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I often wonder if I have a burden for this world – if I love those around me to share with them the freedom of Jesus Christ.
Do I recognize their need for fulfillment in the only One who can fulfill? Am I sensitive to their need for purpose, a purpose only He can give? Can I overcome my personality – my desire to stick to my own business and not bother with other people – to be authentic with them and share the Light of my life with them?
The believers at Thessalonica had no problem in doing this, none whatsoever.
In verse 2 we see that God was present with them, He gave them help and boldness and courage.
His Spirit was there, in their midst and in their hearts in a very real way. He empowered them and strengthened them.
I also often wonder – when I do share the Gospel, why I do.
Do I want public acclaim?
“I have led three people to Christ in the past year.”
Do I want public recognition?
“Look how big our church is.”
Do I want public approval?
“I must be a good preacher, look at how many people raised their hand after my sermon.”
God purified the desires of the believers at Thessalonica; there were no ulterior motives or secondary purposes. God selected them, instilled them with a burden for their lost and dying world, empowered them, and was confident they could share His truth with their community.
The Thessalonian believers had no ulterior motives, they simply wanted those around them to know the Lord and love Him. They had no fancy methods, simply His Spirit and His truth.
What are my motives in forming relationships? Do I desire fellowship? Do I love non-believers enough to share God’s Word with them, that they may know Him?
How bold am I? How daring? Who do I try and please? What am I afraid of? Who do I fear?
My the sovereign God, who inspires us with life and truth, have free reign over our souls, to transform us daily for His purposes. May we have no agenda but His kingdom, and no purposes but to worship Him.
We are told in verse 5 of 1 Thessalonians 1 that the Gospel of Jesus Christ came not just in words, but in power.
The greek word for power here comes from dunamis, from which we get the word dynamite. The idea carried with dunamis is an inherent power, or a power that comes simply from the nature of the empowering thing.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ does not need to rely on schemes of man, emotional appeals, or miraculous confirmation – the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the embodiment of transformational and life-giving power.
The Gospel is effectually applied through the life of the Holy Spirit. Theologians would say the job of the Holy Spirit is spiration, whereby He engages in the application of redemption.
We see also that the Holy Spirit brought joy to the early believers at Thessalonica, and that He did so in spite of suffering. In our emotional vocabulary, suffering and struggling are independent spheres of existence and have no room for anything except for the woes therein.
But our God is bigger than that, and so then promises joy in spite of – and indeed in the midst of – our most trying circumstances.
“Watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become your character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” Or so the fanciful saying goes.
In a culture of positive thinking and a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality, these words serve to encourage and enlighten the masses. And while I have heard them often, and even agree with them to a certain degree, my heart still wanders to Scripture above all else when it comes to evaluating the health of my attitude.
And yet the question is still left to be asked: Why is attitude important in the first place?
We read in the Book of Proverbs that as a man thinks within himself, so he is (Proverbs 23:7a).
As we think, so do we live. The attitudes of our mind are expressed tangibly in our actions.
We are told in the opening chapter of Philippians to have the attitude of Christ:
5Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,6who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped,7but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.8Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
Just as Christ faced the cross in humility, so are we to press on with humble and broken hearts.
So too do we claim with the servant, “We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.” (Luke 17:10).
Have an attitude of humility and gratitude for the opportunity to serve, and our actions will reflect that.
Have an attitude of pride and selfish ambition, and our actions will reflect that as well.
Be near to God and may your attitude always reflect your eagerness to serve Him and Him alone.
14For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
– 2 Corinthians 5: 14-15
We walk the earth, lazily wandering here and there, spending time but never really investing it. We live aimlessly, purposelessly, and distractedly.
Why?
We foolishly and selfishly think this life is ours to waste.
We think we own the right to govern ourselves based on our own limited faculties.
But that is incorrect.
In truth, our life belongs to God and it is His name we bear, and we are revealing His name to others as we live.
Whether or not we realize this affects if we reveal His name in a glorifying or disgraceful fashion.
My Lord and my God, my deepest, most intimate desire is to live the truth of Your Son’s resurrection as an everyday reality, for You own my life and I desire to be poured out before You. Move in me and through me for Your glory.
