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The River ChurchSermons

REACH, GATHER, GROW

Gather - Encouragement

Gary Wright · Sunday, 14 September 2025 · Romans 1:12; 14:19; 15:2 · 33:08 · 3,978 words

Romans S21 · 1:12; 14:19; 15:2 Burton

There is no public page for this message yet — the transcript below is the whole of it.

Gathering together as a church is presented as a command, because believers need each other for encouragement and growth. The sermon describes how Christians form a family and a body, each equipped with spiritual gifts to use within the community. It emphasizes that gathering renews the mind through God's word, provides encouragement, and enables believers to bear one another's burdens. The speaker urges listeners to prioritize attendance, to serve, and to discover their gifts, warning that online viewing cannot replace worship, fellowship, and encouragement found in the gathering.

What this sermon is about

Ranked by keyness against every other sermon in the corpus. Each one is a word this sermon actually said — nothing here was written by a model.

gather 30 serve 23 online 14 encourage 19 together 23 watch 15 gift 20 another's 6 burden 8 encouragement 9 function 6 spur 3

Topics

Faith 4 Spiritual Gifts 2 Sin 1 Prayer 1 Adoption & Sonship 1 The Holy Spirit 1 Salvation 1 Hope 1 The Body of Christ 1 Sanctification 1 The Law 1

Scripture referenced 12

Verified against the transcript. A reference the recording does not support is never listed here.

Hebrews 10:25 3:18 Romans 8:15-16 5:09 Romans 12:4-5 6:57 Romans 12:6-8 9:03 Romans 12:2 14:02 Hebrews 10:24 22:42 Proverbs 27:17 22:56 Galatians 2 24:07 1 Thessalonians 5:11 24:48 Romans 6:23 29:59 Romans 10:9 30:58 Romans 12:10-13 31:52

Transcript

Every word, as spoken, with the second it was said. Each word links to its own entry in the index.

So I have some family members, I have some friends that have struggled with alcohol in their life.

And a lot of them have transformed their lives by going through things like AA or Celebrate Recovery.

And these programs are great for helping you and having people alongside you to help you on the journey and to help you overcome.

And you have accountability partners and these people will help you.

But here's the really awesome thing about these programs.

Is when people become, when they get a handle on their addiction, they don't leave the program.

They stay there and they help the new ones coming in.

They come alongside of them and they tell their story.

And they use that to encourage.

The people who are still struggling.

It's something that, it's a battle in, it's a battle together that they do.

And really, that's what gathering together as a church is all about.

We're not in this walk alone.

We're meant to be together.

To encourage one another.

To come alongside and help one another.

Gathering together, we do some things.

When we gather, we worship.

We come for instruction from the scripture.

We fellowship and we encourage one another.

And we evangelize.

People come here that don't know the Lord and we tell people about the Lord.

So, actually going back to REACH.

That's what really REACH is all about.

But there's really four things that I want to focus on this morning as we talk about gathering.

The first one is this.

That we're commanding.

Commanded to gather together in the scripture.

Secondly, we all as believers have spiritual gifts to use.

And in a gathering is the place where we use these spiritual gifts.

And thirdly, we come here to have our minds renewed through God's word.

And lastly, and I think one of the most important things.

I shouldn't say that.

But a very important part of it is to be encouraged to preserve.

To serve in your faith.

I can't imagine trying to walk this life of faith without you.

And I hope you feel the same.

The first thing we want to talk about is that we're commanded to gather together in scripture.

Now, I told you we were going to be talking in Romans.

But this verse fits so good for this.

I had to use Hebrews here.

I'm sorry.

So, Hebrews 10.25 says,

Not neglecting meeting God.

Gathering together as is the habit of some.

But encouraging one another.

And all the more as you see the day drawing near.

So, gathering together is, as believers, is not supposed to be something that we feel obligated or a burden to do, necessarily.

I mean, we are commanded here to meet together.

But as a believer, we should want to be obedient.

We should want to be in a gathering together and grow together.

I never realized how important gathering together was.

And you probably can relate to this if you've been involved in the church any time at all.

It was back in 2020 when COVID came and we couldn't gather together.

I don't know about you, but if you were around, if you were a Christian at that time, it was difficult.

I actually was tore up over this.

I mean...

I felt disconnected.

I didn't have this encouragement around me on a weekly.

Look, we need each other.

We need each other.

Listen, if you don't hear nothing else today, we need each other as believers.

In the Bible, in the scripture, believers are referred to as a couple of different things.

One is a family.

And in Romans 8.15 and 16,

it says,

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,

but you received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry,

The Spirit Himself bears witness to our spirit that we are children of God.

