Fervent Exhortation

Mostly doctrine and mostly rational speech; you can even manage to do that when you are spiritless and as dry as a stick.

There is very little fervent exhortation, even at meetings, and even much less in private. As far as most people are concerned, exhortations practically do not exist!

Essentially, you cannot exhort unless you are full of goodness, care, and fervent love, and unless you are full of the Spirit of Christ and fire!

This is the very thing that is so badly lacking! We can also rightly say that there is a great lack of a deeper salvation! Romans 15:14 is an exceptionally good indicator: “That you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to exhort1 one another.”

Even if you have much knowledge, this does not result in exhortation unless you are also full of goodness.

Picking on each other has nothing to do with exhortation or correction! Picking on each other is the result of making demands, which is the direct opposite of love and goodness. Besides, you cannot exhort others to live a better life than you are living yourself!

Beloved friends! Be filled with the Spirit so you can address each other with hope, faith, joy, and rejoicing; so you can exhort one another sincerely from the heart; so that you can have a fervent desire that it will go very well with each and every one! Wake up! And most certainly do not sin! Let there be an end of it forever! Love the good with a boiling hot heart. Hate the evil as if all of it were Satan himself! Do not be indifferent, lackadaisical, and lazy! Use every opportunity to say something good and to do something good! Do not spare! Cursed is all stinginess with words and deeds. Disperse the good! Let it flow—in season and out of season!

Your devoted—

Elias Aslaksen