1 Thessalonians 1:3 can be translated various ways:
NASB: constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ and of our God and Father
NIV: We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
ESV: remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
What is most striking to me when I read this passage in one translation, and again when I compare several different translations, is the similarity in the words used. Work, labor, endurance, steadfastness, hope, inspired…it seems to me that Paul had something very important to say, something that isn’t quite captured by the English rendering.
When we break down the different words, we find the following:
Work is the word ergon, and denotes something by which an individual is occupied, something that takes up all their time and energy.
Faith is the word pistis, and carries with it the idea of faith, confidence, conviction, commitment, trust, fidelity, and guarantee. It is derived from peithomai (be persuaded, have confidence, obey).
Labor is kopos, and Paul envisions one who beats his breast with grief and sorrow when he uses this word, a beating of the breast which leads to intense labor.
Love is agape, agape being the highest form of the words used for love in the NT, meaning God’s love, love with deep respect, love according to value, love expressed in good will or deeds, love that manifests itself and puts itself on display; literally demonstration of love.
Steadfastness/endurance is hypomone, meaning endurance, from hypomeno, meaning to endure, to wait expectantly. The connotation is of someone who is not swayed from his purposes by even the most severe trials or sufferings. Those reading this in Paul’s time would envision this endurance as the most potent of all virtues, the vigor and perseverance of an Olympic athlete.
Hope here is elpis, referring to hope inspired by Jesus Christ, a confident, expectant, and joyful hope of salvation. This spiritual hope is contrasted with human hope, which is the uncertain or anguished longing for a desired good.
When we dissect Paul’s words, we read 1 Thess 1:3 slightly differently:
remembering all your time and energy occupied by obedient works of commitment, your passionate and intense labor of love that is not merely spoken, but demonstrated, and your confident and expectant hope in Jesus Christ, of which you are certain and for whom you endure all things.
46Nathanael said to him, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
– John 1:46
Rob Bell’s Nooma video “Dust” can perhaps provide some helpful background information on this passage:
Nathanael’s opinion was par the course for how everybody viewed Nazareth in Jesus’ day. It was a blue collar town filled with laborers, not scholars or educated men.
Bell mentioned how the best of the best – the brightest – would follow the way of a single rabbi. Usually, these men would not come from Nazareth, it was a town made up of men who were surely a few fries short of a happy meal.
So, when Christ comes along teaching and preaching things that turned the world of Jewish law and custom on its head, everybody reacted the same way as Nathanael: “Nazareth? This guy is from Nazareth? You’ve got to be kidding! What good can come from Nazareth?”
Yet Christ taught, and He taught with authority. He challenged popular rabbinic conceptions regarding the Law; in the Sermon on the Mount, every time Christ begins a teaching with, “you have heard it said…” He is taking something from the Law and turning it on its head.
Christ is showing the inability of anybody to live up to the requirements of the Law, and thus their need to trust in His forthcoming death.
Jesus’ teaching on the Law was radical – revolutionary. No one had even dreamed anything even remotely similar to the way Christ interpreters and applied the Law. His teaching truly was original, inspired, and authoritative.
And who taught in this way? A man from simple, lowly Nazareth, the place from which no good could come, from which no man could ever learn intricacies of the Law, let alone the revolutionary understanding Christ understood and taught.
With Philip I say to you, come and see. Come and see Jesus Christ, the Son of God who has come to teach a new way of life by covering your sins with His blood. Come and see Jesus Christ who knew we couldn’t meet the requirements of the Law, so He did for us. Come and see the teacher who didn’t just teach us how to live, but sacrificed Himself on a cross to offer us eternal life and the opportunity to live an abundant life (John 10:10).
Come and see Jesus Christ, who said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6)
We all know them; they are the famous passages. The passages everybody knows by heart and the passages every preacher uses when he gets preacher’s-block.
“Love the Lord your God…..”
“Be Holy because I am Holy…..”
“Love your neighbor…..”
And – invariably – some variation of, “The Kingdom of God/Heaven is like…..”
