Pursuits

What are your pursuits in life? What are the things that you would do anything for? What are the things you desire to do more than anything else. I have heard the phrase "living for the weekend" speaking of people's desire to get to the time of the week where they get to do what they want. For some people it may be camping, or boating, or even this time of year ice fishing. The crowd I used to run around with in high school would pursue fixing up their cars. In particular a few guys liked to invest in their pick-up trucks and they spent all their spare money and time working on them. They would add whippers to their rig, chrome tips to their exhaust pipes, or one kid even took his exhaust and made it so that he had smoke stacks coming out behind his cab.

For me I went through a season of pursuing fishing. I would look at fishing reports for some of my favorite spots, seeing how fast the water was flowing, and what was hatching that the fish were hitting on. I would go and talk with my buddy who worked at Scheels to find out what the latest and greatest tackle were to use. I began to focus my free time and attention to fishing, and with that I spent more money than my wife probably would've liked. When you pursue something (like the wily trout of the Big Horn River) you focus on it and you disregard what it costs.

Paul talks about what we should pursue in Romans 14:19

"Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another."

Paul is talking here specifically about what we pursue in relationships. Some people pursue love and a desire for acceptance, other may pursue always being right in their relationships. Truthfully I have pursued both at one time or another, but neither of those pursuits produced peace or edification in the relationship. See the problem with both of those pursuits in a relationship are that they are both selfish. Paul is calling us to a pursuit that is not about us but the other person.

We want to zoom in here on the pursuit of edification. Edify means to build up or encourage. I think we can all look around and find someone that needs some encouragement. In the last year studies have shown that 40% of adults struggled with mental health or substance abuse issues. Depression, fear, suicide have gripped our land as results from the pandemic. Sometimes it is easy to look at another's situation with callousness and think you just need to buck up, or as my dad used to say, "bite the bullet and move on". But maybe God has brought that person across our path so that we could bring a word of encouragement to their life.

The word here for edify in the original Greek is a compound of 2 words, one means a house that is fully built and complete, the other pictures the roof of the house. So what this word is really means is a well thought out plan to construct a quality built house from foundation to roof. This is a specifically designed and detailed plan to build something up. Who is the one that designs the building up of someone? The Chief Architect and Engineer the Holy Spirit, he is the one who will give the detailed instructions on how to encourage the people that He brings across our path.

So if we look at what Paul is saying in this verse in light of this definition, we are to pursue being directed and led by the Holy Spirit into the detailed plans to build up completely, from the foundation to the roof, through encouragement, the people we come in contact with.