02 How to Know If Your Faith Is Genuine (1 Thessalonians 1:1-10)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. This is the second talk in our series on Paul's letters to the Thessalonians. Today we're gonna cover 1 Thessalonians chapter 1, verses 1 through 10. You can follow along with the lecture notes for today's talk on the link below this podcast. Lecture notes contain the information I would give you on a handout if I were teaching you in person. You can also find those lecture notes by going directly to wednesdayintheword.com slash Thessalonians 2. Thank you so much for joining me today. Well, in the first podcast, we covered the background to this letter, and today we're going to start looking at the letter itself. But first I want to review briefly what we know about Paul and Thessalonica. The Apostle Paul went to Thessalonica during his second missionary journey. He didn't spend very much time there. He preached three weeks in the synagogue and then probably stayed maybe a month or two after that until the Jews in the city were so angered by Paul's message that they drove him out of the city and then followed him to the next city to make trouble for him there. So Paul wasn't able to spend very much time with the Thessalonians, and they are facing a lot of pressure not to listen to this crazy preacher Paul and to abandon this new Christian faith they have found. Paul has not seen the Thessalonians for several months. He's concerned about the young church he left behind there because he knows they're living with this faction that is very hostile to Christianity. He sent Timothy back to visit them and see how they're doing. Timothy has now rejoined Paul in Corinth, and Paul is writing this letter in response to Timothy's report. He's writing to encourage them to continue in the faith and to clear up some confusion they're having. The Thessalonian Church is made up of mostly Gentile Godfearers, some Jews and some prominent women from the town. They are young in the faith, having heard the gospel from Paul only about seven to nine months before he writes this letter. Let me start by reading the passage and then we'll go back and look at the details. This is first Thessalonians chapter one verses one through ten. Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy to the Church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace. 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. For we know, brothers loved by God, that He has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake, and you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in A. For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything, for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and 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 delivers us from the wrath to come. As we talked about in the last podcast, the author of this letter is the Apostle Paul. Sylvanus and Timothy are with him. He's probably dictating this letter to one of those two, but the ideas and the content are his. He's the author. He's writing to the church in Thessalonica, and he starts this letter, as he often does, with a comment about his prayers for the recipients. I always love Paul's opening prayers because it teaches us so much about the way he thinks about prayer. He indicates that he prays frequently for those he ministered to, and it makes you stop and ask, why would he do that? Is he just being nice? Is he trying to point out his piety, saying, Look how spiritual I am, I'm always praying for you? Or is this just some kind of formal, standard, how are you kind of greeting? I think he's trying to demonstrate that he really sincerely cares about their spiritual welfare. The fact that they are people of faith means a great deal to him, and he appeals to his prayers as evidence of this concern. He says, Do you want to know how concerned I am about you and your faith? When I pray, I pray for you. I'm always thanking God for your faith and your response to the gospel. And we're going to talk more about that at the end. It makes a lot of intuitive sense that Paul would be concerned about their spiritual growth. After his own conversion to Christianity, Paul dedicated his life to traveling around the known world, preaching the gospel and the message about Jesus to a largely Gentile audience. He doesn't have a home. He doesn't have a permanent home church. He did spend about 18 months in Corinth. Early in his life, Antioch was his home base, and later Ephesus became his home base. But basically, Paul traveled a lot and was almost always on the road. He doesn't have a wife or a family to take care of, and he works at his trade only when he needs to make money. But he stops that work and devotes himself full time to preaching whenever his finances allow. So if you follow him through Acts, you can see that his life follows this pattern. He goes into a new town and he preaches first in the synagogue. Some people respond positively to his message, but usually most of them don't. The Jews then ban him from the synagogue and he preaches to the Gentiles, who typically respond in greater numbers. Eventually, many in the town get angered by his message. They beat him, harass him, or try to kill him, and he is usually so persecuted that he has to flee the area. Then he starts the process all over again. Now clearly that life would have had tremendous challenges and difficulties, but one of the joys for him must have been seeing faith take hold in the lives of those he's preached to and watching them grow into a stable, mature faith. I suspect one of the things that