Category: 1 Thessalonians

As Indeed You Are Doing?

~ John Grimm ~ 1 Comment

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 (NRSV)

1 Now concerning the times and the seasons, brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anything written to you. 2 For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. 3 When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! 4 But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; 5 for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. 6 So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; 7 for those who sleep sleep at night, and those who are drunk get drunk at night. 8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, and put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep we may live with him. 11 Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.

By John Grimm

I cannot count how many times that I have read these verses.  Well, to be honest, I have heard only a portion of these verses being emphasized.  It appears that in my life I have heard many people only quote verse one and two.  What about verses three through eleven, do they matter to us?

Paul is emphasizing how we Christians are to live, remembering that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.  Faith, love, and salvation are our themes as we live as children of light and children of the day.  It is through our Lord Jesus Christ that we live, now and later.  Salvation is ours in Christ now.  The day of the Lord is later, and salvation is ours also at that time.

You can be encouraged with this info.  You can build up other Christians with this news.  Paul says that is “as indeed you are doing.”  However, we know what we have been doing.  We stopped reading after verse two.  God help us!  As we live as children of the night or of darkness, we have not been able or willing to encourage one another or to build up each other. 

Will you take time today to recognize the salvation you have in Jesus?  Will you start encouraging and building up other Christians, even today? 

God, as I live in Christ, nothing will surprise me about the day of the Lord.  Yet, I have not grasped the salvation I have in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Forgive me for my slowness of living as a child of light and a child of the day.  In this day, may other Christians find encouragement and be built up in Christ by my words and actions.  In the Name of Jesus, I hope to be found on the day of the Lord, amen.

Those We Honor

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

1 Thessalonians 5:12-18

Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. And live peacefully with each other.

Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy. Encourage those who are timid. Take tender care of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone.

See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people.

Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.

While these verses serve as Paul’s exhortation to the Christians at Thessalonica, they also give us the opportunity to meditate a few moments on our own church experiences.

First, think for a few minutes about those who encouraged you when you were new to the faith.

I see a little parade of people in my mind. There are preachers and teachers from my childhood, relatives who exposed me to delightfully different expressions of Christianity, and people my age who seemed always to be one step ahead of me spiritually, setting good examples.

There are lots of ways for Christians to lead. Lord knows, we need more Christians willing to lead in public and private ways.

Also take a few minutes to think of the timid and weak Christians, the ones in an early or arrested stage of faith. What are their specific needs? How do we increase the amount of good they experience each day as members of Christ’s body?

As you meditate on the second question, you may find a calling welling up within you, a desire to help people grow in the grace of God. If so, lead on!

Lord, help us be mindful of how faith in Christ must be handed like a baton from generation to generation. Let us not drop the baton. Amen.

Primary Source

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

By Chuck Griffin
LifeTalk Editor

1 Thessalonians 2:13-16 (NLT)

Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received his message from us, you didn’t think of our words as mere human ideas. You accepted what we said as the very word of God—which, of course, it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe.

And then, dear brothers and sisters, you suffered persecution from your own countrymen. In this way, you imitated the believers in God’s churches in Judea who, because of their belief in Christ Jesus, suffered from their own people, the Jews. For some of the Jews killed the prophets, and some even killed the Lord Jesus. Now they have persecuted us, too. They fail to please God and work against all humanity as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last.

Is it from God?

Whenever we hear a pronouncement from another human being regarding what we should believe or do, “Is it from God?” is the obvious question any Christian needs to answer.

All sorts of people claim to speak truth, supposedly looking out for the best interests of their audiences. These people can be quite eloquent at times. Hearing them, we can find ourselves moved intellectually or emotionally.

The Christians of Thessalonica came to their beliefs while living in a politically important trade center, a place where ideas would have flowed as easily as goods. There was much to be heard, and there were many ways to live.

Paul commended them because in the midst of all of that, they had recognized the declaration of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to be a message from God, changing their lives accordingly despite the ongoing persecution they experienced.

Paul and his colleagues obviously had help from the Holy Spirit, whom we believe goes ahead of us as we spread the Good News. With their hearts readied by God’s constant-if-subtle grace, some of the people of Thessalonica were able to perceive Paul’s words about Jesus Christ to be from God. They heard the Christian message despite the general buzz around them.

If a miracle is God intervening in the normal course of events, then it’s a miracle any time such conversion happens. Non-Christians encountering the message of Jesus Christ as Lord have a tough time stepping toward belief. They have to decide first of all if the existence of a loving God makes sense to them.

They then must figure out if they can trust that God loves them despite their sins and accompanying sense of unworthiness. None of us can reach such a state of belief without a little prodding and guidance from the Holy Spirit, and help from Spirit-inspired people.

Having accepted Christ as Savior, we should have an easier path, assuming our discipleship has gone well. “Is it from God?” can be answered using sources we have learned to trust, in particular God’s word as revealed in the Holy Bible.

Once we have established a broad understanding of the Bible’s message, and especially after working our way through the nuances of some of the finer details of Scripture, we have a kind of touchstone, a way to test the purity of what we encounter in the world.

Let’s just remember to use it, particularly in these trying times.

Lord, we thank you that you love us so much that you have revealed yourself repeatedly through the centuries. We recommit ourselves today to the idea that all truth is rooted in action, the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Amen.