Recalled to Life

The Apostle Paul’s Concern for the Thessalonians

We'll turn, if you would, to 1 Thessalonians, in chapter 3. I'll read verses 1 through 10, though the preaching text will be verses 6 through 10. You may recall last week, verses 1 through 5, we saw how concerned the Apostle Paul was for the Thessalonians.

He knew that they were under severe affliction, that there were many trials coming upon them. He knew it was the devil who was seeking to drive them away from their faith, and he was extremely distraught over it, and what was really distressing him was not knowing if Satan, if the devil, had actually had a success story for him to boast of there with the Thessalonians.

He needed to know whether or not this was the case. He needed to know if his effort had been in vain, and so what he did was he sent out Timothy, as we learned last week. And this week, in verses 6 through 10, we're going to see what Timothy found out and the report he brought back to the Apostle, and we will have that report and Paul's response to it as we go through these verses, verses 6 through 10, this morning.

So please stand as we read God's Word. 1 Thessalonians, chapter 3, verses 1 through 10. This is the Word of God. Therefore, when we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone, and we sent Timothy, our brother and God's co-worker in the gospel, to establish and exhort you in your faith that no one be moved by these afflictions.

For you yourselves know that we are destined for this. For when we were with you, we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction just as it has come to pass and just as you know. For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.

Now this morning's text, but now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us as we long to see you, for this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction, we have been comforted about you through your faith.

For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord. For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith.

God bless the reading and now the hearing of his word. Please be seated. You know many years ago, it was actually back in the early 1980s, I sat for my professional accounting exams and to pass these exams and to gain the certification that success would bring was a real necessary cog in the wheel of my career, if you will.

I probably could have kept my job even without the certification that success would have gained me if I passed the exams, but only probably and then without much chance for advancement. Successful completion would set me on course for a productive career.

It would bring professional standing and associations that would help me along. In a word, it was really, really important, and I worked very, very hard preparing for those exams. I had thought, though, that the hard part was the preparing, that it was the sleepless nights, that it was going back through the books and studying all the practice books that you get for that.

I thought that was the hard part, but it turns out that preparing, as hard as preparing was, wasn't the hardest part. And the exams were hard. They were harder than I expected, and that wasn't the hardest part.

The hardest part of the whole process came after the exams were over. I'd taken all four parts of the exam instead of breaking them up, as some people wisely did, and after I turned in my papers, and I was walking out in the parking lot, I hadn't even gotten to the car when I was already kicking myself for having taken all four parts at once instead of breaking it up and giving myself a little more space to study.

And then came the really hard part, the waiting. The waiting. Even having been told that the results would take about three weeks, this is pre-email, folks. This is way, way back. So I had to wait for the snail mail, as we call it now.

Even knowing that it would take about three weeks, I couldn't believe it was taking three weeks. To borrow from Paul's words, I could not bear not knowing what was happening with my exams and whether I passed.

Unlike Paul, though, I had no Timothy to send. I couldn't call. I couldn't do anything to rush the process along. And like Paul, though, like Paul, I did have this gnawing fear that all my work might have been in vain.

The waiting was the hard part, and I think you can relate to that in many ways. You apply for schools, and you wait to see if your application got accepted. You turn in a thesis or a dissertation, and you wait to see if your defense gained you the degree.

Or you go to the doctor, and he takes a biopsy, and you wait for the results for yourself. Or perhaps for a husband, or a wife, or a child. The waiting. I think many of us can agree, this is the hardest part.

And the more important the thing is, the harder it is to wait. And the sooner we get to this point where Paul was and say, I can bear it no longer. And yet oftentimes, there's nothing we can do about it.

Most of us have been there. Maybe not accounting exams like I was taking back in the 80s, but the other things. Waiting for applications, for medical diagnoses, those sorts of things. Well, the Apostle Paul was there.

He couldn't bear not knowing if the Thessalonians had withstood this assault against their faith. So what does he do? He sends Timothy. And in the verses before us, in verses 6 through 10, Timothy brings back this encouraging report.

It's filled with love for the Apostle, and assurances that the gospel of Jesus Christ remained front and center for them. Satan, or excuse me, Paul had feared Satan's success, and that his efforts there had been for nothing.

