate in ministry are the ones under the biggest attack.  The American Church has taken persecution to mean something much different from the way the rest of the world faces persecution.

November 14th 2010 was International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.  A day that was for the most part largely ignored by the American church, with maybe a mention before the offering and during the prayer.  Persecution as it happens in other countries, isn’t something that we see much of here in the American church.  Oh, I am sure we face some persecution to a small degree, but none of us have had to worry about being killed for owning a Bible or for attending service.  We’ve never had to face going to prison because we organized a prayer walk for our neighborhood, or because we showed a film about Jesus.  A good friend of mine shared yesterday, that as American’s we don’t have a clue what real persecution is.  He said that maybe we all need a little persecution in our lives. I agree.

“maybe we all need a little persecution in our lives”In America we really don’t know what it means to be persecuted for our faith.  What would you do if someone pointed a gun at your head and told you to denounce Jesus Christ?  I know what I hope that I would do, but truth is I’ve never been put in that kind of situation.  I cower and back out of much less confrontational issues.  Things start to get difficult and I start second-guessing whether I am following Him or not.  “Maybe it wasn’t meant to be” I convince myself.  Or “maybe that wasn’t God’s will after all….”  If I can’t stand firm in my faith against  issues between family and friends how could I say I would  at gun-point?

I am discovering that we have a different kind of persecution in the American church.  This kind of persecution isn’t coming from the world, it’s coming from within the body of Christ.  We are persecuting our own.  We are persecuting fellow believers and followers of Christ.

How can this be?  I thought we were supposed to be about building each other up, and encouraging one another?  How did it come to this?  How is it acceptable that we are now in the business of tearing each other down?  Critical of every word spoken, heart shared, and prayer voiced?  How can the body of Christ function if we are ripping apart our own limbs?

Our agenda has become our idol.  It’s no longer about coming together in corporate worship, it’s about a personal agenda of who is right, who is wrong, and we offer up nothing to fix the issues except hurtful words, hard feelings, and unforgiveness.  We expect to be heard, and we use our words as swords that we continue to thrust into the body of our brothers and sisters in Christ.

“Crucify them!”

Our leadership is being crucified as though they were Christ hanging on the cross. Who are we following?  We act no different from the crowds that cried out to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus!  Perhaps we are worse, because we claim to do it in the name of Christ.  This is the kind of persecution going on in the American church.  This kind of persecution is more sickening to me, than any other kind.

People in other countries make a choice to follow Christ, knowing that they could lose their lives just by accepting Him as their Savior.  When we make a choice to follow Christ here in America, the hardest choice we face is where we’ll eat after church is over.

Persecution?  Aside from what we have done to ourselves within the four walls of our churches we know NOTHING about it.  It’s no wonder why all of the encouragers are discouraged. When they do ministry they face being crucified by their own brothers and sisters in Christ.

We all have a role to play in this.  Are we using our words to build up or tear down?  I heard a statement a while back that said “God can and will use you, but you have a choice.  Are you going to be used as John or as Judas?”

Tweet