That is an amazing scripture.

And I think I've read it about every week.

But I love it.

But like believers,

those of us,

those who have put our faith in Jesus,

we're not just acquaintances.

We have a Father in heaven,

and we're brothers and sisters in Christ.

Right?

We are a family.

And we're meant to be together.

I know we have struggles in our family sometimes,

and maybe there's sometimes we don't want to be with our families.

But most of the time,

we want to be with our families in the world.

Don't we?

I mean, I want to spend time with my siblings and my grandkids,

and my kids.

That's what I want.

That's my desire.

And I also have a desire to spend time with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

And we all should have that when we believe in Jesus.

Believers are also referred to as a body.

Romans 12:4-5, Paul writes this,

"For as in one body,

we have many members,

and the members do not all have a body.

We all have the same function."

So we, though many,

are one body in Christ,

and individually members of one another.

Okay?

The human body has many parts.

Like we have a hand,

we have an arm,

a leg, a foot.

And Paul is comparing the human body

to the body of Christ, the church.

Each part of our body has a different function.

I mean, my hand works good for picking up this cup,

but my foot probably wouldn't do as good of a job, right?

Just like without one of the other parts,

the body doesn't function as it should.

Look, if I didn't have a foot,

I could probably get along,

but I would be like limping like this, right?

It doesn't function as it should.

And it's the same in the church.

If the church is missing one of its parts that God put here,

one of

the parts that functions in a certain way,

one of you, the church isn't functioning as it should.

Because you see, God has given each believer

gift to use inside the church.

If you're a believer,

God has given you a gift, and sometimes you have more than one.

Some of them are gifts to use.

Romans 12:6-8 says, "Having gifts

that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them."

And then he lists off some of these gifts and how they're used.

If prophecy is our gift in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving,

the one who teaches in his or her teaching, the one who exhorts

in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads

in zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

Those are the spiritual gifts and those are the things that go along with them.

But using our spiritual gifts are another reason that we gather as a church.

And I don't know if you know this, but if you're a believer and you're here

at the River Church and this is your home, it is not a coincidence you're here.

It is not a coincidence.

God brought you here so you could use that gift.

Believer uses that gift to grow the body, to contribute to the body.

And I know for a long time, me personally, I struggled with what is my gift?

I don't know what that is.

I don't know.

How do I find out what that is?

The church has come up with these little

quizzes you take to help you find your spiritual gift.

Those are probably helpful, but I'm not like a big fan of those.

This is what I suggest.

You want to know what your spiritual gift is?

Start serving. That's it.

If we need help in guest services, jump in, jump in.

Because what happens is as you serve,

you're going to find out what your spiritual gift is.

And if it's not guest services, do you quit?

I'm going to say no. You stay there and serve faithfully.

Until you can move to somewhere else and try something different.

This works.

I'm going to give you a little example.

And I've talked about this before.

But this church used to be called Bethany Baptist.

And about 15 to 20 years ago, Kim and I, my wife and I came here.

And she's when we started coming here,

she's like, Gary, how do you want to serve in the church?

Every once a year they had like a thing where you decided what you wanted to.

Where you wanted to volunteer.

And then they voted to see who was going to get those jobs.

And this was my answer.

I'll do anything here but teach.

I couldn't imagine myself teaching like I've been an introvert my whole life.

I'm like, there's no way I can do that.

Right. God had a different plan.

He had a different plan.

Like and as I got into serving, God began to reveal gifts to me.

That I didn't even know existed.

I believe they were directly from him.

They are directly from him.

He will do the same for you.

Can you open a door?

Tell people hello.

Sometimes their spiritual gifts aren't the same as our strengths in life.

God gives them to you as you grow.

And he opens doors as you go on this journey and things change.

And he moves you from place to place into different roles.

Things you never dreamed you could do and you can't do.

You can't do it except through his strength.

I want to encourage you.

Start serving in some area and God will direct you where he wants you to be.

Another reason that we gather is to have our minds renewed.

Have our minds renewed.

Romans 12:2 says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the

renewal of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.

What is good and acceptable and

perfect. Paul says, don't be conformed.

Don't be molded to what the world says, but be transformed.

And that means to be changed from one thing into something else.

Not from the outside in, from the inside out.

When we give our lives to Christ, his spirit indwells us.

He lives in us and he transforms our lives.

And how does he do that?

Through the renewal of our minds, through God's revelation from his word.

We study God's word.

We learn God's word when we're here together.

And we, the Holy Spirit uses that to transform our minds, to renew our minds.

And through our minds changing, it transforms who we are.

Being in a gathering and hearing God's word preached and taught is invaluable for helping

us renew our minds.