And now as deep as were those fears, real fears, that the enemy has succeeded, as deep as those fears were, so high now does he soar in thanksgiving to God for the good report he heard. Can you relate to that?

When you've been waiting for the news, that doctor's test, that application, and when you get the good news, if it is good news, if indeed good news, how high do we soar after that? Well, how deep had the Apostle Paul fallen?

How deep had he fallen? We can gain from looking at verse 8 for just a moment, and we'll dig into our text and start at verse 6 and go through it in order, but I want us to see how far down he was, because in verse 8, when he got the good report from Timothy, the encouraging report from Timothy, verse 8, he says, Now having heard from Timothy, we live.

His fears, his worries, his sleepless nights have been so severe that by comparison to his joy at the good news, that previous angst had been a kind of a living death. He says, now that we have good news, now we live.

Here was the cure. Here was the balm that brought him back to life. Here's the reason that my title for my sermon is shamelessly borrowed from Dickens for this message, recalled to life. The Thessalonians' faith in Christ, their abiding love for the Apostle, as it were, recalled Paul to life.

He says, for now we live. I want you to have in your minds, as we go through these verses, that you must not underestimate the power there is in simply telling a fellow Christian that you are still believing.

The Thessalonians sent back with Timothy and said, Paul, we believe. And Paul said, now we live. And many of you who are in Christ, all of you who are in Christ, I should say, have that same simple, powerful testimony available to others.

That simple testimony from the Thessalonians took the Apostle Paul to such heights of thanksgiving that his earlier dread was like death. And that's how powerful it was to hear simply this, they're still believing.

Are you still believing? If you are still believing in Jesus Christ, if you believe in him today, then you have this powerful testimony that could do the kind of good for others that the Thessalonian report did for Paul.

So let's look at these verses. Let's look at these verses in order and see how this worked out in Paul's response to Timothy's report. I want to look first at just what the news was that caused the Apostle Paul to write, for now we live.

What was it he heard? Well, it's pretty simple. Verse 6,. But now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought the good news, so there it is, the good news, literally the gospel. It's from the Greek word for gospel that we have there.

One of the few times it's ever used, not preaching the gospel itself. He brought us the good news. He brought us this gospel of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us as we long to see you.

Faith and love. That was the report, that faith and love, kind memories, a desire to be reunited. You know the expression no love lost? What that usually means is that there's no kindness between two people, that they're enemies.

There's no love lost between this country and this country, therefore they're at war, that sort of thing. No love lost. They hate each other. But if we use the expression here to describe the love between the Thessalonians and Paul, we could say no love lost, meaning that their love was full, that not a drop of love between them was missing.

The love was complete. Paul's famous triad is faith, hope, and love, and here he just speaks of faith and love. But he says in 1 Corinthians 13 13 that the greatest of these is love. And that's sort of interesting if you think of this.

The apostle who teaches us in the New Testament so much about faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God. All that is not from faith is sin, and on we could go. So you'd expect him to say something like the greatest of faith, hope, and love is faith.

You must have faith in Jesus Christ, but he doesn't. Says the greatest of these is love. And I think this is what in the Thessalonian report really set Paul at ease and caused him to just go into this paroxysm as it were of thanksgiving to God, the love that they had for him.

Love is key. Love is the necessary outflow of true faith in Jesus Christ. The Apostle John puts it this way, if anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

Love for the brethren is proof of faith in God. The two go hand-in-hand in this good report from Timothy to Paul. Love for the brethren, love for each other is proof that you have true faith in Christ.

For the love of God has been poured in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who's been given to us says the Apostle Paul. Now this is more than just an easy mental assent about yes, okay, we're supposed to love each other.

The Apostle says it, I believe it, so therefore I'm doing it. Galatians 5, 6 says something of this. It says that the matter that is important is faith working through love. It's not just a mental assent.

It's not just working out in technical aspects. It's okay, love is duty, love is service. I'm going to give duty. I'm going to do my service. It is that. We don't give up on duty. We don't give up on service.

But I think there's something deeper. Can we even say emotional? This sent the Apostle Paul up from the depths of despair to this thanksgiving to God, faith working through love. And you think about this for a moment, and why was the Apostle Paul so concerned?

