THE PERILS AND POSSIBILITIES OF SPEAKING THE TRUTH IN LOVE

Picture someone who encourages you in your journey of faith? In what ways do they offer encouragement to you? Are you able to hear or receive encouragement in some ways better than others?

Now picture someone who challenges you in your journey of faith? How do they deliver challenge to you? Are you able to hear or receive their exhortation in some ways better than others?

Paul was both an encourager and an exhorter – someone whose words can lift us to our feet while offering us a gentle but firm nudge to get moving at the same time. This might be a rarer skill in others than we wish it would be – to hold encouragement and exhortation together in ways that we welcome and thank God for.

We’ll be looking at Paul’s words in Ephesians 4 about how we as the Church ought behave towards and amongst one another, so that we might ‘lead a life worthy of the calling to which (we) have been called’.