Imagine yourself in your living room or around your dinner table or fire pit. Maybe that is where you are already! Now add in your favourite company and conversation partners – friends, family or fellow believers. What are you talking about? What are you discussing? Work life? Family life? Church life? Politics? Sports? The weather?

There is an endless amount of topics available to you, ranging from what is empty, to mundane and ordinary, to what is eter­nally significant. The challenge for us as Christians is to find the right proportion. Assess yourself: how much do you converse with your spouse, or your closest friends, or your children concerning Jesus Christ and your relationship with him, and your joint determination to live for his glory? These should be topics that Christians talk about with one another without reser­vation. As Christ said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11 Paul reminds the believers about Christ’s second coming. He spoke of what will happen to believers who die before that event, as well as the need to be prepared. In light of this, he issues the commands he does in 4:18 and 5:11, namely, to “encourage one another” and “build one another up.” To encourage means to comfort. To build up means to build a house, and the idea is that we should build up fellow believers.

What this means in general terms is that after another Christian spends time with you, the result should be a stronger Christian, an encouraged Christian, a built-up Christian. That’s a worthy aim to pursue.

The question is: how do we do this? Certainly deeds of love and mercy play a part. Hello meal trains! But Paul mentions one specific way: encourage one another “with these words.” So the task is to encourage and build one another up by using our words as they relate to the content Paul had just taught about the coming of Jesus Christ.

This is why Bible reading is so important for yourself and for your family. Where do you get things to talk about? It should not come primarily from your pool of common interests, hobbies, concerns, or grievances, but from the Word! That is also what makes a Bible study or small-group meeting so peculiar when the Word is hardly opened or only minimally unpacked and discussed. Call it a therapy group then for a more accurate description. We need to be mining the Word in order for us to have material to talk about. We need to be in the Scriptures and filled with them so that we can encourage others profitably.

Christ’s return provides much material for deep and impact­ful conversation. Just think: if you were about to embark on an exotic vacation with some friends and you meet together the week before, you would probably talk about it. That would be logical. If you are scheduled for an appointment to meet with the Prime Minister or the President, you would likely talk about that in advance. How about this: “We will always be with the Lord” (4:17) and we will “live with him” (5:10)? There is no greater destination or appointment than that! It makes sense therefore that these things would be on the forefront of our minds and woven into the fabric of our conversations. Else they be conspicuously absent.

For further study⤒🔗

1. Have you measured up to your calling in these verses? Is there anything you must repent of and reorder in your conversations with other people or online?
2. Consider some motivations to change: 1) Your words reveal what is in your heart. 2) God hears everything you say. 3) When you delight in some­thing, no one has to tell you to talk about it.