Category Archives: 1 Thessalonians

Dear brothers and sisters, we can’t help but thank God for you, because your faith is flourishing and your love for one another is growing. We proudly tell God’s other churches about your endurance and faithfulness in all the persecutions and hardships you are suffering. And God will use this persecution to show his justice and to make you worthy of his Kingdom, for which you are suffering.

2 Thessalonians 1:3-5

Dear God, I wonder what it was really like for the Thessalonians to get this encouragement from Paul in the midst of their persecution. I also think it’s of note that in the midst of their persecution he describes their faith as flourishing and their love for one another as growing.

I hear Christians in our country claim that we are being persecuted by nonbelievers in our society. I can’t help but wonder if that were really true, wouldn’t that mean our solidarity with each other and our faith would be growing? Instead, we seem to be in a cycle right now that includes anger and a spirit of fighting back. Perhaps we aren’t truly being persecuted, but maybe it’s the opposite. Could it be that we are the ones trying to do the persecuting?

Another slant to this is our own community. We have a myriad of social issues in our small town, but somehow it feels like the church is being crockpotted into lethargy. We are the frog in the pot on a slow path to boiling. Would it really take outright persecution to finally get the church fully engaged in the problems instead of passionately doing it proactively (and I use the word “passionately” intentionally because what we are currently doing is often half-hearted)? And what about me? I have some concerns about what’s going on, I articulate them to others, and I even get involved in some committees to explore them, but am I really out there pursuing you and passionately taking you into my community through addressing these issues?

Father, I feel like I need a spiritual B12 shot. I’m spending time with you, but there’s no sense of urgency to my activity. I would hate to think they I have to be really pressed to get to that sense of urgency. Help me to find a path to a little more intensity, and if it can be without any specific suffering, but just through my love for and worship of you I would welcome that—but not my will but your will be done.

In Jesus’ name I pray,

Amen

God’s will is for you to be holy, so stay away from all sexual sin. Then each of you will control his own body and live in holiness and honor— not in lustful passion like the pagans who do not know God and his ways.1 Thessalonians 4:3-5

Dear God, I wonder what it was like to stay away from sexual sin in Paul’s time versus now. I just spent a few days in New Orleans, and there was certainly no shortage of ways to sin sexually that would have been available 2,000 years ago, but that’s because I was in New Orleans. And maybe Thessalonica had similar opportunities. But what about small towns. Yes, I know our little town had a whorehouse 150 years ago, but now we have something so much worse and easier to keep private. Pornography. Especially pornography available through the Internet. 

Then there is the ability to secretly order women and even young girls (or even boys) on the Internet. The more I learn about human trafficking the more I see just how dark our hearts can be, and it all starts with us allow my ourselves to give into a little “lustful passion.”

Father, help me to keep myself pure and love everyone I can. Help me to be part of a solution for our society and not a helpless observer. Help me to know what that path is. Help me to know how to parent my children in this world. Please protect them. It’s all so overwhelming, I simply have no idea where to start. I guess I will just ask that you start with me. 

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen