Danny's Men's Studies

I read this morning:

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. Heb 3:12-13

And the word "encourage" stood out. I'm still chewing on the difference between forgiveness and grace that our pastor preached 2 Sundays ago (which we listened yesterday) especially about accountability meetings where forgiveness is the operative word: you grill each other through the checklist and then for each failure you say "we forgive you but try harder next time." Somehow that isn't encouragement to me and I'm sure that's not what the Biblical authors had in mind when the word encourage is used. Even Jesus rarely rebuked people (including His apostles).

I'll post more on my grace vs forgiveness thoughts later....