Relentless Community - a special sermon from South Africa

• Hebrews 10:23-25 “23 Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. 24 Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. 25 And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”
• Live your life each day with a purpose, to stir one another to acts of love and good works.
• Why do you wake up each day? If you don’t ask yourself this question, you are purposeless which is like lifelessness.
• Community isn’t a story, it’s an experience and filled with story after story after story. It’s why I came here for my surgery.
  • I knew I would be
    • Loved
    • Not judged
    • Encouraged
    • Filled with hope
• God’s plan for your life is to wake up each day and…
  • Choose hope (v23)
    • Because he is a promise keeper, and there is nothing we need to fear
    • But this isn’t the kind of hope you sit on, your hope should stir you up to act, and guess what God wants you to do with this hope?
  • Stir up each other to love and good works
    • Your hope in him leads you to desire seeking out others each day to actively motivate and encourage them to love and do good things for others.
  • Consider each other
    • The NIV uses the word ‘consider’ instead of motivate. When you look at this word more closely: Consider — think about, ponder, deliberate, meditate, mull over — other people.
  • This is your purpose each day! V25. But it is not simply gathering in a large group on a Sunday.
    • Get together one on one or in small groups, because we are to encourage each other, it’s a give and receive.
• Your goal in life is to consider others — study them, know them, figure them out — to the end that you stimulate them to love and good deeds.
• You do this by meeting together in coffee shops, gyms, school, wherever you are with people. With the purpose of encouraging each other.
  • Henri Nouwen wrote, “We are unified by our common weaknesses, our common failures, our common disappointments and our common inconsistencies.”
• And the heart of that encouragement is our hope in Christ because God can be trusted!