Stir Me Up! Reach Out, Hold On, Stir Up

 

Stir Me Up! Sermon Notes Pastor Brad Myers

Reach Out, Hold On, Stir Up! August 11, 2024

Today: Stir Up Each Other!

• How? Reach Out & Hold On

We have a responsibility (duty) to stir up one another.

Stir: to move us, to put us into action.

Thought: We have a responsibility to move others and put them into action!

Hebrews 10:24-25 (ESV)

• Urging persecuted Jewish Christians not to forsake Jesus and return to Judaism.
• Like today: Urging persecuted believers not to return to being unbelievers.
• Encourages us towards love and good works.
• Inspire, support, and challenge each other in our faith.
• It’s not just a suggestion; it’s an essential component of our walk with Christ.

Thought: Stirring up each other is about nurturing the gifts and callings within our community. It is about recognizing the potential in each other and encouraging the pursuit of godliness and service.

Proverbs 27:17 (NIV)

Practical Ways we Stir Up Each Other:

• Encouragement
• Support
• Accountability

At the center is helping each other not to fall away

Hebrews 10:23 (ESV)

Thought: Holding fast our faith is not just an individual responsibility, it is something we’re all supposed to be working at as a community:

Thought: “Let us hold fast” means it’s not just a warning to not fall away, but a ‘help each other not fall away.

Thought: This command shows us that we are not just supposed to live and let live. We are supposed to try to help one another to follow Jesus and live for Jesus.

• We need to be involved in each other’s lives.
• Here’s the relationship between fellowship and falling away.

1. What does going to church have to do with falling away?
2. Fellowship is one of God’s primary tools for empowering people to keep going forward in their faith.

Thought: You need to keep others healthy so that they’re healthy enough to help keep you healthy.

Covid interrupted our ability to fellowship and that was the intent of the devil all along!

Q) How does fellowship prevent falling away?

Q) How does fellowship promote spiritual growth and perseverance?

1. We get taught! Wednesday night!
2. Reminded of the love and goodness of God.
3. Reminded that God is bigger than our troubles.
4. Reminded that reality is not what we see with our eyes.
5. Reminded that this world is not our home.
6. We see the Holy Spirit at work in people’s lives.

The fact that we need to stir each other up shows that we tend to have a certain level of resistance in maintaining our spiritual growth.

2 Thessalonians 3:13 (ESV)

It is not only hard to get going, but hard to keep going. Because of this selfishness that resides in every human heart, even in the hearts of Christians, there is a need for prodding, for reminding, for nudging, for inspiring each other to get us to think the way we should be thinking and to do what we should be doing.

How can we stir up each other one?

• It’s easy to do nothing!
• Hebrews 10:24-25 is all about considering how to stir up one another (or “provoke one another”).

1. How do you get someone going? How do we stir them?

• Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to do
• God knows it takes a lot of effort to figure it out.

Hebrews 10:24-25 (ESV)

Isn’t the spirit of love and good works more caught than it is taught?

The best way to spread this spirit of loving others is to be an encouragement to others, to live a life that makes others want to love and do good works.

• Be the example…and lead them
• Specifically mentioned in Heb.10:25 is encouragement.’
• The word here is PARAKALEO. Very rich and broad word.
• Translated by 14 different English words in the Bible.
• Urge, comfort, beg, appeal, exhort, implore, plead, and invite, etc.
• Verb of PARACLETOS, which Jesus uses to referring to the coming Holy Spirit

John 14:16 (ESV)

• Meaning helper, counselor, advocate.
• PARAKALEO is translated EXHORT in Heb.3:13, which is a parallel passage to this:

Hebrews 3:13 (ESV)

• Exhort: Urge to pursue some type of conduct. Holiness!

How do we encourage; how do we exhort?

Hebrews 10:22-23 (ESV)

let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith,…..²³ Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering,,…..

V22: We are commanded to:

• “Let us draw near with a true heart (pure motive)”

Introduced earlier

Hebrews 4:16 (ESV)

• Throughout Pentateuch, (first five books of the Bible) God repeatedly tells people to draw near to Him,
  • “draw near to me”
  • Author looks back to the Pentateuch

We can’t stir each other unless we are continually stirred ourselves.

V23: We are commanded to”

^“hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering,,…..”

• Our ability to stir others lives here!

Problems we face

Christians were unprepared for the intense societal changes of the last several decades because we have not held fast to our confession.

We have not been diligent to know what we believe and why, and so we compromised little by little so now we struggle to stir the next generation.

• A gradual erosion

Peter says it like this

1 Peter 3:14-15 (ESV)

But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, ¹⁵ but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,