Sep 20, 2022
Do you believe tearing others down has become a national pastime? Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One Podcast.
We're doing a couple of episodes on building others up. We did yesterday in part one, and we're also doing a part two today on building others up.
It's interesting how the different translations use different words. Today, our verse is Romans 14:19 and I'm reading from the New American Standard Bible.
"So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another."
Paul's challenging us as Christians, as Christ followers to build others up instead of tearing them down. In this particular passage, he was talking about meat sacrificed to idols or about what kind of foods that we ate, and the different things that we did. And, he talks about in couple verses before this, how the kingdom of God is not tied up in eating and drinking. It's in doing what glorifies Jesus.
In yesterday's episode, we also talked about this because it was also based a little bit on the rules of the law of Moses, the Old Testament Law. And he was talking about how all things are lawful, but not all things are helpful, or not all things build up. That was yesterday's message.
Today. We can split hairs and I don't have many, but we can split hairs about the rules and the way that we live, or we can be people who build others up. And I'm challenged by this because often I'm so involved in my own selfishness that I don't notice others. But I want to be someone who notices others and who builds them up because when we bless other people, we're doing what God does. We're basically taking our faith and inserting it in the world.
Our calling is to be someone who builds others up. "So then we pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another." Let's pursue these things that make for peace. Let's be the, peacemakers in our world. That was one of the Beattitudes, "Blessed are the peacemakers."
It's our challenge to be difference makers. And our world as it gets more and more tense and more and more negative, creates this opportunity for us to be visible and to show off what life is like following Jesus.
I don't often live like I want other people to even notice me as a Jesus follower. But that's something I want to do more of as well. My goal is to be this kind of peacemaker, to be someone who builds others up and helps them to feel good and to enjoy life and to realize that God created this world, that we would enjoy it and him.
We broke it and it's all messed up now because of what we did. Every one of us would've done what Adam and Eve did. So any one of us could have been the one who pulled the trigger. But our job now is to help build others up and help them see Jesus. He's paid the price for our sin. He's paid to undo all of this mess and to make it right one day. And God will, especially if we live, like we believe it. Let's follow him today and let him use us in the lives of the people around us.
Thank you for being a marketplace minister. And thank you for considering how your faith can make a difference. One way we can do that is to find ways to build others up. Look for ways today, to compliment people and to thank them for what they've done. And look for ways to help them see themselves in a better light and to feel better about themselves, as they move towards God, not just for the heck of it.
We want to help people move towards Jesus. That's our goal. That's our ministry is to help other people move one notch closer to Jesus. Thank you for being a marketplace minister and considering how you could do that. Please consider also joining us in our online community. It's at https://community.followerofone.org.
We want to help one another, be the kind of people who point people to Jesus. Thanks very much.