To Encourage You

1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 “We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Those who call themselves born again believers in Jesus Christ believe in a God that they cannot see.  Because of this, their life is based not on sight but on faith (2 Corinthians 5:7).  It is unseen things that motivate all that they do, and they are commended by God for it in the verses above. 

Notice the motivation for their work – it is faith, which is to believe on something you can’t see and acting upon it.  Their work in this life is a means to glorifying the God Who sees them, and that’s all that matters to them.  They trust the promises that the unseen God has said to them in His Word and because of that, they want to obey the commands He has given to them in that Word. 

But their work, their labor for the Lord, isn’t based only on faith.  It goes beyond that to love.  They actually love Jesus, whom they have never seen, and do all they can to express that love for Him in the things they do.  They see the unseen Christ in their neighbors and they love them for they know that “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). 

And then there is the issue of hope – which for the believer is not an “I sure hope so” kind of hope, but a sure trust in what God has promised us regarding the future.  They know that “in this hope we were saved.” And they realize that “hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24-25).  They trust in God’s promise of their reward of eternal life in heaven and they know that because “it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain” (Hebrews 6:18-19). They know that that “inner place” refers to the most holy place in the Old Testament temple of God and that it is a type of the heaven for which they wait.  This sure hope gives believers steadfastness through the trials of this life. They know that it will be worth it all, in the end, no matter how things appear at this present moment. 

Work, labor, and steadfastness, based on the unseen God we believe, love, and put all our hope in is a pretty good summation of the life of the believer.  And “so we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18).  Praise the name of the Lord!