Poetry

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Our nature will have us desiring gifts that have not been given to us from on high.
But there is one gift that the Lord has given each of us, and that is the ability to edify.

I do not consider myself multi-talented, yet he still affords me opportunity to encourage others I meet in this life.
And every saint in the past, present, and future has been commissioned by God Almighty to edify.

Since I am writing about this, does that mean that I’m now ready to proclaim a victory cry?
It should, but so many times I’m still knocked down by my old man at times when I’m called on to edify.

Only knocked down though, and not out, for the Lord lifts me back up and sets my heart again to try.
I have found that the Lord will open the door for me, when my heart is fixed to edify.

There is no better life afforded God’s children than to spend their lives encouraging mankind.
To edify our fellow companions is like helping one find their way out of a ditch that is blind.

To edify is to offer hope, to those who have no hope, to offer new life to one with a life of ruin and waste.
To edify is to offer words of hope, and life to him that has never heard, and has yet the Lord to taste.

To edify is to offer a life ring to a drowning man, that could be going under water for his last time.
To edify is to offer a man deliverance that is lost in the wilderness, and cold, hungry, dehydrated, almost to die.

Would you not shoot a raging lion if it was in your power to do so that is ready to pounce on a defenseless man?
Yet we do just that when we hold back words of encouragement, or edification when we can.

Would you not seek rescue for a man fallen through a crack in the ice, on a mostly frozen lake?
We say yes, yet we still hold back words of edification, therefore leaving the man to freeze by the words that we never spake.

I can see in myself a great need to entreat the Lord to control my mouth to withhold my many foolish words that flow from my mouth without having to try.
And then replace those useless, meaningless words with words of exaltation of a Great Savior, and these words to my fellow man are words that edify.

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