Feeding the Sheep - Endurance
Because of the Master, we have great confidence in you. We know you’re doing everything we told you and will continue doing it. May the Master take you by the hand and lead you along the path of God’s love and Christ’s endurance."
-Paul writing a second letter to the first church in Thessalonica, 1st century
2 Thessalonians 3:1-5
[This is the 13th message of this series]
This lesson is intended for mature believers (or adulting believers). For a more orderly study, please go through all the previous messages first, if you haven't yet.
Never Give Up (Never Give In)
So the Apostle Paul wrote a second letter to the first church in the City of Thessalonica where we have taken a short excerpt above.
A quick takeaway from this is that Paul was telling the believers in this city to persevere just as they were already doing. But a second letter telling them to do so, seems to be that a substantial number of them may just be in the brink of giving up or may have already (giving in to the pressures pulling them back to the world they live in).
Pressure
As we have already mentioned in the previous message, the believers in this city have been living with all the pressures to do what the world wants everyone to do and so Paul was telling them that they (the church leaders) are also undergoing hardships like them in their own Christian walk. In essence no one is immune to what they were going through -- trials and tribulation. (Jesus told His disciples about this -- in this world they will have trouble but to take heart because He has overcome the world, John 16:33).
Fake Christians
Paul told the Thessalonian church that there are actually believers who are not really believers (we have those today as well). And that these fakers were trying hard to burden Paul and his team and to tire them out.
Paul reminded the believers in Thessalonica that He knows that God is helping them to endure. But he actually is asking for prayers from them. This is a great practical teaching moment for them, because the moment you take your eyes off of your own troubles and focus on praying for others who have more pressing troubles than you, your own troubles will slowly pale in comparison and they will not be as big as you first thought them to be. And believers ought to pray for one another.
Troublemakers
What about those fake believers though? Who would pretend to be a believer, going through all the trouble infiltrating the church in the hope of making Paul's life and ministry harder for him (which is hard enough as it is already).
Endurance
Another teaching (eye-opening) moment for these believers is that their enemy is not only within them (inner pressure for them urging them to quit being a Christian), and outside the church (from the pressures from people outside the church urging them to conform with the world around them) but trouble also comes from among them -- from people inside the church who were there to create trouble from within, to create chaos, disorder, confusion and to keep them from doing what the Lord wants them to do.
But through it all, God is holding His children in the palm of His hands and keeping them from falling away. They have Christ as their example, who went through trials and tribulation but didn't give in nor give up. And they have the Holy Spirit to comfort them and to guide them through everything they are going through.
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