WEDNESDAY 6th
2 Thessalonians 1:3-4
NIV (vv3-4) – ‘We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.’
ESV (vv3-4) – ‘We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions that you are enduring.’
Back in 1 Thessalonians 3, Paul had asked that ‘our God and Father and our Lord Jesus . . . make you abound and increase in love for one another . . .’ as we get to the second epistle after his introduction and greeting, he acknowledges that what he had asked for in the first letter has happened, ‘we ought to give thanks . . . the love of every one of you for one another is increasing’. He also says that ‘your faith is growing abundantly’. The Church they had planted in Thessalonica was growing spiritually, and that was good news for Paul. They had remained in the faith, steadfast, despite all their persecutions and the afflictions which they had endured.
This Church is a model Church in the sense that they obviously lived out their faith in the hum-drum routine of life, and this was what enabled them to stand firm in the more difficult and perplexing moments.
Quite simply from this Church we can learn the need for us to be a people who grow in our love for one another, for as we show that love and care for one another, it will strengthen us as a body of believers and will enable us to be steadfast in the faith when the difficult moments arrive.
May we increase in love and our faith grow abundantly, that we the Church that meet in EPC Gateshead may be an example to others of our strong and resolute faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that is evidenced in our love and care for one another.