Well, he had reason to believe he knew in fact that there was demonic activity against the Thessalonians, but on a more physical level, think of it, if someone came along to you and got you to buy into a program and then left you, and when they left you, they left you with nothing but affliction.

You're losing your jobs because of this program you bought into. You're losing your friends. You're excluded from society. What would you think of that person? What if I was a salesman, and I did that for you?

I called you up a week later and said, how you doing? Well, great. I bought into what you sold me, and now I'm all alone. Everybody hates me. How would you feel about me? Well, I exaggerate the case in order to make the point that this could have been the Apostle Paul's concern.

Knowing what was happening to the Thessalonians as a result of the gospel that he had brought to them, but they sent back with Timothy something like this. When Timothy came to see how they were, and he exhorted them, and he built them up by preaching the Word of God to them, and came back with this report, he said something like this.

He says, or they told Timothy to say something like this, you tell Paul our love for him remains true. You tell Paul that our love for him remains true, and it's not for his sake. It's for the Jesus that he opened our eyes to.

You tell Paul that we love him. He's not only welcome back here, but we long to see him. And you tell Paul that we're standing true in the faith that he taught us about. It's powerful words. You know, it doesn't say you tell Paul that we figured out the systematic theologies of the Old Testament, or that we can describe the difference between super and infralapsarianism.

And we've got all the eschatological theses down, which of course they didn't. That's part of the reason for the letter that will come much later. Not today. Don't worry. We're not going to go that far.

No, you just tell Paul we're still believing. We love him as the one who brought us the gospel, and you tell him that we're holding true to the faith. And I ask you, is there someone in your orbit who needs to hear such a powerful thing from you?

And I do use the word powerful. I mean it. A powerful tonic. Is there someone whose flagging spirit needs to hear something no more complicated, but no less enlivening? Can we say life-giving? The Apostle Paul says, for now we live nothing more than I want you to know that I'm holding on to Christ and my love for you because of him.

There's someone in your orbit who needs to hear that. You don't even have to know that they're in the depths where Paul was. We're to build one another up. We're to edify one another. We're to exhort one another into the image of Christ as we grow together.

Who do you know who needs to hear this? Maybe it's a missionary. Maybe it's a fellow believer. Maybe it's a pastor or two who needs to know that their work has not been in vain. That you're still believing.

Maybe somebody needs to hear, you know, I'm believing now. We're holding true to the faith, and by the way, you've had a little bit to do with it. This is what Paul heard. Paul, the great, the zealous, the brave, the durable Apostle, he needed to hear this.

How much more the average believer? People in your circle. It's a comforting message that you bring when you tell others that you still believe in. It's a comforting message. Look at verse 7. For this reason, brothers, in all our distress and affliction, we have been comforted about you through your faith.

Now Paul wrote this from Corinth, and Corinth was a hotbed of immorality and of idol worship, and in Corinth, we can read in chapter 18 of Acts, he was getting nowhere. He was having a hard time of it.

We read in the first part of Acts chapter 18 that he met up with fellow tent makers Aquila and Priscilla, and he had to support himself in his tent making trade, and while he was supporting himself making tents, which seems like hard work, they didn't have sewing machines then, he would be working all day and evangelizing in the evening, I would imagine, going to the synagogues for their Sabbath day and proclaiming to them Jesus Christ, and going on and on trying to persuade the Jews about Jesus, and nothing to show for it for his efforts, but a new day to go and begin again.

How bad was it? He speaks of all his affliction. They were going on there. He's writing to them from an afflicted point of view. How bad was it? We read in chapter 18 verse 9 of Acts, where Jesus speaks to him personally, audibly.

He says, do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many people in the city who are my people. You think of how hard it was for the Apostle Paul for Jesus Christ himself to come and have to say those words to him, the distress and affliction that he was under, and soon after Jesus speaks to him in that way, the next thing you know, there's a riot, and then the magistrate of the town sort of shrugs his shoulders.

He wants no part of a religious dispute. One of Paul's few converts named Sostenes is beaten, and the magistrate just kind of, you know, this is just not my problem. Certainly, he was distressed and afflicted, and on top of all this, his concern for the Thessalonians.

If he could hardly stand it, if he could write, for we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. In 2nd Corinthians, he wrote that. If he could write that, imagine how worried he was over the neophyte Thessalonians.

