As we await God’s promise of a perfect earth, He calls us to serve, through Holy Spirit, to be His hands and feet. This 👇🏼 is from the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) today…
Hebrews 3:13
“But exhort one another daily, as long as it is still called ‘Today,’ so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.”
The fascinating word rendered ‘exhort’ (Greek para-kaleo), elsewhere translated ‘comfort’, ‘beseech’, literally means—come alongside.
Note in Corinthians 1:4 “God comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we are comforted of God.”
The unusual importance of the word ‘exhort’ is magnified by the fact that its Greek noun form (parakletos) is used as one of the titles for Holy Spirit!
Jesus said, “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which precedes from the Father, He shall testify of Me.” (John 15:26)
Thus, a believer who is ‘called alongside’ to comfort a sorrowing friend, to beseech a person to do right, or to exhort him to useful action all in the name of Christ, is in effect performing the same type of service on the human level that the Holy Spirit Himself performs on the divine level.
Further, the above text would inform us that this type of service—whether done in the context of exhorting or comforting or beseeching—is designed specifically to prevent the one to whom he is ‘called alongside’ from being “hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” And since hardening through sin is a moment-by-moment danger to the unwary, the ministry of exhortation is one that must be performed “daily, while it is called today.” HMM