1 Thessalonians 2 2 2

In this chapter, I learned a lot about sharing the gospel with other people.

v.8 "...delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well..."
First thing that I got from this verse was the "delight" in sharing the gospel with others. I find myself really hesitant and afraid when I'm telling other people about God, and I thought it was natural. However, I think it's difficult but more natural to be happy to share God's story with non-believers because, by telling someone about the amazing relationship I have with God, there's a chance that one more person in the world will accept God as their saviour. The second thing I learned from this verse is that you don't only need to talk about God in the Bible when evangelizing. I think non-believers are very close-minded when it comes to religion, and stories from the Bible might seem fictional to them. So, this chapter tells us to share our lives with people. I think that, if we share God's influence on our lives and the transformation through which we went, there might be a higher chance that non-believers will believe that God can move in their lives as well.

v.9 "...not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you..."
I think it's always important to remember that people may put pressure on non-believers to accept Christ and become a burden. There's a part in the chapter where Paul and Silas talk about their working hard not to be a burden to the Thessalonians out of love. For an english project, I had to read Ecclesiastes 3, and read about how there's a time for everything- for sin, for laughter, for creation. So, I definitely think that there's a time for each person's accepting Christ. Of course, God doesn't plan the times out, but He knows the point in people's lives in which they will accept Him as their Father. Hopefully, we can learn not to be a burden when spreading God's love.

v.20 "In deed, you are our glory and joy."
Paul and Silas are so happy that the Thessalonians' faith is remarkable. I'm sure that some of you have friends who have accepted Christ because of your influence, and you probably were very happy when they became believers. Just by imagining all my friends have a relationship with God, I can put myself in Paul and Silas' shoes. I want to continually pray for my non-Christian friends so that that, one day, they will accept Christ, and will bring joy to me and glory to God.

Dk i like the idea you bringing out the word of the gospel.

In this chapter i kinda have the same idea, when we would share the gospel with non-believers. It can be hard sometimes when you are trying to spread the word of god to others because some people might not be interested. But the reason why we do this, is for God. In verse 4,5 says, On the contrary, we speak as men apporved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts. You know we never used flattert, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed, God is our witness. So in this verse, God is telling us that when we are doing good things for other people, we are not doing it for them, we are doing for God. If we do good things for other reasons beside God. We are doing the wrong thing then. God will always know what we are doing, because God is every where. He is our witness as it says in verse 5. So when we talk about the gospel to others, we must show that we care for them and to show love. This way they might understand.

AMEN..........

Have a good one....

hey guys...some of u know that steven is doing surgery soon, so lets pray for him that God will be with him..

5You know we never used flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed—God is our witness. 6We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else.
I liked this verse because it reminded me of the importance of sincerity and truthfulness when preaching and spreading the gospel. In TOK class we talk a lot about fallacies - the untruths that seem like truths by using manipulative techniques (we use them all the time without knowing it!) And one of them is appeal to the public, in which people use flattery and emotions in order to sway the public of the crowd. And we see this in so much of our politics and our everyday lives. But there really is a difference between one who is running of president of their country and one who is spreading the gospel. We win worldy elections by using appeal to the public - by twisting our words, hiding up some flaws, etc. But as Gospel- spreaders, we have a completly different mindset. Instead of seeking to glorify ourselves, we wish to teach people about God, to bring more to God's kingdom and show others the same love that God shows us. So obviously, we can't use the same techniques that we would use in anything else - but when teaching others about God, it's all about sincerity. We can't teach others hnow to live Chrsitian lives if we dont do it ourselves. We cant proclaim that there is only one way to heaven if we don't believe that it's Jesus. We can't tell people to pray everyday if we don't do it ourselves. We should do these things with sincerity, and that's why i remember for missions, Sam really pushed us to do our devos EVERY SINGLE DAY, to pray every single day and to be a Christian 24/7, because you can't be a missionary without being the Christian first.
I sorta ranted and strayed from the verse but it's all there. hahah
Have an amazing day, everyone!

"Our purpose is to please God, not people."
This is the only thing i got from this passage... but its a doosie...
We often think far to much about pleasing the crowd, each other, but sometimes God is not #1 on our list...
like saiyha said "we are playing for a crowd of 1". I know this retreat prep is a lot to handle but pplease hang in there! come saturday it will all be fine we ll explain everything....

-Enjoy!

"As apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to make some demands of you,"
I don't like that line in this Chapter because Paul seems to acknowledge that by being an apostle of Christ, he is different from those who are not apostles.
This difference is enough that he thought "we certainly had a right to make some DEMANDS of you," but he chose not to because he loves the people so much.
I mean, I personally don't think I have any authority to make even some demands from anybody just because I'm serving God and for the purpose of serving God; unless you count asking people to donate or do something for the church so they can contribute to helping other people and thus serving God, but that's just charitable work voluntarily executed by both parties so ya...
Anyways, I liked the rest of the Chapter and its messages like: being totally selfless, not being a burden to others, and loving God (as always =])