Here it was Paul, who's distressed, who's afflicted, who's so burdened, he's despairing of life, and this is Paul. Think of these rookies in the faith in Thessalonia, Thessalonica, excuse me, under the same kind of assault, but far less experienced in the spiritual warfare.

So what's the point of all this? I want you to understand that Paul was a man like the rest of us. He was a fallen man like all of us are. He needed to know that his life's work meant something. He needed something other than an unbroken string of rejections.

He needed to know he was having some impact. So we got from verses 1 through 5. He didn't know, he needed to know it wasn't all futility. I wonder if he felt like Jim Kelly. Have you ever heard of Jim Kelly?

He was a great quarterback. He's still alive. He was a very fine quarterback. He quarterbacked for the Buffalo Bills. And he did something that no quarterback has done. Not even the great Tom Brady. Just as a quick aside, okay, I was a football fan.

I'm not so much anymore. And in a very temporal way, I really hate Tom Brady, but give him his due. He's the greatest. But Tom Brady did not do what Jim Kelly did. He went to four consecutive Super Bowls as the quarterback of really fine football teams.

1991 through 94, and you know what happened? He lost all four. He lost four Super Bowls in a row. Not him, he had a team around him, but still he becomes this symbol of futility. Of just the agony of defeat after defeat after defeat.

Four in a row. And I wonder if the Apostle Paul was feeling this way. He was distressed and afflicted in Corinth. He had been in Philippi and got violently chased out of Philippi, and then he's in Thessalonica.

And he got violently chased out of Thessalonica, and he's in Berea, and he gets violently chased out of Berea. Now he's in Corinth, and he's having no impact in Corinth. You see, there's always this fear of futility, this fear of uselessness.

That it's just not working out, and I'm having no impact here. If Satan used flattery to afflict the Thessalonians, that's in last week's message. This flattery of, come on, you can come on back to us.

We're gonna love you again. And you could just be fine, and you're the grandest person if you just come away from this Christianity stuff and back to the fold. Powerful tool. But another tool he uses is discouragement.

Discouragement. You're wasting your time believing this invisible God. Why do you preach? Nobody pays attention. Who's gotten what you call saved of late? We look at our children. We look at our friends.

And we tell them about Jesus Christ who died for your sins and was buried, and God raised him from the dead for our justification. And we tell people why we believe in him. I say, well, that's really nice.

What a cute little faith you have, and we just don't have the impact that we hope to have. That before God we want to have. I wonder if the Apostle Paul was feeling that way. And not just the Apostle Paul.

You know, discouragement can set in to the people we think are the highest and must be the most vulnerable or most immune to it. Excuse me. It's not just Paul. It's not just you. It's not just pastors who are vulnerable to this.

I want you to look at Isaiah, if you would turn there, please. Isaiah chapter 49 and verse 3. I'm gonna read to you just a couple of verses, just a little bit of this conversation between these two. And the two are God the Father and Jesus his Son.

Now, it's the pre-incarnate Son. It's before his incarnation, clearly. And it's prophetic as God the Father is speaking to his Son about what he's going to do when he sends him. And I'm gonna fill in the names of these pronouns here.

Are you turning there? Isaiah 49 verse 3. And look at verse 4. Remember, this is the pre-incarnate Christ Jesus. But I said, I have labored in vain. I've spent my strength for nothing and vanity. You see, it's not just Paul.

It's not just you or me. The Lord Jesus Christ, in his humanity, saw futility. He made very few converts. At one point, in a very human way, in John chapter 6, after many disciples left him because of the hardness of his teaching, he turns to the Twelve.

And he says, do you want to go away as well? In his humanity, you can almost hear him praying, no, please don't leave me. Please, Father, keep them with me. I need to have some success here. Of course, he didn't say that.

He was God and man. But in his humanity, can you see that when he turns to the Twelve after so many disciples walked away? He says, do you want to go away as well? Well, it's Peter who speaks up, much as the Thessalonians did to Paul.

And he says, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. What could lift the Apostle Paul up? The answer is the Thessalonians' faith.

If we have Jesus turning in humanity to the disciples and saying, are you going to leave me too? What could lift him up? Peter saying, you are the Holy One of God. We have come to believe your words. We believe this gospel.

