1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” This episode talks about how important community is in encouraging each other and building up our faith. It also talks about three miracles and how amazing God is. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The Miracles in Life
1 Thessalonians 5:11 “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.”
If there is one thing that I have become acutely aware of over time it is how important community is. I know I have talked about this before, and I think it is something that can be mentioned again. I have talked about how much my friends helped me get through all the difficult times I have had over the years. Today I want to talk about how important community is to helping build not only your faith, but spreading the Gospel to others as well. When I was younger, newly married, and just out of college my husband and I were living in a new state and we didn’t really know anyone. We started at a new church. This church has a Catholic women’s group that met once a month. I was hesitant to join as I felt like I wasn’t Catholic enough. Do you know what I mean? I can’t be the only person that has ever felt that way.
I mean I went to church, I went to religious education growing up, I made all the sacraments, and still I felt like I was Catholic, but not enough to go to this women’s group. I was convinced that they all knew so much more than I did. They had probably all not only read the Bible before but had it memorized. They had probably all been going to groups likes this their whole lives. Has this ever happened to you? You think about joining something that you think could help you grow in the faith and then all of the sudden your mind is flooded with all these negative thoughts? Don’t worry, you are not alone. This happens to all of us. The reason is the enemy. He knows you will grow if you are in a community of believers. He wants to deter you from ever stepping through that door because he knows once you do, you won’t want to leave.
There is something about being in a community of believers that is not like anything else. You may be involved in other groups, for instance a bowling group, a running group, a book club. These are great. Being with a group of people that have a shared interest feels really great. You can encourage each other and build each other up just as this verse is telling us to do. However, it is different when you are encouraging each other and building each other up in the faith. It is so much more powerful and it truly can change your life. We are all on a faith journey and how long or how short that journey is depends on us. Are you going to stay on this journey forever, or are you going to give up and quit?
There will be times when your faith is tested. There will be times when you question God and everything you know about Him. We all run into difficult times. No one skates through life without encountering trouble. No one is exempt from pain. Even Jesus and Mary encountered pain. There is no reason to believe that we won’t have to go through it. The important this is how you deal with that pain and that testing of your faith. If you are on your own it will be much harder to get through it. If you are by yourself, it will be harder to keep believing, harder to talk yourself out of your negative, doubting thoughts that the enemy is bound to fill your head with. When you have a community of believers surrounding you, they speak truth into your darkness. They speak the Lord’s words and His promises into the darkness. If you surround yourself with people who don’t believe, they may be able to love you through the difficult times, they may be able to comfort you, but will they be able to talk truth to you when you need to hear it? Will they be able to remind you that you are a child of God and that He is always with you?
A community of believers is not just important when you are struggling, they are important when you are thriving as well. They are there to help you grow more and more in your faith. They are there to celebrate your wins with you and to help you recognize where God is working in your life. That is something that I am not sure we spend enough time doing. Are we taking time out of our days or our weeks to stop and look at how God is working in our lives? I remember the first time I saw a spiritual director and they asked me that question. “Where do you see God working in your life?” I was not sure what to say. I know God is there, I know He is working in my life, but I wasn’t taking the time to ask myself that question and to truly answer it. I think it is a question that can be life changing if you get into the habit of asking yourself that question on a regular basis. “How is God working in my life this week? Where do I see God at work in my life? What things has God done in my life this week?” Any or all of these questions are a great place to start.
I was planning to talk about a different verse and a different topic today. Then as I was beginning to write this episode, I got a text message. I had decided I wasn’t going to check any messages while I was working on my podcast, but for some reason I did. It was a message from a friend. His wife has MS and she has been suffering with a pretty bad flareup. She had lost mobility on one side of her body. Usually flare ups don’t last long but this had lasted for weeks and they were worried. I prayed, along with many others, and the text message was to tell us that she has been at 100% mobility for a few weeks now. Praise God, he is amazing! He is so good!
I went to go tell my workout group as they are a group of faithful ladies and I feel when you witness or hear about a miracle you should spread the news so you can as the verse says, “encourage one another and build one another up.” When I got to the message page my friend had just written the following message, “Great news girls. All the active cancer in the pancreas is gone!! And the rest of the cancer has shrunk quite a bit. She is giving her two weeks off and they will be decreasing her chemo since she has had such a hard time with it. So exciting.” You see, my friends mom had gotten a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer several months back and it had spread to other parts of her body. We immediately started praying and the next time she went to get pet scan her numbers decreased from the thousands to the hundreds. Now to read this message that the cancer is completely gone in the pancreas, is amazing. God is so good!
I felt like both those messages were a sign that I should relay these miracles to you. I think it is great when we can believe without seeing, and I also know that sometimes it is easier to believe when we can see. Sometimes we need to see the miracles to build our faith. If you have a loved one that is sick or that you are worried might be getting sick trust that the Lord can heal all things. Have faith that when you ask the Lord answers. Another thing that the Lord has made perfectly clear this year is that you don’t have to know how it will happen. It is ok if you are praying for something that you can’t really see an answer to. You might be praying that a loved one is cured of a disease where there is no earthly cure. That is ok, God is not confined to what is possible with earthly means. You may be in a situation where all the doctors or counselors are telling you that things won’t change, don’t loose faith, God can move mountains.
One last miracle to end this episode. I have a friend who’s baby was born at 26 weeks. The baby was under 2 lbs when she was born. I was there in the ICU room hours after the baby was born. The doctors told the parents she would not live. They were so sorry and wished they had better news, but they were certain she would not live. We did not give up hope. We prayed all the more. We praised God, we told Him we knew He could still save her. We prayed, we thanked Him, we praised Him and we kept hoping that He would save her. Today that little girl is 2 years old and is the happiest little girl you have ever seen. Was it an easy road. No. Was she instantly cured. No. She spent 4 months in the hospital. It was a long 4 months for her and for her parents. And one they are so thankful for because their little girl is doing so great now. I don’t know why they had to go through that awful experience but I do know and they do know that a miracle happened for them that night and that changes people. They will forever be changed by that night and so will I.
I hope that these examples of real miracles that are happening to real people in today’s day and age will encourage you and build up your faith. I hope they will bring you comfort when you are facing an impossible situation. These three situations were difficult. It sucks that they had to go through them and I don’t know why they had to go through them. However, I do know that God’s glory shines through them and they are a testament to how much God loves us and how real miracles are. It is proof for all of us to see that miracles are still happening today and if it can happen for them it can happen for you. Please don’t give up hope. Your miracle is just around the corner, keep asking and you will receive.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that you bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, please help these words to encourage and build up the faith of all those listening. Lord, help us to see how you are working in our lives. Help us to stop and take the time to think about that question. Help us to talk to those around us about how You are working in our lives. Help us to encourage others in the faith. Help each one of us to find a community of believers that will help us grow closer to you. Lord, we love you so much and are so grateful for all the miracles, big and small that you have doing in our lives every single day. You are so good and we ask all of this in according to your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!