Encourage one another TODAY

Our reading today from Hebrews (McCheyne's 4th column) has an important application. (Actually the word "important" seems too weak for this as you will see.) In verses 12-13 the author says, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today', that none of you may be hardened by the deceitful of sin."
Note the following points:
1. The author is offering a warning. He says, "Take care, brothers..." He is very concerned that his readers understand that something great is at stake.
2. What is at stake, is an "evil, unbelieving heart" - a heart that although it has seen God work, and provide in mighty ways does not look to God in trust and faith.
3. An unbelieving heart leads one to fall away from the living God. (Are you beginning to see the seriousness of this passage.) Real life is only experienced as we are connected to our Creator. To fall away from Him is to be separated from our life source. It is a sure route to experiencing the death about which God warned our first parents. Life was meant to be lived in communion with the "living" God.
4. At the very center of this is the deceitfulness of sin. Sin has a way of making itself look good to us humans. It has a way of offering us things of which it is unable to provide. We so easily get sucked into its lures and before we know it our hearts are being hardened, unbelief crops up, and we begin to stray from the "lover of our souls".
5. The solution to this human dilemna is that we "exhort one another every day". Knowing that we are all tempted by sin's deceitfulness, knowing that our hearts can so easily be hardened, knowing that we can so easily slip into unbelief and fall away from the living God, should urge us to be diligent to encourage one another.
6. Finally, the author calls for this mutual exhortation to be done "without delay". He says, "as long as it is called Today" to emphasize that we should not put this off.
This is especially important in light of what we read in Psalm 39 today. The psalmist indicated that life is short. He said, "Let me know how fleeting I am!" He also indicated that God "disciplines a man with rebukes for sin..." Since life is short and since there are consequences for sin, there is an urgency to exhort one another. To waste even one day in unbelief, or to give one's time to experience God's judgment for sin instead of the blessings of His presence, is a tragedy indeed.
Brothers and sisters, a vital application of Jesus' command to "love one another" is to encourage one another TODAY. Every day we must ask God to be His vessels of encouragement, bringing the truth of God's Word to fight the deceit of sin, thus saving our fellow brothers and sisters from wasting time, which is so short, in a state of unbelief. May God grant us all grace to see how we might live obediently to this important calling.