Thoughts From 1Thessalonians - Day 2

2 We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. 3 We 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.

4 For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. 6 You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. 7 And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 8 The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, 9 for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

1Thes. 1:2-10

      I have been on multiple mission trips and led over 100 to the Lord both here and abroad and yet wonder how many of these will greet me in Heaven? In Sunday School we just looked at the unjust steward in Luke 16. The bottom line was use your worldly resources in such a way that they further the gospel so when you die, the people who got saved from the use of "your" wealth will be there to welcome you. How many people will welcome me? I won't know till I get there. Is there any way to tell, while we are visiting this planet, who is truly saved? Not completely as the parable of the wheat and tares explains. Are there some signs that a tare has turned into wheat? Yes there are as seen in this passage. There are 7 that I see.

              First, they will begin to work. They will want to use their spiritual gifts for the body of Christ. Service prompted and energized by the Holy Spirit indwelling them.

               Secondly, there should be a new hope. They should start living from the perspective that Jesus is coming back and this world is passing away and we aren't discouraged by all we see on TV or social media but encouraged by a new hope.

               Third, a deep conviction that manifests itself in prayer, Bible study, worship, Church attendance, etc. Basically the faith got to your core and you want to get past the surface belief.

              Fourth, new inner circle friends. You are an imitator of Christ and even more humbling, fellow believers who are further ahead of you in their walk with Christ. You get a new peer group and the common denominator, you are all imitators of Christ

                Fifth, new God. In the past you had gods/idols. You may have worshipped money, comfort, pleasure, adoration, physical appearance, power, sports, entertainment, but now you worship Jesus and nothing really else matters.

             Sixth, this new found joy and hope endures. 6 months/ a year later people are saying, I can't believe how this person changed!

             Lastly, witnessing. Reproduction is something life does. Jesus said that if we confess Him before men, He will confess us before the Father.

            So, as a new believer do we write down this checklist and "work out our salvation with fear and trembling?" That is a thought but ideally, if the Holy Spirit has transformed you from a tare to a wheat, it should happen organically. His wheat DNA is inside you making you do "wheaty" things. Surrender to His control.

               

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Thoughts From 1 Thessalonians - Day 1

 Paul, Silas and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

Grace and peace to you.  1:1

        In Acts 17:1-10 we see Paul on his second missionary journey going to Thessalonica and as usual preaches in the synagogue and reasons with them that Jesus is the messiah. He reasoned with them from the Bible that they had, the Old Testament in Greek - the Septuagint, that the Messiah did not come to be a political deliverer but to suffer, die on a cross, and rise again. If you think the Old Testament was just for Jews and not Gentiles, think again, because a large number of gentiles including prominent women were converted/persuaded. During the week they stayed at Jason's house, which I like to call Jason's Deli, and he taught from there. I wonder if he made tents and while working engaged people in conversations.

        Anyway, a number of people were believing, enough so that the religious leaders stirred up a mob to get at Paul but he couldn't be found and because of the danger he moved on to Berea. This is how the church of Thessalonica started and Thessalonians was written to answer some questions that they had because Paul couldn't stay long.

       I meet with some 11th grade boys from church to disciple them and i said to them, "I know, I believed Christianity because I was raised in a Christian home. (on a side note, it's interesting that our political affiliations also seem to cling to us) At your age I began to question do I really believe this or have I been brainwashed? I had to find answers for the questions I had about Christianity to assure myself that it is the truth. Do you have any doubts or questions that I might be able to help you with?" One of the boys said, "When I have questions I just go to YouTube and Cliff answers them." I figured out that he meant Cliff Knechtle with "Give me an answer" ministries. The first 2000 years of Christianity did not have access to the immediate answers that we have today. Just think, if the Thessalonians could do that, we wouldn't have 1&2 Thessalonians. Wouldn't that be a shame! On the other hand, what a blessing to be able to have doubts immediately put to rest.