We all have passages we turn to first, passages we think embody the Gospel or our response to it, passages we use in counseling on a regular basis, passages we use in preaching and passages we think are foundational to the an understanding of the Kingdom (incidentally, my passage is Matthew 6:33).
Well, amongst these is Matthew 4: 18-22.
18As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19“Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” 20At once they left their nets and followed him. 21Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.
And more than knowing these (in)famous passages, we all know the standard interpretation of them.
If I had a dime for every time I heard a sermon encouraging us to embrace the reckless faith of the disciples who left their jobs as fishermen to follow Christ, I wouldn’t be paying off my wife’s student loans until the day I died (I’m pretty sure I would have to pay them back even if my wife died….).
So, far be it from me to stray from the pack and suggest an alternative reading; for indeed it is true we all should look to the aforementioned reckless faith of the disciples.
They did leave all they had ever known for the sake of following Christ, counting all things as loss for the sake of Jesus.
But let us not become beleaguered by whimsical or fantastic ideas that the disciples lived some fairytale life. They fished because they had no choice: it was their family business and they couldn’t make it anywhere else. They woke up early, went to bed late, and probably smelled like week-old sushi.
I imagine they were restless and discontent with their lives, and when Christ came along offering a chance at something bigger, they jumped on the bandwagon faster Los Angeles when the Dodgers make the playoffs.
Perhaps they had heard rumors and rumblings of this man baptized by John , perhaps they could connect the dots and thought perhaps this man just actually be the messiah, come to bring in political stability and throw off the heavy-handed Roman government, perhaps they saw how much they had to gain should this man turn out to truly be the messiah.
Me? What do I see in this passage?
I see the Son of God walking along the beach, offering purpose, meaning, and eternal life.
And I see four men – two sets of brothers – sick and tired of their seemingly dead-end lives, sick and tired of the same daily routines, sick and tired of looking for purpose and meaning in life. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into, but they left all they had and followed Christ.
Where does life find you today? Sick? Tired? Empty, purpose-less, and meaningless?
Look at your life, and you will see the Son of God offering to turn your life upside down.
Trust Him. He wants what is best for you – Himself.
Don’t stop at desiring God halfheartedly.
Leave everything behind, detach your heart from all this world offers, and follow Christ.
He doesn’t promise a better job, a faster car, or a bigger house.
But He does promise Himself, and with Him your life will never be the same again.
Late in the Gospel of Luke, after Christ has risen from the grave, He appears on the road to Emmaus and talks with two individuals, explaining the scriptures to them.
After, once He had revealed Himself to them and left their presence, they began to discuss what they had just witnessed. And this is what they said:
“They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”
– Luke 24:32
The word here for burning is kaio and means to set on fire, light, or consume with fire.
How often are our hearts consumed with passion and desire over the truth and power of Jesus Christ?
How often are we a light to the world around us, desperate to make God known and see His name glorified?
I pray that our emotional high’s and spiritual excitement would give way to a consistent, burning passion that consumes us with desire for God’s kingdom.
In Mark chapter 4 we have the account of Christ napping in the rear of a boat while the disciples fearfully prepare for the impending doom threatened on them by the storm. The disciples find themselves in the middle of a roaring windstorm – directionless and afraid - and they are stymied by the fact that all Christ can do is lay down in the back of the boat and sleep.
And so it is with us: so often we face times of tumult, turmoil, and tragedy, only to feel abandoned by God – as if He didn’t care and were asleep on the job.
But remember this: God is God. God is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, and a multitude of other attributes that – a list that would take books to enumerate.
He has the power to prevent storms from arising in our lives, but He still allows them.
If He could prevent them, but chooses not to, then He must have a purpose and a plan for the storm.
I imagine that after Christ was roused from His slumber and caused the storm to give way, the disciples were instilled with a deeper level of awe and trust in their Lord.
So in the midst of the storms that arise as if out of nowhere, threaten to sink you, and cause you to feel isolated and abandoned, remember who God is, and that He has a purpose for your storm.
CS Lewis said: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Turn to God when He shouts, be still and know He is God (Psalm 46:10).
