Establishing ourselves

I was invited to speak at a weekend retreat, and it dawned on me that the Apostle Paul did “retreats,” except they didn’t call them that back in the day. Here is how they talked instead:

“For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you” (Romans 1:11, ESV).

“Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God’s coworker in the gospel of Christ, to establish and exhort youin your faith” (1 Thessalonians 3:1–2, ESV).

“When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith …” (Acts 14:21–22, ESV).

“And Judas and Silas, who were themselves prophets, encouraged and strengthened the brothers with many words” (Acts 15:32, ESV).

“And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, ‘Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaimed the word of the Lord, and see how they are’” (Acts 15:36, ESV).

“As they went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthenedin the faith, and they increased in numbers daily” (Acts 16:4–5, ESV).

Establish: “to set up on a firm or permanent basis.” Think trees and roots and imperviousness to storms.

Here is the question: The people being visited for the purpose of “strengthening” and “establishing” in the faith are already Christian people, so why would they need to be “established”? Why wouldn’t that be automatic? Why wouldn’t Paul assume they are steadily growing? Why would he and Barnabas have to trudge (as opposed to flying United Airlines like I did) miles of modern day Turkey and Europe to revisit where they had been before, to “see how they are”?

The answer is not hard to find. Paul knows that unless a Christian’s faith is “established” it will disappear after a while—by afflictions or lack of practice or ennui. It was already happening in Galatia in his day (see Paul’s terse letter marveling at their so soon abandoning the true gospel for an ersatz one), in Corinth (they were big on gifts but low on love), in the letter of Hebrews (they were ready to hightail it back to the comfort and familiarity of ceremonial law). The Ephesus in Revelation 2, though outwardly brimming with good programs and doctrine, had drifted seriously enough that Jesus warned He is about to take them out.

Retreats are fine but, practically speaking, you cannot go on one every weekend. That tells me we have to learn how to establish ourselves:

“… Establish your hearts …” (James 5:8, ESV).

We have a model in David, who when his men were on the brink of mutiny, had to do some bracing talking to his soul and to God. He was an afflicted man who learned how to strengthen and establish himself, an “art” we all can and must learn:

“And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him. … But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God” (1 Samuel 30:6, ESV).

We might want to meditate on how David did that, and on how Paul spoke when he visited the churches to do that. In fact, it is imperative that we do. For as the prophet Isaiah said:

“… If you are not firmin faith, you will not be firm at all” (Isaiah 7:9, ESV).