To Encourage You

1 Thessalonians 1:6 “You received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit.”

Are you a true Christian? How would you describe yourself? Do the words above describe you, for it’s with these words that Paul was describing the true believers that made up the Thessalonian church? So, what is he saying with these words?

Well, for one thing, these people had “received the word.” By this he was referring to the Word of God, for it is by hearing the gospel message recorded in the Word that faith enters a person’s life. However, there are many people who hear the gospel message, “receive it” in a sense, but they are still not true believers. Jesus describes such people in the parable of the sower that is recorded in three places in the Bible, Matthew 13, Mark 4, and Luke 8. For God to say something to us just once is enough, for every word of God is absolutely true. But when we are given the same message three times in His Word, perhaps we should particularly make an effort to sit up and take notice.

So, what does Jesus say in this parable. Well, he describes various types of receptivity of the human heart to the Word of God. There are those who don’t pay any attention at all. The Word (i.e. the seed) just falls by the wayside in their lives like seed sown along a path that is trampled underfoot. Then there are those who get all excited when they hear the gospel, perhaps with an emotional reaction, but when trouble comes, they quickly fall away. Jesus describes these people as those whose hearts are like rocky soil, in which the seed springs up with signs of life at first, but because it has no roots, it quickly withers away and dies. Then there is the seed that is sown among the thorns. These are those who “receive” the Word, but they turn away from the truth after a while to pursue temptations for riches or pleasures of various kinds.

None of these descriptions would characterize the people that Paul describes from the Thessalonian church. Rather, these true believers received the Word and when afflictions came into their lives on account of it, they didn’t turn away. Rather, they endured – with joy!

So does that describe your life? Was there a time that you “received the Word” and were all excited about Jesus, but that excitement has waned to the point that the Word of God has no place in your life anymore. You don’t read it, you don’t have any interest in it, and you certainly can’t explain the impact it has had on your life. If that’s the case, there’s a good chance that you are not a true Christian, no matter how you might think about yourself.

Persistent belief, joyful belief, the perseverance of the saints – just different ways to describe true Christians, like the true Christians Paul describes in the Thessalonian church.