Acts 20:1-6

Acts 20:1-6
English Standard Version (ESV)

  Over and over again, there are highlights of the Biblical journeys that sum up what the disciples were doing by describing their actions as showing up to encourage others.  I'm sure they were busy doing other things as well, but they spent a lot of time encouraging one another.
  Rightly or not, the modern world often pictures the church as a group of people opposed to lots of things.  The church doesn't always deserve this label, but we sometimes get very caught up in what other people shouldn't be doing.  Now, I'm not at all saying that there isn't a time and place for the church to name sin and to define things as dishonoring God and damaging our relationship with Him.  What I am saying is that the vast majority of our lives should be spent encouraging one another, our friends and neighbors, and our enemies, in love.  We should be so busy encouraging, with our words and our deeds, that other people give thanks for our presence in their lives, because we're reaching out to lift people up.  Even our admonishments of one another can be encouraging, if done in love.
  We forget to encourage one another, or we just take it for granted, and so we often end up skipping it, thinking that maybe it's frivolous or a waste of time.  I promise, it's not --thousands of years later, we still have tales of how Paul and others stopped to encourage other Christians on their walk with Christ.  May we endeavor to serve with the same love.