Marsha's Musings: My Quiet Time: How We Treat Others

My Quiet Time

And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. (1 Thessalonians 5:14, 15 ESV)

Here are instructions for us in our dealings with our fellow Christians.  We are to 

1. admonish the idle

    We are to show those who are spending their time in idlness what they should be doing and how being idle can lead to other sins.

One form of idleness is when a person is constantly looking around at other Christians and finding faults in them to nit pick about and goes around to various ones to make remarks about how they are not measuring up.  I believe this can be called being a busy body.

We need to admonish those who are idle in this way.  Their activity does not promote peace.  We need to look at oursleves to make sure we are not doing the same.

2. encourage the fainthearted

    We are to give encouragement to those who may be struggling in their faith and the cares of this world are weighting them down.

3. help the weak

    We are to help those who are spiritually weak, maybe new to the faith.

4. be patient with all

    In all our dealings with these people we are to exercise patience.  This implies kindness and love.

If a Christian brother or sister offends us in some way we are not to return evil for evil as our nature would tempt us to do.  We are to seek to do good to all even those who have offended us in some way.