And then as this, as the gospel continues, then Jesus Christ keeps teaching his disciples, turns his face towards Jerusalem, and goes there as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He goes to the cross.

You see, your faith, your simple unadorned faith, might be just the elixir that will remind a struggling saint that it's all worth it. Tell of your faith. When we say, don't keep your faith, share it, we usually mean that evangelistically, don't we?

To go out and share your faith with others who don't know Jesus Christ. Well, don't stop doing that, but I want to add something to that. Don't keep your faith, share it with me. Tell me, tell Pastor Owens, I'm still believing.

Tell the brother or sister next to you. You never know who might need to hear it, who might be in the depths of despair, of affliction right now. I need to hear that someone just like me is keeping the faith.

Does that mean you have to be going through the kind of troubles and anxieties I am? No, it doesn't mean that at all. Just a reminder that someone's keeping the faith. And even in my trials, I can too.

The great Apostle Paul had to hear this. It was such a refreshment to him. He looked back and said, this was like death because now I live. Sometimes just letting somebody know, I'm still believing. In a world gone mad and going madder, I still believe in Jesus Christ.

Jesus, in his humanity, needed to hear this from all too human Peter. And Paul needed to hear this from the all too immature Thessalonians. And I can almost assure you, there's someone who needs to hear that from you.

Just that simple. Your faith, your faith can be so powerful. Just to know that you're keeping it. Peter writes in 1 Peter 1 .7 that your faith in Jesus Christ is more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire.

And it may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Precious in God's eyes because your faith was won by his son's precious blood. Precious to the saints because it is able to sustain each other's spiritual well-being.

It's a very comforting message. Don't underestimate the power of the comfort that you could have just by letting somebody know you're still believing. It's a life-giving message. When you tell others that you're still believing.

It could be life-giving. And that's verse 8, which is in the center of these verses. And I think it's the main point. I'll read it again. For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord. Now, if you're standing fast in the way it's written in the original Greek means seeing that you are standing fast in the Lord.

We'll get no more technical than that. Now we live because I see that you are standing fast in the Lord. And that's why I borrowed from Dickens, Recall to Life, for the title of this message. Recall to Life is the name of the first book of the Tale of Two Cities.

The lawyer Jarvis Lorry, he finds out that this man, Dr. Manette, hadn't died in the Bastille during the French Revolution as his family thought he had. And he gets a communication that not only is he alive, he's soon to be released.

His friends and family thought he was dead. And so that first book of the book, Tale of Two Cities, is called Recall to Life. Here in our text this morning, it's as if Paul didn't realize just how bad it was until Timothy's report gave fresh wind to his sails.

He was recalled to life by the knowledge that the Thessalonians were standing fast in the Lord. You know, it's difficult to the point of impossible to keep laboring when a great fear or worry is gnawing away at you.

I think this is what the Apostle Paul meant when he said, well, I could bear it no longer. I just couldn't keep going with the afflictions I was having in Corinth and my concerns for you. I just couldn't go on.

I can't concentrate. I can't put my words together anymore. When I was waiting for the results of my exam, the one that if I passed would so help me in my career, I was so dominated by worry about it that my career started to go the wrong direction.

It began to be a wonder if I would have a job by the time the results even came in because I was so focused on waiting for that and it was worrying me so much. How do we come out of that? Well, I got something in the mail that brought me out of that.

But in the spiritual realm, in the church, what becomes so important is the human touch. We live by faith, not by sight, yet the Lord created us to need each other. Jesus needed to hear Peter's affirming words.

Paul needed to hear the Thessalonians' affirming words in the same way that you and I do. I need it and you need it. We all need to hear this confirmed sometimes that when we look around, we're looking at others who are standing fast in the Lord, that others are having the same kind of struggles or maybe not even have a struggle but we're hanging on.

Your message could be comforting, just as simple as I'm still believing. Your message can be life-giving. To draw somebody up and say, there's somebody still believing, I can still believe. Your message of standing fast can enliven other people's prayers.

You can drive them back to prayer. Look at verse 9 and 10. For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith.

You know, we often say that God works through means. Common expression in the church, God works through means. And what we mean by that is that God works through ordinary tools, the ordinary things of life to accomplish his extraordinary purposes.

