Stir Up One Another
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.” Hebrews 10:24
In the hustle of daily life, it’s easy to drift into isolation or self-focus, but this verse from Hebrews calls us to something profoundly countercultural and essential: intentional community where we actively provoke—or “stir up”—each other towards love and good deeds. This isn’t a casual suggestion; it’s a command vital for our spiritual health and the flourishing of the body of Christ.
Because without it, we become vulnerable to our three greatest enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. These forces work relentlessly to redirect our energies toward division, selfishness, and inaction, poisoning the very relationships meant to build us up. As believers, we’re in a battle where what stirs us—and what we stir in others—determines whether we bear fruit for God’s kingdom or sow seeds of discord.
Hebrews 10:24 isn’t just about encouragement; it’s a safeguard against the erosive influences that seek to undermine our faith. The world bombards us with messages that prioritize self-gratification, comparison, and outrage—think social media feeds algorithmically designed to amplify division, cable news cycles that fuel tribalism, or podcasts that stoke cynicism and entitlement. These stir up wrong thoughts (like envy or bitterness), attitudes (like superiority or apathy), and desires (like revenge or isolation), which inevitably lead to wrong actions: broken relationships, withheld forgiveness, or neglected service.
Then there’s the flesh, our sinful nature that resists humility and accountability, preferring comfort over conviction. It whispers excuses, justifying why we don’t need to engage deeply with others or confront our own failings. And behind it all lurks the devil, the master deceiver who orchestrates subtle tactics to invert God’s commands.
C.S. Lewis captures this demonic strategy brilliantly in The Screwtape Letters. In Letter 6, the senior demon Screwtape advises his nephew Wormwood: “Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.” This inverts the command to love one’s neighbor, promoting selfishness in close relationships and empty virtue-signaling afar, which undermines real good works rooted in personal connection.
Just as Jezebel incited Ahab to unprecedented evil (1 Kings 21:25: “There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited”), the enemy uses people, media, and ideas to “poison minds” and counteract God’s work.
Consider Acts 14:1-2: “Now at Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.”
Here, the good seed sown by the disciples—leading to belief and unity—was met with opposition that stirred division and hostility. In our Information Age, this plays out daily: online influencers or news pundits (or even a barrage of worldly ideas) act as modern “unbelieving Jews,” stirring up the flesh through echo chambers that validate our worst impulses rather than calling us to Christlikeness.
This begs critical questions for self-examination: What kind of seeds are we sowing in others? How are we stirring them up? What fruit is our stirring producing—love and good works, humility, unity, and genuine conviction rooted in truth? Or are we unwittingly becoming tools of the enemy, fostering resentment, pride, or complacency?
To ensure we’re used by God rather than the enemy, we must first allow ourselves to be stirred by the Holy Spirit. This happens as we abide in Christ through prayer, immersion in His Word, and fellowship with believers who can stir the right things in us. It’s not enough to consume content from afar; we need close, accountable relationships. There’s a big difference between seeing a therapist and being in genuine community. A wise therapist grounded in Scripture, godly wisdom, and spiritual discernment can offer help, but it’s no substitute for the Hebrews 10:24 call to stir one another in close fellowship—a community that truly knows us, holds us accountable, and provokes us to love and good works up close, not from a distance.
I recently spoke with a brother who had strayed from the Lord but returned. He shared that while therapy had been helpful at times, it wasn’t the same as real community with brothers who know him deeply. In humility, he recognized the need to be open and honest with them for true accountability. Moreover, he noted that some friends, perhaps with good intentions, had said things that fed his flesh rather than his spirit—stirring thoughts that gave him ammunition to make excuses and justify avoiding Spirit-led actions that required humility, which his flesh was already resisting. We can learn from therapists or podcasts, but as Paul warns, “knowledge puffs up, but love edifies” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Information alone inflates our egos; only love in community builds us up.
In contrast to those who would stir-up our evil impulses in us, Paul praises people like Timothy in Philippians 2:20-21: “For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.”
Concerning himself Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 4:14-16: “For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me.”
We need to open our hearts to such “fathers” and “brothers”—those who selflessly stir us toward Christ’s interests—and seek to imitate them.
I’ve heard it said that we should not be talking to people on behalf of God unless we are talking to God on behalf of people. This underscores the need for prayerful dependence. A wonderful regular prayer could be: “Lord, stir my heart with your love and truth and give me the wisdom and the words to stir others up to love and good works. And if it’s correction that others need, show me how to earn the right to speak personally into their lives and to do so with a godly attitude and goal to bring restoration.”
Finally, ask yourself: What is stirring me? And what am I stirred up about? Apathy—being stirred about nothing—can signal spiritual ill health. When filled with the Spirit, we’re moved by the hurt, lostness, and brokenness around us, compelled to loving, constructive action that brings hope and healing. May we reject the world’s stirrings, crucify the flesh, and resist the devil, choosing instead to stir one another as Hebrews commands—for the glory of God and the good of His people.
