Your Work Is Produced By Your Faith
I, Paul, am writing
this letter. Silas and Timothy join me in writing.
We are sending this
letter to you, the members of the church in Thessalonica. You belong to God the
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
May grace and peace
be given to you.
We
always thank God for all of you. We pray for you. We never forget you when we
pray to our God and Father. Your work is produced by your faith. Your service
is the result of your love. Your strength to continue comes from your hope in
our Lord Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters,
you are loved by God. We know that he has chosen you. Our good news didn't come
to you only in words. It came with power. It came with the Holy Spirit's help. He gave us complete faith in what we were preaching.
You know how we lived among you for your good.
We and the Lord
were your examples. You followed us. You suffered terribly. Even so, you
welcomed our message with the joy the Holy Spirit gives. So you became a model
to all the believers in the lands of
The Lord's message
rang out from you. That was true not only in
God raised him from
the dead. He is Jesus. He saves us from God's anger, and his anger is sure to
come.
1
Thessalonians 1:1-10
Francis Asbury was
the very first religious circuit-rider. He rode 6,000 miles a year bringing
people to Christ. In 1771 when Asbury arrived in the colonies there were 600
Methodists in the country. Forty-five years later there over
200,000. In that same time he had recruited over 700 traveling
preachers. The days of circuit-riders is gone, but
each of us does have a “frontier” where friends, relatives, and neighbors are
our mission field. Can you think of someone today who needs to hear the good
news?
Those who
love Christ have a love for the lost.
Our Daily Bread -