Famous Last Words

REFERENCE: II Corinthians 13:11 Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you.

Observation: These are some great words of advice that Paul ends his letter with.

o       Be joyful. It is so easy to get bogged down with battling sin and serving problematic people that we may to easily forget that joy is supposed to be a fundamental part of our Christian walk. The good news is that this joy is "in the Holy Spirit" not in myself or in my circumstances. If we are not experiencing joy, the Holy Spirit is the one to ask for it.

o       Grow to maturity. On the flip side of joy, our difficulties are not for the purpose of destroying us but producing maturity in us. Our goal should be always to become more like Jesus, more mature. If that is our goal, then hardships and setbacks can be seen as good things, getting us closer to being the kind of people we want to be.

o       Encourage each other. We are not in this alone. We live this life together with others. God is calling us to encourage each other. We need to find ways to build each other up so that we can have the strength to be joyful as we grow in maturity.

o       Live in harmony and peace. Can’t we all just get along? Too often, with many groups of Christians, the answer is "no, we can’t" but God wants us to learn how. Being at peace is more important than proving our point or getting our way.

If you do these things there will be a strong sense of God’s presence and pleasure when we, as a Church, are together.

Application/Confession: The most difficult of these for me is the call to be joyful. It is so easy for me to simply get my head down and my nose to the grindstone and "do it for God" that I forget that part of doing it for Him is to do it in joy. Perhaps I feel like I don’t deserve to enjoy what I am doing. God is telling me just the opposite, joy is His emotion and He wants it to be mine.

PRAYER: Lord, teach me to mature in joy, to deal with conflicts in joy, to encourage others joyfully. Since it is a fruit of Your Spirit, please bring it to fruition in me.