     The internet has great dangers for youth but also great faith strengthening tools. Lets teach our youth how to use the internet!

Messing With Satan

 "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one" Matt. 6:13

Back in the 90's as I was directing my 4 kids into following Christian music artists, a guy came on the scene named Carman. He did theatrical, well produced music videos and concerts and the concerts were free. We went to see him at Thompson Boling arena in Knoxville and it was packed. He even set a record for having the largest Christian concert ever, somewhere around 78,000. A lot of his "schtick" was bossing Satan around and telling him that he was a loser thanks to the blood of Jesus as seen in this video

  The problem was that Satan is not to be trifled with. First of all, most of us don't even need to bother with him because we are living lives that are not threatening to him in the least. In fact, many "Christians" are living lives that are helping his cause because people are saying, "If that's a Christian, I don't want to be one."

         Second, Satan is not omnipresent so his sends his demons to defeat us. Most of us aren't enough of a threat that we'd even experience him in our lifetimes. Someone like Martin Luther, who started the reformation, felt tormented by Satan and was said to have thrown an inkwell across the room at him, leaving a mark on the wall. Insane? Maybe. But just maybe, Luther was such a danger that Satan didn't trust sending the underlings but came in person. Satan asked permission to sift Peter. He asked permission to destroy Job. Jesus tells the disciples to pray for deliverance from Satan because they were going to become world changers and would be attacked. In fact, His high priestly prayer in John 17 was filled with prayers for protection for His disciples because He wouldn't be around for three days to keep Satan away from them. Most of us don't pose that kind of threat. Pray we do.

         Thirdly, he is more powerful than us. I don't think we can drop kick him, tell him to bite the dust, or boss him around. Jude says, 

"they reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings. But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” Yet these people slander whatever they do not understand..."

    So if even the strongest archangel, who could wipe us out immediately, didn't mess with Satan, what makes us think we can?

       So what's my point. Don't mock Satan. Don't relish a confrontation with him. Pray for protection. Be humble. Don't be afraid because God's more powerful but don't be like the 7 sons of Sceva who just a minion said, "Paul I know but who are you?" Don't think you are something you aren't.

The Cure For Anxiety

 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.  Phil. 4:6-9

    In a world filled with anxiety and no peace, where the most popular medicines are nerve pills, depression medicine, high blood pressure medicine, ulcer pills and the like, What is the real cure? Paul gives it to us in Philippians 4. But what does it mean to think about "lovely" things. Are we to think about daisies, daffodils, blue sky, and humming birds? Maybe we can go to our Happy Gilmore happy spot? Actually "lovely" in the greek is prosphiles or pros - towards philos - love. Towards love. In other words our thoughts are to go towards loving people.

   When someone does you wrong, rather than thinking about the injustice, how to right the wrong and what to do to get even, which are anxiety inducing thoughts, we should think about how to express love towards that person. If we are consumed by a heart of love, which only the Holy Spirit can give, no one can do anything bad to us. Anything "bad" that happens to us is just an opportunity to love and the worse it is the more the flame of love is fanned.

  Psychologists tell us that anxiety and depression are usually caused by anger turned inward. In other words, anger that is allowed to fester eats us up from the inside. It steals all our joy and peace (not to mention seratonin). Let's fill our minds with thoughts toward love so that the fruit of the Spirit, the peace of God, can be borne on our branches.

Are you doing greater things than Jesus?

" I tell you the truth anyone who has faith in me, will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these because I am going to the father." John, 14:12

     In a day and age when believers do not want to miss out on all God has for them we are wondering where are all the miraculous signs and wonders that the apostles and Jesus did ...today? After all we are going to do greater things than Christ did, right? 

