1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 "We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” This episode talks about how important gratitude is and saying thank you to the Lord. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Do We Thank God Enough?
1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 "We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
When I first read this verse the first thing that stood out to me were the words, “We always thank God…” I think these stuck out to me so much because I was just talking a friend the other day and she mentioned how much God likes it when we thank Him. She couldn’t remember where she heard it, but she said she had just read something about how God likes it when we pray and ask Him for His help. However, it really melts His heart when we thank Him. I am sure those weren’t the exact words she used, but whatever she said, this is the impression it left on me. This isn’t the first time I have heard this. I seem to hear this over and over again. God does so much for us, the least we can do is say thank you. In Luke 17:12-19 Jesus cures 10 men from leprosy and only one came back to say thank you. Jesus asked in Luke 17:17-19, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner? Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”
Jesus didn’t want the gratitude for himself. He didn’t heal people so they would thank him or so He could feel good about himself. He wanted the glory for His Father. Have you ever gotten offended for someone else before? For instance your parents do something really kind for people and yet no one thanks them? Maybe you have a friend that does a lot at work and never gets a thank you. Maybe yours spouse helps out his or her friends and yet, no thank you. Do you ever get upset for them? They don’t seem to mind, but you are annoyed and maybe you even mention it to the other person because you don’t like how it seems they are taking advantage of you parent, spouse, friend, child, whoever it is. I know I have done this before and I can’t imagine I am the only one. Showing our gratitude and saying thank you is such an important thing to do.
I tend to talk about gratitude a lot because it is one of the simplest things you can do to change your mood. It is also a really simple way to show God that you appreciate all He does for you. Having a regular gratitude practice is also a really great way to open your eyes to see more of what God is doing for you. If you train yourself to be in the habit of looking for reasons to be grateful, then you will start to notice things that you hadn’t previously noticed. For instance, you might not usually pay attention to the weather, but suddenly you are appreciating the sunny days. Maybe you start to notice less traffic on your drive, or more green lights, or the leaves changing or the flowers blooming. Once you start approaching your day from a place of gratitude, you will notice a difference and you will find you are in a much better mood. If you haven’t already developed a daily gratitude practice, I challenge you to start today. Take a notebook, or a piece of paper and write down 3 things you are grateful for that are specific to this day. If you don’t have a notebook or a piece of paper, you could use your phone to take notes, or you can even just think about three things and not write them down. I like to go back and look through them, but maybe you just want to spend 5 minutes while you drink your coffee and think about all the things you have to be grateful for. However it works best for you, that is the way to do it. I promise it is a life changing habit. If you don’t see an increase in your mood, let me know, I will be very surprised.
As I read past the first part of this verse I really liked the second half just as much. I think it makes some really powerful points. The verse says, “ We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Let me start with the first thing they said, “your work produced by faith.” This is what they mean when they talk about faith in action. Their faith produced work, they didn’t just sit around and talk about the faith. They didn’t just gather at mass on Sunday and then the rest of the week do their own thing. They put their faith into action and that produced work. There are plenty of people that can talk the talk, however, the Thessalonians were also walking the walk. They saw how Paul, Silas & Timothy lived among them and then when they left they continued to live out their faith. It says in 1 Thessalonians 1:6-7 “ You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.” Their work was produced by their faith.
Next it says, “your labor prompted by love.” They weren’t laboring in vain. They weren’t begrudgingly doing the work that God set them out to do. Their work came from a place of love. I think this is beautiful. When is the last time that your work was prompted by love? It is sometimes I think. For instance, when I am making dinner for my family and I am excited because I know it is something they will really like. I know this is prompted by love because I am joyful while I am making it. I am not complaining, I am in a good mood, I probably have worship music or some podcast or audiobook on and I am in the zone. I can tell when my labor is not prompted by love when I am grumpy, when I am complaining, when I am maybe even resentful that I have to do to it. I am probably not listening to worship music or anything, I am just talking to myself under my breath. Do you know what I mean? Can you see the difference in these two states of mind? Can you picture yourself in each state? I wonder what we could do to try to remain in the first state more often than the second? Maybe gratitude would help? Maybe just reminding ourselves that we can chose to labor out of a place of love? I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know that the first part of solving a problem is know that you have a problem. Now that we know that we aren’t always laboring out of a place of love, we can notice it and try to change it.
The third thing the Thessalonians were praised for is their “endurance inspired hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” In 1 Thessalonians 1:8-10 it says, "The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.” They had endurance to wait for the coming of Jesus because of their hope that He would come. The Thessalonians were able to turn from their idols and to serve the one true God. This couldn’t have been easy for them. Many of them probably worshiped these idols ever since they were children. So, what gave them the power to turn away from these idols and serve the Lord? The Holy Spirit did. The Holy Spirit is very powerful and if you decide you want to do something, even if it is really hard, the Holy Spirit will help you. Once the Holy Spirit helped them turn away from these idols, what helped them continue to serve the Lord? Yep, you guessed it. Their endurance inspired by hope in our Lord.
We all have various levels of endurance. Our endurance is important because it helps us do things that are hard for us. For instance if I wanted to run a marathon, I would need to have a lot of endurance to do so. It is what would keep me going. My endurance for that would be based on my ability to run, or to complete things I start, or my dedication to completing the goal. However, this is not the same endurance that the Thessalonians had. Their endurance was not based on a belief of their own abilities. Their endurance was based on their hope in our Lord Jesus. That is an unending faith and endurance. They were able to get through the hard times knowing that Jesus was with them and that He would be coming again. We know that they were suffering because the verse above said, “you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering.” We don’t know what the suffering was but we know they were suffering and yet they were able to welcome the message of the Gospel and then put their faith into action. I wonder if we can do that. I wonder if we can live our lives in a way that someone would say this to us one day? “ We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, we ask you to be with us and we ask you to help us in our quest to thank you more. Help us to be more grateful throughout the day. Help us to be more mindful and to notice all the ways you help us throughout the day. We love you so much and we know you do so much for us. We are so very grateful and we are sorry that we don’t say it more often. Lord, we ask you to help us be more like the Thessalonians. Help us to have a faith that is fruitful and based on action not just words. Help our labor to be prompted by love and our endurance to be inspired by hope. Lord you are amazing, you do so much for us every single day. We are so lucky to have you as our Heavenly Father. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk boldly with Jesus. Tomorrow we will hear a witness from my friend Diane who has more than her fair share of tragedy in her life. She will briefly share it with us as well as how she got through it all. I look forward to spending time with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!