The Wobbly Table
Fifteen years ago, a freshman and I met every week at a hip coffee shop in Boston for a Bible study. We sat at a tiny round table with uneven legs in uncomfortable chairs, talking about our lives and the Bible. Nobody walking past us would have thought we were doing anything important. It was a weird way to spend my twenties.
Read 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10
Three friends pray together regularly, thanking God for the faith, love, and hope of a church community in Thessaloniki. Their prayer meeting overflows with gratitude and joy. Knowing their friends are enduring persecution, they write to encourage them. Together, as missionaries to this city, they had imitated Jesus in how they loved one another and those who became their brothers and sisters in Christ. Their lives proved that Jesus was alive, the Spirit was at work, and God the Father was bringing people into his love. When they preached the good news, it was backed up by good living. But the message and the messengers aren't the point: Paul keeps pointing to God. Beloved by the Father and filled with the Spirit, Jesus set the example. He demonstrated the pattern of complete love for God and our neighbors. It's a way of life that is paradoxically marked by suffering even to the point of death, but also resurrection life that fills us with joy and hope. Paul can't stop thinking about how Jesus lived, because he and his friends want to live the same way. When the new believers in Thessaloniki saw God at work in these unusual missionaries, they responded with wholehearted faith. They did not merely pray a prayer or have an internal change of mind. It was evident that the Holy Spirit had filled their lives with spiritual power, startling joy, and loving service to one another. Total conviction led to dramatic changes. They threw away their idols, but this came at a cost. They got kicked out of their synagogues and pagan guilds. They lost friendships, jobs, and housing. But instead of becoming despondent, their hope grew that Jesus would return soon and rescue them from a worse fate. Persecution is unwanted but revealing. These new Christians wanted Jesus more than their own comfort. The price they paid reveals the sincerity of their beliefs. How can affliction produce affection apart from the Holy Spirit? Just as Jesus transformed Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, and then the church of the Thessalonians, the gospel kept multiplying throughout Macedonia and Achaia and everywhere else the news traveled. Their new lives announced the reality of God. At the end of the semester, the student told me that what stuck with him was "imitating Christ-like character" and so he would be mentoring three young high school guys over the summer. When I looked him up this week, I saw that he's serving as a worship and young adults pastor. We met at a wobbly table and God did the rest.
Paul praises the Father, Son, and Spirit. What is God doing in this passage?
Whose life made Jesus seem real to you? What did they do that you've copied?
What's one way you serve Jesus, even though it seems too small to matter?
Who's one person you could invite to discuss the Bible with you? Reach out to them today.