kept him going was seeing the joyous response of faith among those who heard him teach. Just imagine Paul approaching a new town. He's walking along a hot, dusty road, he's probably barely recovered from the ill treatment he received in the previous town, and he's wondering what's going to happen to me here. Beaten, jailed, riots, what are they going to do to me? Yet among all that hostility, he knows some are going to respond with faith and embrace the gospel. This kind of traveling and teaching is his life. His goal is to build faith among the people he teaches. For Paul, the joy of seeing that response of faith must have been partly what motivated him to keep going. And that's what he must live for. Paul doesn't preach in huge convention centers to thousands of nameless and faceless people. These are real people that Paul has met and he knows them to some degree. Seeing their lives change and be impacted by the gospel would be a source of great joy for him. He can remember, oh yeah, I talked to this person over there, and I talked to that person in that city, and they responded with such great faith and enthusiasm. So in one, two, I think he's saying something like, I am grateful for seeing the evidence of faith in your life, and I continue to pray for your further growth. I'm sorry I had to make a rather hasty departure from your town, but I'm glad you're doing so well despite the harassment I'm sure you're facing from the people who ran me out of town. So he's not speaking of his prayers here as some kind of religious discipline. He's speaking of his prayers as a reflection of what's important to him. He's saying, I can show you what's on my heart by what I pray for, and what I'm praying for is you and your faith. He goes on, this is one and two. 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. Paul makes reference here to what for us has become a classic trio faith, hope, and love. And that language is so familiar to us today that it tends to just wash over us. But there's a reason why it's a classic trio, and that reason is not because we needed something to put in greeting cards. Faith, hope, and love capture the essence of what it means to be a believer. Paul looks at the kind of people they have become since responding to the gospel, and he's thankful for the changes that he sees, and he sums those changes up by their faith, their hope, and their love. The kind of people they have become is evidenced by their faith, love, and hope. So let's talk about them in order. First, their work of faith. One of the key elements of being a Christian is faith or belief. God has proclaimed who he is and what he's doing about our problem with sin and our need for a redeemer, and he has proclaimed that Jesus Christ is that redeemer. We are called upon to believe the gospel because it's true and to trust in the blood of Christ. One of the central aspects of being a believer is responding positively to the gospel and embracing it as true. And Paul describes that as their work of faith. Language James would have been very happy with. And I think he means here the things that you do that result from their faith. Paul is remembering the things that they have done that arise from their faith. They not only believe the gospel, they live as if the gospel is true. They believe and it makes a difference in the things they do, the way they think, how they act, what they value, the kinds of choices they make, and what they're pursuing. That's, I think, what he means by their work of faith, the changes in their lifestyle, the changes in the way they think, what they want, what they value, what they're running after, and all of that as a result of what they believe to be true. The second thing he remembers is their labor of love. Love is central to being a Christian because it is central to the two great commandments. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself. These two commandments capture how we ought to view the world and act in it. As we've talked about in other podcasts, love is not a warm, fuzzy feeling, but rather love is how we act toward God and others. Love is an action, it's how we treat each other. This kind of love captures the essence of righteousness. Loving God is valuing him, wanting to be like him, seeking to live by what he says is true, listening to him and obeying him rather than following the world and so forth. Loving my neighbor is recognizing that we are equally important, that we equally share the image of God, and then treating my neighbor as I would want to be treated if the tables were turned. Additionally, with our fellow Christians, we share a bond. We have a common destiny, we have a common father and a common Lord. You, my fellow believers, are my people. We belong to each other. If I refuse to recognize how much you and I share, then it questions my faith. And this is a theme I teach on a lot because it comes up so often in Scripture. We talked about it a lot in the Sermon on the Mount. This is just a big theme in the New Testament. So love then is a central response of faith. Love not in the sense of warm, fuzzy feelings, but love in the sense of how I act and treat others. It is my actions, my commitment, my service, making an effort to seek my neighbor's best and to be on my neighbor's side and to help each other on this journey of faith. I may not get along with you in terms of personality. I may never know what to say to you when we're together. We may not be interested in any of the same things, but if we're both believers, we belong together in the family of God. We have the most important