“May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness and patience of Christ and in waiting for His return.” 2 Thessalonians 3:5 ->me: Whoa! ‘May the Lord direct your hearts!’ Direct our hearts where? -> into the love of God -> into the steadfastness and patience of Christ Himself! When does this happen? -> while we wait for His return! This is a total epiphany moment and I had just sat down to read quite a few verses; I didn’t get more than 2 verses before hitting this nugget. What this tells me, is that when I follow God through His word, through prayer, and worship Him…continually confessing my sin and striving to be righteous in Him -> God (through His Holy Spirit) will affect and influence my heart into the ways of Himself in Love, Patience, and Hope in the return of His Son. Said differently – my heart will respond to the ways and purposes of my King. I will feel in my being the love Jesus has for the lost, sadness for the downtrodden, and pure joy in the expanding of His Kingdom. I will have that knowledge that God is answering my prayer of ‘make my will, Your will’. If you are reading this, I hope you have had the experience of God having ahold of your life through your own surrender to Him (an amazing sense of peace and comfort that is unexplainable)…this can fade as I get complacent in my walk but once I have felt it, I have the knowledge of what it feels like and the incentive to get back there is God chastening me to Himself; it is an inflection point in any Christian’s walk.
[QTVOTD] Be sure to ask for prayer…
“FURTHERMORE, BRETHREN, do pray for us, that the Word of the Lord may speed on (spread rapidly and run its course) and be glorified (extolled) and triumph, even as [it has done] with you, and that we may be delivered from perverse (improper, unrighteous) and wicked (actively malicious) men, for not everybody has faith and is held by it.” 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2 ->me: One thing I have seen in Paul in my readings is how much he asks for prayer. We all know that Paul endured a lot of suffering and persecution but he was also a principled man against idleness and not doing the work to sustain himself…he did not like leaning on the support of the church. I know I don’t ask for prayer often enough. I am always ready to ask others what I can pray for but I need to get better at requesting. I also love that part of Paul’s request is that God’s word be glorified and succeed with those that come in contact with it. That, essentially, God would call those to Himself that hear the preaching of Paul, Timothy, and Silas. Finally, the prayer Paul has to be saved from men without faith who have it out for him. Paul knows that the world is filled with evil faithless men who have no inhibitions about eliminating followers of Christ. I feel so thankful that I live in a country where this is not prevalent so I should spend more time praying for our brave missionaries who do.