     What could be greater than raising someone from the dead but raising two people from the dead? Christ did that. What could be greater than feeding 4000 but 5000? Christ did that. What could be greater than walking on stormy waves but to tell the storms to stop. Christ did that. No, the only thing Christ didn’t do was to raise the spiritually dead to life until he went to the father, was glorified, and then sent the Holy Spirit to Earth  

       That is why he would do miracles and each time the disciples would wonder "what manner of man is this"? That’s why after he would feed the multitudes, the next day, they would wonder where they would get food. This is why he would clearly tell the disciples three times that he would be handed over, put to death and raised from the tomb on the third day, and when it happened, they were all dumbfounded . 

      What can we do today greater than Christ? We can actually share the gospel and in front of our own eyes because of the Holy Spirit, we can see the spiritually dead come to life. That is why Paul said in Philemon," I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ."

 Have you raised anyone from the dead lately? 

The Unforgivable Sin

 "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven, is guilty of an eternal sin,"

                                                                                                                           Mark 329

Is there a sin, so heinous that it can’t be forgiven? Have you committed it? 

No sin is so evil that it cannot be forgiven. However, when the remedy is rejected, there remains no cure.

           The Holy Spirit was the final culmination of God‘s plan. Why else would Jesus say that "it is better for you that I go to my father so that the Holy Spirit may be sent?" Why else would Jesus go around teaching about the living water waiting to come inside? A person who died of heart failure could receive a post-mortem heart transplant, but unless they are made alive, they would be nothing but a corpse with a good heart. This is the condition of mankind after Jesus' death and resurrection.  After 40 days of personal post resurrection instruction by the son of God , the disciples ask, "so when are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" They still were not made alive by the Holy Spirit and had in their minds the things of man not God. That’s why Jesus told them not to leave or teach until the Holy Spirit came.

        After God has made you and brought you back to life with the blood of his own son, to deny the Holy Spirit control of your life, and say," the power and authority of my life belongs to me not the Holy Spirit", is the sin, for which there is no further cure. Is this not equal to giving the devil the glory? After all, according to the Satanic Bible, the devil doesn’t ask us to worship him, he just wants us to worship ourselves. 

The question is not, have you committed the unforgivable sin?, but rather are you committing it? 

The Unlikely Key to Cleaning Out Our Heart

            A scary thought is that my heart's default mode is no different than the Pharisees' who Jesus had nothing but harsh words for. He discussed this broken condition first when he talked about eating "clean and unclean" food ..

 “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” Mark 7:20-23

        Jesus added to this in Luke 11 where he said in verses 34-36...

 "Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.”

       Putting these two thoughts together and applying it to me it is saying that I could live a life in this unclean world without it defiling me and give the proper response to the corrupt society around me by letting the darkness out and letting the light of Christ in me have full reign. How that might play out is to watch a gay pride march and respond with love rather than disgust. I might get persecuted for sharing the gospel and respond with "Father forgive them, they don't know what they are doing." It would make me weep for people's souls rather than pray God's judgment on them. And here's a thought... I could go to Hooters for the wings! Haha. I could use social media as my prayer list.

       If you think of your heart or soul having a chest with a lock and key that is jam packed with darkness like the things listed in Mark 7, and you want to clean the junk in the trunk (mind check), how do you get it out and replace it with the light of the Holy Spirit? What if I told you there is a passage in Luke that gives us the key to unlock the chest? Pretty exciting - right? Hold on because it isn't what you would think...

 "...the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you."  Luke 11:39-41

       The inside of the cup filled with the Mark 7 wickedness can all be let out and cleaned by being generous to the poor. Let's examine 8 reasons why this is the key to unlocking the chest and we can take a trip through Luke 12 and find most of them.

 1. Takes your mind off self - let's face it, we are all self centered. It's probably the most difficult part of our sin nature to get rid of and it's the first thing that demonstrates we have a sin nature in an infant. "Mine!", says the toddler.  Luke 12:15-21 demonstrates this...