But think about it for just a moment, how God works through means. Do you remember when the Israelites came to the bitter waters and they were ready to stone Moses? They said, why didn't we just go die in Egypt?

Why did you bring us out here to die? This water is terrible, we can't drink this stuff. And God says, throw a log in it. What? So Moses gets a log and he throws it in the water and they're clean. Well, it's a miracle.

It's an extraordinary miracle, but he worked through this means of a log. You think of the extraordinary victories that King David had, but he won them with an ordinary sword. You think of Jesus restoring a man's sight with mud.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. God brings faith, eternal life to lost souls by something so ordinary as mere words. God works through means, ordinary stuff used to accomplish extraordinary purposes.

Regular people just being obedient, being faithful, like the Thessalonians. They were only recently converted to Jesus. He only spent three, maybe four weeks there. But their faith was solid. Their faith was solid.

Their knowledge was immature, but their faith was secure. They were mixed up about holy living and they were especially mixed up about the Lord's return. Who are they to actually lift the spirits of the directly inspired apostle?

Who indeed? Like I said, they didn't have systematic theology. They didn't have any of their doctrines down very well. They were immature in every way you can imagine. And the great apostle, who when he was a Pharisee studied under the great rabbi Gamaliel.

Who are these babes to lift him up? Paul can hardly wait to get on his knees and thank God as the only one to whom credit is due for this good report that so lifted him up out of the doldrums. Paul had been concerned that they weren't even in the faith.

That all his work was for nothing, had been in vain. They had misunderstood, he had misunderstood the signs of their salvation. Chapter 1 verses 3 and 5, he says, and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

Could he now be thinking, before that report came from Timothy, was I wrong? Did I misread all the signs? Verse 7, he says that they had become examples to the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 1 Thessalonians 2 .13.

He accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God which is at work in you believers. Could he have been wondering if he was mistaken even about that? That he misread everything?

Is that why Corinth was so hard a nut to crack? God used the life-giving, spirit-refreshing report to turn Paul's mourning into dancing. You read about that in Psalm chapter 30 verse 11. It's what Peter wrote about.

He said, All the doubts that Paul had, all the fears and concerns, turned around by this good report. A report as simple as just this. Paul, we love you. We're hanging on to Jesus. God reminded him that the only Thanksgiving he could return to him was just that, Thanksgiving.

He says, what Thanksgiving can we return to God for all this? That's the answer. Thanksgiving. Thank you, Lord, for that good report. Thank you, Lord, for that shot in the arm. For bringing me from these doldrums, from a living death, into life again.

To acknowledge God as the giver of every good and perfect gift. I think Paul is alluding there to Psalm 116 in verse 10. The psalmist writes,. And then upon the good news that he received, can we see him transitioning?

I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. Paul was brought back to life, as it were, by the Thessalonian report. By the good news that their faith was solid and their love for him was secure.

And Paul rendered back to God, nothing but thanksgiving and desire and prayer to see the Thessalonians again. We close this message I would just ask you, do you realize that you could be the one to turn some saint's mourning into dancing?

To remind them of all the thanksgiving that they owe to God? Do you realize how powerful their faith really is? By grace you've been saved through faith. By grace you've been saved from the prospect of going to hell forever.

By grace you've been saved through faith. How powerful is your faith? Powerful enough to take a lost, broken, rebellious sinner, a hater of God, and turn him into a lover of Jesus Christ, a believer in the cross, his death and his burial and his resurrection.

Powerful enough to do that. And yet, do we realize also that that faith that you have, that you can state to another person, is the same powerful faith? Don't underestimate the power of the faith that Christ has given you.

The Thessalonians' simple affirmation of their faith in Jesus and their love for Paul lifted them out of this dark pit and put words of praise back on his lips. Consider this question. Who do you need to tell of your continuing faith and your strong love?

Who do you need to tell that you're simply still believing and still loving the saints because of your love for Christ Jesus? Amen? Heavenly Father, we thank you once again for bringing us together, for giving us a day of worship, a day to consider your word.

I pray, Father, that we would have our faith solid in Jesus Christ and our love for one another would be fervent. And that the testimony and the example that we be to one another would be that which would bring us closer to the image of Christ Jesus and much honor to his name.