Think Outward, Look Outward, Pray Outward

As we looked at Acts 18 this past week, God gave Paul a night vision and encourages him with these words ... "for I am with you."

God knows when we need an encouraging word. What a blessing and encouragement it must have been for Paul to "know" that God was with him. I believe God will encourage us today as well as we seek Him and His purposes for our lives.

We all need encouragement from time to time. Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (NASB95)

God gave Paul friends like Silas, Timothy, Apollos, Aquila and Priscilla. We need a strong relationship with God so we can hear His words of encouragement. We also need strong relationships with other believers so they can encourage us and we can encourage them.

I love Paul's words at the beginning of his letter to the church in Rome:

11 For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you, that you may be established; 12 that is, that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other’s faith, both yours and mine. Romans 1:11-12 (NASB95)

Paul understood the important place that other believer's played in his life and the importance place he played in their lives. Later on in Acts 18 it talks about how Paul travelled throughout the region of Galatia "strengthening all the disciples."

Let me exhort you to allow God to encourage you through others. When God sends someone to you with a word of encouragement, receive it as if from God. God will often use other believer's to remind you that He is still walking with you.

I challenged us as a church this week to ... think outward, look outward, and pray outward, and ask God how you can strengthen other believer's in their walk with God. Please take sometime this week to look beyond your own needs and ask God how you can be an encouragement to someone else. In particular, come to church this Sunday prepared to find someone to encourage. Pray for them, speak a word of encouragement over them, ask God for words from His heart to theirs.

Think Outward, Look Outward, and Pray Outward!

Tell me how God gave you the words to bless someone else. This is not bragging about ourselves, but bragging on God's faithfulness to bless His people and using us as a vessel to bless someone else.