things in common, and so we look out for each other's welfare. And Paul speaks of this as labor of love, emphasizing the effort, the hardship, the commitment it takes to act on our neighbor's behalf. We exert ourselves on each other's behalf, we labor on each other's behalf, making an effort to seek each other's best and to care about each other. That kind of active love is a result of coming to faith and believing the gospel. And then the third thing he remembers is their steadfastness of hope. Hope is also central to faith. The gospel is good news about our rescue and deliverance from sin. Things in this fallen world are not right, but God is in the process of making them right. That rescue or redemption is still in progress. We have confidence that God will eventually fulfill the promise of our inheritance, which was secured by Christ, but right now we hope for it. We wait eagerly for it with joyous confidence. This is not wishful thinking, this is a confident, eager expectation. God has promised us an inheritance in his kingdom and we wait eagerly for it. Believing the gospel leads to hope. God has made certain promises and we are confidently waiting for him to fulfill them. Because this hope has not yet been fulfilled, we have to hold on to it. That's why Paul speaks of their perseverance of hope or steadfastness of hope, emphasizing the holding on to it, the standing firm in it, the clinging to it, as we wait for that hope and what the Lord Jesus Christ has done for us to be fully fulfilled. Later in 110, Paul describes them as those who wait for his son from heaven. It is the return of Christ that will bring about our full rescue. That's part of our hope. That's what we hold on to while we wait. This then is what Paul sees in them in their first year of faith. This is what he's grateful for and what he sees God doing in their lives in the first year they've been believers. They believe the gospel and are living as if it's true. This is their work of faith. They are exerting themselves to care for one another. He calls this their labor of love, and they have a confident, eager hope that they are not letting go of, that Jesus will return and make everything right. This is their steadfastness of hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what he sees that has happened among them, and he's grateful for it. He goes on in four and five, for we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake. Paul references their election, the fact that God has chosen them to be saved. He's thinking back on how they responded to the gospel with this faith, hope, and love, and it gives him confidence that God has chosen them. I find that juxtaposition of ideas very interesting. Paul refers to what he can see changing in their lives and their election. He comments on the changes, their faith, their hope, and their love for each other, and he's giving thanks for what he sees there, and what he sees in their lives gives him confidence that God has chosen them for salvation. Now, I don't want to get into the details of election and predestination, but I'll just say briefly, it is God's choice that they are going to enter eternal life, and yet we see God's choice manifested in something we can actually see. They live differently, they choose differently, they express belief in the gospel, they have a confident hope and they love each other in a way they didn't before. God's choice of them is seen in the changes that God is making in their lives. They embrace the gospel as true, they stand on the hope that Jesus will return and fulfill the promises of eternal life, and they care for each other along this journey of faith. Now remember, they are under intense pressure from their community to abandon this newfound faith, and Paul reminds them now what he first taught them, why they believed it, and encourages them to stand firm in the truth. Now we don't see this so much today in our culture, but in their culture there were a lot of what we might call traveling salesmen or peddlers. They came to town with an agenda. Sometimes it was to sell some product or some good they were importing from another city or country. Sometimes they were rabbis or philosophers or teachers who wanted to gather students or spread their teaching. Sometimes they were farmers coming in to sell their produce or their wares. But whatever they were peddling, they had an agenda. Now along comes Paul and he starts preaching in the synagogue. And the question would be, why should they trust him? Why should the Thessalonians change their entire lives based on this crazy story that this guy brings from out of town? And why should they continue to lead a different life after this guy gets run out of town? Especially given the fact that they probably have family and friends they've known for a long time, who are probably saying to them, Look, why are you listening to this Paul guy? Well, Paul is aware of the problem. He knows they're facing persecution, he knows they're facing pressure to go back to their old way of life, and he's trying to remind them why they believed what he taught them and to encourage them to stand firm in it. He starts by reminding them of the objective evidence they have to believe. He reminds them why they trusted him in the first place. He says, Because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction, you know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake. Paul tells them he's convinced that God has chosen them and that they are genuine believers. And he says, Not only did you hear the words of the gospel, but Paul's message