Saturday, May 20, 2023

       From Paul, Silas, and Timothy – To the people of the church in Thessalonica, who belong to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: May grace and peace be yours. ² We always thank God for you all and always mention you in our prayers. ³ For we remember before our God and Father how you put your faith into practice, how your love made you work so hard, and how your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ is firm. ⁴ Our friends, we know that God loves you and has chosen you to be his own. ⁵ For we brought the Good News to you, not with words only, but also with power and the Holy Spirit, and with complete conviction of its truth. You know how we lived when we were with you; it was for your own good. ⁶ You imitated us and the Lord; and even though you suffered much, you received the message with the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit. ⁷ So you became an example to all believers in Macedonia and Achaia. ⁸ For not only did the message about the Lord go out from you throughout Macedonia and Achaia, but the news about your faith in God has gone everywhere. There is nothing, then, that we need to say. ⁹ All those people speak about how you received us when we visited you, and how you turned away from idols to God, to serve the true and living God ¹⁰ and to wait for his Son to come from heaven – his Son Jesus, whom he raised from death and who rescues us from God’s anger that is coming.   1 Thessalonians 1:1 – 10                                                                       

       They need to be part of the family.  1/3 of the world is outside the reach of the Gospel.  1/3 of the world has never heard about the Lord Jesus, who loved them enough to die for their salvation.  1/3 of the world has much to offer our family, the Christian family, in culture, tradition, hymnody, and insight.  Our family is much poorer because we’re missing 1/3 of the world.  In Blakely, Georgia, one of the loops in the Bible Belt, that same scenario is lived out.  Though they’ve heard, though they know about, they don’t know Him.  They don’t know His love and thus, cannot adequately return it.  The same was true in Thessalonica before Paul and His team arrived.  Thessalonica was pre-Christian, living in ignorance of God and His love, but through the ministry of Paul and others, they came to believe!  And the message of God’s work in them spread and encouraged others.  Today, God is working, doing a new thing, in parts of the world.  O God, do it here!  Do it here in Blakely, Georgia where we have a hint of religion without a loving relationship.  Do it here … in me … that the world may know I am Yours!  Amen!