The Parable of the Rich Fool

 “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “I have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

    Notice the 12 times he uses the personal pronoun and in response to this, God treats him in like manner 5 times. When we give to the poor we are saying, "This money isn't mine, I'm managing it for God." Not only that but it makes us a servant too putting us on even footing with everyone and you could argue subservient to others. What a way to cure self - centeredness!

   2. Takes focus off Kingdom of Earth and puts on Kingdom of Heaven - Notice how the parable ends; "rich toward God". Giving to the poor is akin to depositing your money in Heaven's banks. Look at verse 33...

 "Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys"

          The faith chapter in Hebrews 11 time after time commends our heroes for living for the future and not the present. From Moses who forsook the fame, power, treasures of Egypt and rather identified with the oppressed Israelites to Abraham who left comfort to live in a tent and go to who knows where. Of all the great things Joseph did, what's he praised for? Wanting his bones buried in the promised land! Want to get rid of some greed, envy, arrogance and folly? Send your treasures on ahead of you to heaven by giving them away to the poor and living modestly down here.

     3. Teaches a life of faith - If you give "your" money away to the poor, you have to trust God for your needs. Remember when the 72 got sent out they were told not to bring a bag, clothes, food, money along? Jesus was training them in trusting Him to meet their needs. Look at verses 22-31...

Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest? Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock."

             As the lottery approaches $650 million today I often think, "God, if you'd let me win that I could do some amazing things around here for the poor" and then I think His response would be, "If you'd trust Me enough to give Me your substantial retirement fund, we could build a pretty amazing homeless shelter and pay to have it staffed for some time." God doesn't want your excess - well, actually He does, but He wants enough to cause you to have to trust Him. He is just as much interested in you as He is in the poor.

           4. Teaches a life of moderation - In the above passage, Jesus mentions clothes, food, beauty, and work. How many pairs of shoes or suits do we really need? Wouldn't my BMI be better served by giving that food away? Why am I working 80 hours a week? To increase my net worth and retirement fund? I can take my botox money and do some pretty nice things for the rescue ministry. When you consider that 1.2 billion people on the earth try to survive on $1.00 a day, we should be ashamed of our excesses.

          5. Removes anxiety - When you have a lot stored up and you are mentally resting on that for your life security, there is a whole lot of time, energy, stress, worry, anxiety caused by following the market, cyber security, elections, taxes, inflation, recession, etc. I highlighted the number of times worry appears in the above passage to prove my point. And to further prove the point check out verse 33...

"Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys"

     That's what they worried about back in the day - thieves, moth, and rust.

       6. Teaches community - You might say, "OK, I do worry about losing my 'nest egg' but I'd worry a whole lot more if I didn't have one." I get that. I'm with you. If you scroll up you can see I made the word flock blue. What is a flock? It implies a whole herd of sheep. In the early community of believers we saw in Acts that they shared everything - no one lacked. In Mark 10:29,30, Jesus replies to the disciples...

... “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life"

      What is He saying? I think He is saying that when we become Children of God we join a common family with pooled resources. Wouldn't it be cool to go on vacation and contact a believer there and say"Hey, can I use your house for a week and you can use mine." Or, "I need some new tires and I gave all my money away", and ala "It's a Wonderful Life", money comes flowing from every direction. I truly believe that this is the way it is supposed to be.

   7. Teaches a life of imminency - When you are living for the distant future on earth there is no urgency.  You are looking for Jesus to come back and you want Him to find you "about His business". When you are living day to day , you are living urgently or in the moment. Look further in Luke 12...

..." But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware..." Luke 12:45,46

    8. Teaches grace- in a parallel passage in Luke 17 we read...

 “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

     When we experience God's grace we realize that we were that poor beggar too in need of spiritual food and Jesus, out of His riches became poor for us. How dare we treat others without grace.

         Do you really want to get rid of all the filth you/we have stored up on the inside? Open up the chest and let it out by not just giving but giving generously and sometimes painfully. See if God doesn't fill it up with grace, faith, hope, humility, peace, and love both for believers and unbelievers alike.