“You yourselves know, dear brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not a failure. You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet our God gave us the courage to declare his Good News to you boldly, in spite of great opposition. So you can see we were not preaching with any deceit or impure motives or trickery. For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts. Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you well know. And God is our witness that we were not pretending to be your friends just to get your money! As for human praise, we have never sought it from you or anyone else. As apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to make some demands of you, but instead we were like children among you. Or we were like a mother feeding and caring for her own children. We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too. Don’t you remember, dear brothers and sisters, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled to earn a living so that we would not be a burden to any of you as we preached God’s Good News to you. You yourselves are our witnesses—and so is God—that we were devout and honest and faultless toward all of you believers. And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children. We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in his Kingdom and glory. Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received his message from us, you didn’t think of our words as mere human ideas. You accepted what we said as the very word of God—which, of course, it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe. And then, dear brothers and sisters, you suffered persecution from your own countrymen. In this way, you imitated the believers in God’s churches in Judea who, because of their belief in Christ Jesus, suffered from their own people, the Jews. as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last. Dear brothers and sisters, after we were separated from you for a little while (though our hearts never left you), we tried very hard to come back because of our intense longing to see you again.”
1 Thessalonians 2:1-14, 16-17 NLT
Those who have suffered together for the work of the Lord have an incredible bond. In this chapter, Paul re-told the story of how he came to them. He worked hard, did not live to please or flatter them, and told them the truth of God’s Word. Paul suffered among them and for them. They accepted the truth and were willing to suffer and work hard for Jesus. Paul and these Christians had a bond that was stronger than distance.
Even when life is hard, we are called as Christians to care for people and point them to Jesus. Paul said that the apostles had been trusted by God to carry the Good News. Wow! God trusted them, and God trusts you to carry the Good News to the world. You are called to speak the truth in a world that often does not want to hear it, and you will face opposition. Christians will suffer, yet as we support each other and suffer together, Jesus bonds us together. These are Kingdom bonds that will last eternally. There is such a joy in saying to others, “You will never walk alone.” There is such a strength in hearing others say to us, “I will always be by your side.”
How will you share God’s Good News today? Who can you support as they faithfully follow Jesus?