In the hustle of daily life, it’s easy to drift into isolation or self-focus, but this verse from Hebrews calls us to something profoundly countercultural and essential: intentional community where we actively provoke—or “stir up”—each other towards love and good deeds. This isn’t a casual suggestion; it’s a command vital for our spiritual health and the flourishing of the body of Christ.
Because without it, we become vulnerable to our three greatest enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. These forces work relentlessly to redirect our energies toward division, selfishness, and inaction, poisoning the very relationships meant to build us up. As believers, we’re in a battle where what stirs us—and what we stir in others—determines whether we bear fruit for God’s kingdom or sow seeds of discord.
Hebrews 10:24 isn’t just about encouragement; it’s a safeguard against the erosive influences that seek to undermine our faith. The world bombards us with messages that prioritize self-gratification, comparison, and outrage—think social media feeds algorithmically designed to amplify division, cable news cycles that fuel tribalism, or podcasts that stoke cynicism and entitlement. These stir up wrong thoughts (like envy or bitterness), attitudes (like superiority or apathy), and desires (like revenge or isolation), which inevitably lead to wrong actions: broken relationships, withheld forgiveness, or neglected service.
Then there’s the flesh, our sinful nature that resists humility and accountability, preferring comfort over conviction. It whispers excuses, justifying why we don’t need to engage deeply with others or confront our own failings. And behind it all lurks the devil, the master deceiver who orchestrates subtle tactics to invert God’s commands.
C.S. Lewis captures this demonic strategy brilliantly in The Screwtape Letters. In Letter 6, the senior demon Screwtape advises his nephew Wormwood: “Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary.” This inverts the command to love one’s neighbor, promoting selfishness in close relationships and empty virtue-signaling afar, which undermines real good works rooted in personal connection.
Just as Jezebel incited Ahab to unprecedented evil (1 Kings 21:25: “There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited”), the enemy uses people, media, and ideas to “poison minds” and counteract God’s work.
Consider Acts 14:1-2: “Now at Iconium they entered together into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed. But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.”
Here, the good seed sown by the disciples—leading to belief and unity—was met with opposition that stirred division and hostility. In our Information Age, this plays out daily: online influencers or news pundits (or even a barrage of worldly ideas) act as modern “unbelieving Jews,” stirring up the flesh through echo chambers that validate our worst impulses rather than calling us to Christlikeness.
This begs critical questions for self-examination: What kind of seeds are we sowing in others? How are we stirring them up? What fruit is our stirring producing—love and good works, humility, unity, and genuine conviction rooted in truth? Or are we unwittingly becoming tools of the enemy, fostering resentment, pride, or complacency?
To ensure we’re used by God rather than the enemy, we must first allow ourselves to be stirred by the Holy Spirit. This happens as we abide in Christ through prayer, immersion in His Word, and fellowship with believers who can stir the right things in us. It’s not enough to consume content from afar; we need close, accountable relationships. There’s a big difference between seeing a therapist and being in genuine community. A wise therapist grounded in Scripture, godly wisdom, and spiritual discernment can offer help, but it’s no substitute for the Hebrews 10:24 call to stir one another in close fellowship—a community that truly knows us, holds us accountable, and provokes us to love and good works up close, not from a distance.
I recently spoke with a brother who had strayed from the Lord but returned. He shared that while therapy had been helpful at times, it wasn’t the same as real community with brothers who know him deeply. In humility, he recognized the need to be open and honest with them for true accountability. Moreover, he noted that some friends, perhaps with good intentions, had said things that fed his flesh rather than his spirit—stirring thoughts that gave him ammunition to make excuses and justify avoiding Spirit-led actions that required humility, which his flesh was already resisting. We can learn from therapists or podcasts, but as Paul warns, “knowledge puffs up, but love edifies” (1 Corinthians 8:1). Information alone inflates our egos; only love in community builds us up.
In contrast to those who would stir-up our evil impulses in us, Paul praises people like Timothy in Philippians 2:20-21: “For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.”
Concerning himself Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 4:14-16: “For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me.”
We need to open our hearts to such “fathers” and “brothers”—those who selflessly stir us toward Christ’s interests—and seek to imitate them.
I’ve heard it said that we should not be talking to people on behalf of God unless we are talking to God on behalf of people. This underscores the need for prayerful dependence. A wonderful regular prayer could be: “Lord, stir my heart with your love and truth and give me the wisdom and the words to stir others up to love and good works. And if it’s correction that others need, show me how to earn the right to speak personally into their lives and to do so with a godly attitude and goal to bring restoration.”
Finally, ask yourself: What is stirring me? And what am I stirred up about? Apathy—being stirred about nothing—can signal spiritual ill health. When filled with the Spirit, we’re moved by the hurt, lostness, and brokenness around us, compelled to loving, constructive action that brings hope and healing. May we reject the world’s stirrings, crucify the flesh, and resist the devil, choosing instead to stir one another as Hebrews commands—for the glory of God and the good of His people.