We need to be here.

We need to be here.

I noticed I've noticed some things here at the at the church

recently, actually, since I've taken over.

Actually, it's almost been a year.

Hard to believe, but

I've noticed that some of us show up here on the days we serve on the days we don't

serve, we're out of town, right? We're not here.

We show up to serve, but we don't come for the gathering.

We're missing out

on the preaching and the things that God is doing in here.

I want to encourage you if you're serving.

Thank you.

But here's how serving is designed.

We we have you serve once or twice a month.

Why? So you can come to the gathering.

If you're not coming, you might as well serve all month.

So I'm not suggesting that I'm I want you to serve and be in a gathering because,

listen, I want you to grow in God's word more than I want you to serve.

Both things go hand in hand, but growing to me is more important.

And you may be thinking this.

You may be sitting here thinking, well, I serve.

Then I go home on the weeks that I'm not serving and I watch online.

I want to tell you this.

If you're watching online only, if you're serving and watching online or if you're

just.

Watching online, you cannot experience the same thing as being here in the gathering.

Like you can't see how God's moving in the worship.

Look, I don't know about you, but we were singing these praise songs.

God was moving in here.

I'm sorry he was.

You're not going to get that online.

And you don't see how people are responding when you're setting home,

watching TV or watching it on your phone.

And I'm going to be honest with every

time I do that, I get distracted by something else.

And I watch about half of it anyways.

But not that I'm sitting home watching.

Sorry. Here's one other thing we miss that's meant to be together.

Look, when people get baptized here, what are they doing?

Publicly professing their faith to other believers.

They're saying, look, I'm a follower of Christ.

If you're not here, you're missing that communion.

What is it supposed to be?

Worshipping Christ together, reminding us what he did for us.

His body that he broke, his blood that he shed.

You're missing all of this.

Not being there, we're missing a huge part of the gathering.

And one of the biggest that I believe is this encouragement.

And I'm just going to list off a couple of things.

Encouragement and fellowship.

We need to be with each other.

In 1:12, Paul writes this, that is that we may be mutually encouraged

by one another's faith, both yours and mine.

Paul's plan here, this letter to the Roman church.

He was planning to go there and visit.

He wrote this letter and he wrote these words right at the beginning.

I'm looking forward to being there so we can encourage one another in our faith.

Look, I love camping.

How many of you guys like to go

camping? And I love setting around the campfire at night and telling.

Well, I like to tell fishing stories, but I love setting around the campfire at night.

It's pretty awesome.

But when the fire burns down and there's just these hot coals left in there,

that's pretty cool to see that.

But have you ever took like a coal out of the fire and set it on to the side?

You know what happens when you do that?

That thing immediately starts to cool off because

it's no longer in the fire, it's no longer in there with the others.

It starts cooling off.

It's the same with our walk with Jesus.

When we miss a gathering, when we're not

gathering together, we're alone. And what happens?

You tell me. If you've missed church a lot, you start cooling off.

I do. I personally do that because we need each other.

We need to be encouraged by one another.

to be relational.

Look, he wants us to have a relationship with him,

but he wants me to have a relationship with you and you with me and all around here.

Look, it's a horizontal or that's wrong, vertical and horizontal.

I always have to think of the horizon.

Sorry, I went to Swartz Creek School.

Look, God's design for the church is to be a community to support one another.

Hello, community.

I'm here to support you and you're here to support me.

We're here for each other.

The word church in the New Testament,

the Greek word that it's translated from is a word called Ecclesia.

And if I'm mispronouncing that, I'm sorry.

But that was my best interpretation.

Ecclesia is how it's how I think it's supposed to be said.

But this word means a called out assembly.

That is what the church is.

A called out assembly, not a called out individual, but a called out assembly.

We're meant to be together.

Why? Because when we gather together, we encourage one another.

Listen to these things.

We spur one another on.

The scripture says this in Hebrews 10:24.

Let us consider how to stir up one another and love and good works under that same category.

Spur one another on.

Proverbs 27:17 says, iron sharpens iron and one man sharpens another.

We come to church to do what Paul said.

Encourage each other in the faith to spur one another on.

Brother, sister, you can make it through this week.

I got your back.

I'm praying for you.

I'm spurring you on.

Remember COVID?

We did not have that.

That's why it was such a struggle.

We didn't have that.

I mean, I was talking to people on the phone, but it wasn't the same.

Another thing that we do when we gather together is we bear one another's burdens.

Look, many of you call me and you ask me to pray for you, pray with you.

We're praying with somebody today.

That's bearing one another's burdens.

Look, we all go through these struggles in life.

