Build each other up
The ministry of encouragement
Two crews work the same building, and from a distance you might mistake the noise of one for the other. But come closer and the difference is total. The first crew swings to bring things down, sledgehammers into plaster, crowbars under beams, the satisfying crack of something that took years to raise coming apart in an afternoon. The second crew works the slower way, hauling, setting, leveling, raising a wall course by course until a shelter stands where there was none. Into a young church Paul presses the question of which crew they are on, and answers it for them: build each other up, he writes, even as you also do. Then the letter to the Hebrews adds the urgency and the strange schedule of the work. Do it day by day, it says, while it is still called today, because a heart left alone and unencouraged does not stay tender. It quietly hardens, the way ground goes to stone when nothing softens it. Many came through the upheaval having met only the wrecking crew, torn down by people who claimed to swing for God. The turn back toward a people is, in part, this: joining the other crew, learning the daily work of building one another up.
“Exhort one another, and build each other up, even as you also do.”
— Paul, to the Thessalonians — 1 Thessalonians 5:11 (WEB)
“Exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called today, lest any one of you be hardened.”
Reconnect here is choosing your crew. The body is meant to be a building crew, not a wrecking one, and the work is daily. Paul tells the church to build each other up; Hebrews names the schedule, day by day, while it is called today, lest a heart harden. To be re-rooted in a people is to take up the slow, ordinary labor of raising one another rather than swinging to bring each other down.
If you were taken apart by people who should have built you up, you know the wrecking crew from the inside, the way a few words can drop a wall it took you years to raise. The reconnected life does not ask you to pretend that never happened. Paul's instruction is plain, almost unglamorous: build each other up. And Hebrews names both the stakes and the schedule, day by day, while it is still called today, because the alternative is not neutral. It invites you onto the other crew, to become someone's steady encouragement, the voice that sets a stone rather than swings at one.
And it asks the harder thing too, that you let others do the same for you, which for the once-wounded is often the harder half. A heart left alone and unencouraged does not stay tender; it quietly hardens in the cold. So take up the ordinary, unspectacular, daily work of raising someone up, and let yourself be raised in turn. The hardening that isolation breeds is not held off by a grand gesture once a year.
The Church can become a wrecking crew without ever meaning to, fluent in critique and slow to encourage, and leave its people hardening in the cold. Whole movements have grown skilled at tearing down, certain they were swinging for God. Yet Scripture calls the Body to the opposite trade, the daily raising of one another while it is still called today, lest any heart go to stone. Across history the Church has been at its healthiest where exhortation was constant and the demolition rare, where the watching world saw a people who built rather than broke. Encouragement is not optional sweetness laid on top of the Body. It is, day by day, how the whole Church keeps from turning to stone.
Words can tear down what took years to build, and some of yours were torn down by people who claimed to speak for God. He did not send those blows; He is able to rebuild after them. What endures is the slow, daily work of grace that raises a heart back up, course by course, until it stands again, softer than the cold ever meant to leave it.
- Which crew have I been on lately, the one that raises people or the one that brings them down?
- Whose daily encouragement could I become this week, in some small and unspectacular way?
- Where have I let isolation harden me, and who might I let back in to help soften the ground?
Lord, I have felt the wrecking crew swing, and some of the blows came from people who claimed to speak for You. You did not send them, and You are able to rebuild what they brought down. Put me on the building crew now. Make me someone's daily encouragement, and give me the harder courage to let others encourage me. Keep my heart soft in the cold. Raise us up together, course by course. Amen.