was confirmed as true by miracles and acts of the Holy Spirit, and also by his character. He says, Our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Now he could be talking about their personal experience of the Holy Spirit working inside them to open their eyes so that they could see and understand the truth of the gospel. But I don't think he's talking about the way they received the gospel so much as the way he presented it to them. I don't think he means they received power and the Holy Spirit. He's saying, How did our gospel come to you? In what form did our message come to you? It wasn't just a lot of words that we threw at you, the message. We taught you came in power and in the spirit and with full conviction. That is language that Paul uses in his other letters. Paul reminds people that God validated his apostolic credentials by visibly manifesting his power. We find the most explicit statement of that in 2 Corinthians. Paul's dealing with a group of people in Corinth who have rejected his authority as an apostle, and he says to them, this is 2 Corinthians 12, 12, the signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles. They're challenging his authority, and he's saying, Look, if you have any reason to question the authority of my message, remember you saw the signs and the miracles that confirmed I am an apostle. If you have any reason to doubt that I was chosen by God, you saw the signs and miracles I performed through his power when I was among you. So you saw the power of God at work in my message. You saw the signs that accompanied my message, the demonstration of the spirit and power. He says something similar in Romans, this is 15, 18, and 19. For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed, in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit, so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. There again, Paul is saying, The power of signs and miracles accompany my teaching. When Paul speaks, God confirms that what Paul says is true, and that God is behind Paul's message with these miraculous signs. So God is confirming that Paul is an authoritative spokesman for him by miracles. He's not flashy or persuasive in a charismatic worldly way. He is speaking the truth, and you can be assured that this is true because the power of God is at work through his spirit. The author of Hebrews says this about the apostolic message. This is Hebrews 2, verses 2 through 4. For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty, how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to his will. So there the author of Hebrews is saying, God testified that certain people were speaking for him by giving gifts of the Spirit, by having them do signs and wonders and miracles, and those miracles verified that the message of the apostles was indeed true. And that's what Paul is reminding them of here. I came and I spoke to you, but I didn't just tell you words, I performed the signs and miracles of an apostle. Now it's not just the signs and miracles, it's also the integrity of the message and the integrity of the man who preached it. Paul can say, look at the scriptures. Doesn't this fit with the Old Testament? Doesn't this fit with the words of Jesus? Isn't my message accompanied with the power of God that demonstrates and verifies this is the one true gospel? Remember why you found my message persuasive. It wasn't because of my sophisticated philosophical wisdom. It wasn't because of my charisma. It wasn't because I'm such a smart philosophical intellectual giant. It was because God demonstrated the truth of my message through the signs and the works of the Spirit. God validated Paul's message by signs and wonders and miracles. So why is Paul different than all those other traveling salesmen and peddlers? Because God confirmed his message with demonstrations of power and acts of the Holy Spirit. And Paul is reminding them that they have this objective evidence that Paul speaks for God. He's reminding them you believed because you saw and heard and you have firsthand knowledge that the power of God confirmed my message. So that's Paul's first point to them is to remind them they have objective evidence to believe his message. And then most of what he goes on to talk about is a more personal kind of evidence. He says, you know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake, and he's going to spend most of chapter two on that point. But first he's going to point to their response. He says, Not only do you have objective evidence to believe me, you have objective evidence that the gospel is true because your own lives changed. Let's look at six through ten. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaiah, for not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything, for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and 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 delivers us from the wrath to come. This is pretty high praise for the church in Thessalonica. Paul says they became an example to the churches around them in Macedonia and Dekai. Example is really too soft a word. It kind of has this idea that they became a pattern, they became a model church, they became descriptive of the way God operates in a group of people. Paul says news of their faith became like a volcano that erupted and spread God's word across the map. What happened in Thessalonica spread like wildfire, so that apparently Paul had the experience of going to a new town, declaring God's word, and having people say, Oh yeah, yeah, we heard about what happened in Thessalonica. We heard what