How many of you struggle sometimes?

We are here.

We carry one another's burdens.

Galatians 2 says, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.

You know what the law of Christ is?

It is love.

That is the law of Christ.

We love one another and we care for one

another because Christ lives in us and we carry one another's burdens.

We pray for each other.

We do things for one another.

Sometimes people need their lawn mowed.

And guess what? We carry that burden.

Sometimes people need other things and we carry that burden.

That's part of what the community is.

Last thing we build one another up.

First Thessalonians 5:11 says, therefore, encourage one another and build one

another up just as you are doing again.

We look at what Paul wrote.

We're here to encourage each other by our faith encouragement.

Listen to this encouragement.

It transforms the church.

It transforms the church.

I'm going to say it a different way.

The love of Christ living in us and it pouring out of us transforms the church.

That's where our encouragement comes from, from each other.

It transforms us.

And I love that we do messages here.

We put all of our messages out online.

I love that.

It's great for when you go on vacation because guess what?

You can watch the sermon when you're on vacation or listen to it.

When you're sick and you can't be here, you can listen to the sermon.

It's great for people who are shut in that maybe they're in a home or they're

elderly and they can't make it to the gathering.

They still can watch.

But what I see happening with online

preaching or online, this online stuff, it becomes a crutch for us.

It becomes an excuse to stay home and we miss

out on all the stuff we just talked about.

Watching online is awesome when we need to do it, but it does not replace this.

It does not replace gathering together, not even close.

One pastor says that online church is an oxymoron.

Why does he say that?

Because it doesn't do the same things.

It's not really online church.

It's an online sermon.

It's a transfer of information.

We don't experience all the other

things that we're intended to experience.

Watching online does not provide accountability.

It does not provide the love that we talked about.

It does not provide encouragement.

It's us being alone, watching the sermon.

And I'm not being negative about watching

other sermons, but we need to be in the gathering when we can.

And I'm not saying you have to be here every week.

I know I realize there's things going on sometimes, but when we can be here, we

should be here. And those are the reasons why.

God commanded us to be in a gathering.

It shouldn't be burdensome.

It shouldn't be checking off a box like we can say, oh, yeah, I went to church today.

Now I can go watch the Lions game, right?

It should be something we want to do because we want to be built up to walk

through our week with the Lord, to stay strong in our faith.

And he knew that each of us would need that encouragement.

That's what the church is all about.

He knew we would need

to be refreshed in our faith, like Paul says, mutual encouragement by each

other's faith, otherwise we start cooling down and losing our passion.

And we easily I do.

And I think we're all in the same boat.

When I start losing my passion, I easily

start falling back into my old lifestyle, my old habits in the gathering.

I want to see your smiling faces.

I want to encourage you and I want

you to encourage me don't want to close this out without this.

Maybe you're here this morning and you

don't even know what I'm talking about with the faith.

Maybe you don't know how to become a follower of Christ.

And I just want to share that really quick.

The Bible says and we studied this in Romans as we as we've been going along.

But the Bible says that we all have messed

up and we've all done things God don't approve of all of us.

That means me because of that.

Scripture says we're separated from God and the Book of Romans.

Romans 6:23 says that the wages of sin is death.

Death means separated from God because of our sin.

We're separated.

But if you read on in that verse, he says,

but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus.

God did something to fix the separation.

And that is his son came and died on the cross.

He paid the price.

He paid the wage that we owed on the cross.

He paid for our sin.

And when we believe, when we have faith, we can become part of the family.

We can become a child of God.

We can become part of the body who has

a special spiritual gift to build each other up.

Scripture says this Romans 10:9.

But if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe

in your heart that God raised him from the dead, guess what?

Will saved. Saved from what?

Saved from being separated from God for eternity.

We can be reconciled to God and we can spend eternity with him.

And while we're on this earth,

we have each other and we have this relationship with him.

If that's how we come to the Lord.

And once we do that, we're part of this body and we build one another.

So I want to close out with this verse.

This is the marks of a believer is the heading.

And this is Romans 12:10-13.

This passage is strictly talking about how believers treat believers,

how we encourage one another, it says, love one another, brotherly affection.

Outdo one another in showing honor, not be slothful in zeal.

That means be excited.

Be reverent in the spirit, serve the Lord, rejoice in hope.

Hope of what?

That someday as believers, we're going to eternity with the Lord.

Be patient in tribulation.

Trust God in hard times is what he's saying there.

Be constant in prayer and contribute to the needs of the saints.

That's other believers and seek to show hospitality.

Gather together to serve the Lord, to worship the Lord.

And to encourage one another.

Encourage you to be here when you can.