God's done there, and we heard how those people turned from idols to trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul says he had no need to say anything because of that spread of truth, that eruption of truth as it rippled across the map. That's pretty impressive considering Paul didn't spend very much time there. We know he preached in the synagogue for three Sabbaths, and he probably stayed maybe a month, maybe two months more, but he had a short amount of time there compared to a church like Corinth, where he spent a year and a half. He didn't have very much time to train the people in Thessalonica before he was run out of town. Plus, this letter suggests that the church was immediately faced with persecution and affliction. Paul says right here they received the word in much affliction and with joy of the Holy Spirit. On the surface, it probably didn't look like this little church was going to succeed. They didn't have any of the advantages that ought to have made them successful, and yet they became a pattern of faith for churches around them. Their response to the gospel became legendary. Well, what made them so different? What made them such a good example? The only clues we have are what Paul tells us here in chapter one. They heard the gospel and they embraced it. The gospel didn't come as something to be debated, it wasn't an interesting philosophical discussion the way the Athenians reacted to it. They understood it to be the word of God, they understood it as truth to be grasped and embraced and followed. Essentially, they just heard and believed, and they clung to that word with joy despite affliction and persecution. And notice the emphasis is on what they know and believe, not how they feel, not how excited or animated or extroverted they were, not how many programs they put in place, not how many soup kitchens they set up. The gospel came to them, they received the word, and their faith was evident in the changes in their lifestyles. In short, they took the gospel seriously and they embraced it as true and lived like it was true. So to summarize, I want to close by reflecting on what Paul's statements teach us about prayer. The more I study the Bible, the more I become convinced that the Bible has a different view of prayer than what I was taught as a young Christian. As I've studied it, it seems to me that the Bible is not concerned with prayer as a routine or a discipline. The church today tends to see prayer as something that works from the outside in. If we impose from the outside this discipline of prayer upon ourselves, then we think it will have an effect on our inside spiritual state. And you can find books about maintaining the discipline of prayer and how that results in becoming a more spiritual person. I think the biblical picture is exactly backwards. I think scripture teaches that prayer works from the inside out, that God is at work changing and maturing me, and the result is I want to turn to him in prayer. I don't think Paul sees prayer as a discipline that will make him a better person. Rather, he sees it as the natural outgrowth of the work of his life, his mission, and his faith. He offers his prayer as evidence of what's important to him. He implies in verse 2 that he can show you what's important to him by what he prays about. I don't think he's saying there, well, I have this religious obligation to pray for and thank God for the folks in Thessalonica. I don't think he's going through the list on his knees at bedtime like you see in the movies, saying, you know, bless Tommy, bless Sally, blessed Aristarchus and Silas. That kind of prayer doesn't prove anything. That doesn't reveal anything about him except maybe that he can cross something off his checklist. So when Paul says, look, I'm concerned about you, and the evidence of my concern is what I'm praying for, he's not saying something about how disciplined he is. He's saying, Do you want to know how much I care about you? When I pray, I thank God for you all the time. I want you to know how much I care about you, and my evidence is that when I pray, I pray for you. The fact that Paul considers his prayers evidence of his concern indicates that he sees prayer as coming from the inside out. His prayers reflect what's on his mind and what's on his heart and what he's concerned about. So he can say, the fact that I'm praying for you shows how much I care about you. If he had no inward reality of concern, then he wouldn't be praying for them at all. Making this kind of claim, I think, indicates that his prayers are a reflection of an inward reality. Paul appeals to his prayers as evidence of his concern, his values, and his heart because he's praying about what he cares about. So when the Bible says we ought to be people who pray, or to pray without ceasing, or to pray at all times, I don't think the idea is you have to have a spiritual discipline or you need to spend uh 15 minutes a day in a routine. Rather, I think the idea is you want to be the kind of people who trust and follow God such that you will want to pour your life out to God. I think the biblical focus is not on the action of prayer, but on having a heart that wants to pray and wants to turn to God. Now, am I saying it doesn't matter whether we pray or not? No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the biblical focus is not on having a routine or a discipline or making sure we pray a certain number of times or making sure we pray in the proper fashion so we can cross it off our daily chore list. Rather, the emphasis is on having a heart like Paul's, a heart that desires to turn to God in all things. Prayer is not going through my list of cares and worries and wishes and wants and making sure I tick off every box and don't miss anything. Prayer is not thinking that I have to get through my list and that's the only way to get what I want. If I forget to pray about it, I won't get it. I don't think that's the biblical picture. Rather, prayer is the result of being the kind of person who turns to God. Prayer is the result of being the kind of person who trusts and hopes and waits on God. Prayer results from being the kind of person who's concerned about the welfare of others and is grateful for the work that God is doing. Paul points to his prayers as an expression of his heart. What he prays for reveals what kind of person he is and what he's focused on. And he's saying, Do you want to know what's on my mind and what I care about? Well, look at what I'm praying for. I'm praying for your spiritual well-being and growth and thanking God for the work I see him doing in you. Now, Paul's job was to promote faith in the people he preaches to. That's what God called him to do. That's his job as an apostle. So we could say, well, of course, his prayers will reflect the spiritual well-being of others more than maybe mine or someone else's, because that was the focus of his life. I have other concerns. Paul was single-mindedly focused on spreading the gospel in a way that most of us aren't. And there is a certain amount of truth in that. But it's also true if we stop and think about it, that Paul is focused on things that will last. He's praying about their work of faith, their labor of love, and their steadfast hope. Sure, it's wonderful when someone gets a much needed job or recovers from a serious illness or gets safely from one spot to another, but how a specific circumstance works out in this life is ultimately not as important as growing in faith, hope, and love. That job's going to end, that trip's going to end, and this earthling life is not going to last forever. We can see in Paul's prayers that he was investing himself in the things that last forever, things like faith, hope, and love. He knows the Thessalonians are under persecution and affliction, and yet he doesn't pray, oh, let the affliction in tomorrow. Instead, he's thankful for the faith, hope, and love that is growing in them through that affliction. In that sense, I find Paul's prayer and his joy over the faith in the Thessalonians both an inspiration and kind of a rebuke. While I was thinking about this, I realized how much time I spend worrying and fretting about things that are temporal. I worry about what's going to happen and what isn't going to happen in the next week or the next month. And eventually, all those events that I'm worried about will be in the past and God will have sorted it all out. But the really important question is, what are the eternal consequences of those events? Did I stand firm in the faith through them or not? Did I stand firm in my hope through them or not? Did I seek to love my neighbor through them or not? Essentially, did I continue to trust God through them or not? Answering those questions is way more crucial than the specific outcome of those particular circumstances. I mean, which one has eternal consequences? It is much more important that I become a person of faith than that I get a particular job or go to a particular college or get a particular answer to a specific prayer. Those things aren't going to last, but what is going to last is what God has set his seal on. And what God has set his seal on are his people, the ones who now focus on the work of faith, labor of love, and steadfastness of hope. So I find Paul's concern for their faith admirable and a goal to reach for. He's been proclaiming the gospel to them and encouraging them to invest their lives in the things that last forever. And they're doing it. He sees evidence of faith in their lives and he is grateful and joyful about it. I think his prayer can be a subtle reminder to all of us to stop and remember what's truly important. Ultimately, the fact that somebody I know got the right job or had a smooth and easy trip or a great medical diagnosis. Well, all those things are good things we can rejoice in. They are wonderful blessings from God. But ultimately, the job, the trip, the health, they're going to go and they will pale in comparison to the question of where does that person stand eternally? How do we know where they stand eternally? Well, we have Paul's short description right here: faith, hope, and love, believing the gospel and living like it's true, seeking to love others, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ, and holding on to our confident hope that God is going to make everything right through Jesus Christ. That's what our lives ought to be about, and that will be reflected in our prayers. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word. This is the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. You can find all the episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There is no charge, no spam, and no ads. It's all free to help you improve your study skills and your understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please subscribe to the podcast, leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen, and most importantly, tell a friend what you learned. And if you can, tell them where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite singer-songwriter Reggie Coates. You can find all of his music and CDs on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.