Everyone thought they would fail.
Within weeks of Paul and his team arriving in Thessalonica with the good news of Jesus, those who had come to faith were left without leaders, facing persecution and under intense pressure to recant their faith.
Paul, Silas and Timothy had been forced to leave. Those opposed to this new Christian faith had persuaded some local troublemakers to stir up the assembled crowd with lies about the team. They had no choice but to go.
Paul was desperate to return. “When we were torn away from you for a short time… out of our intense longing, we made every effort to see you” (1 Thess 2: 17). However, for reasons unclear, they weren’t able to get back until Timothy finally made the journey on his own.
In an age with no mobile phones or internet connection, the wait for news must have been excruciating. Had the church survived the persecution? Were they still meeting? With the longest standing church members barely a few weeks old in the faith on the day Paul and the team left, did they have any leaders? Who was taking care of these baby Christians?
Eventually, Timothy returned with the welcome news that the church had indeed survived and their faith was still strong. The young Christians were standing firm despite the challenges around them, but that wasn’t all. To Paul’s joy and amazement, not only were the Thessalonian believers still meeting as a church, but they were reaching out to their local community, to the wider area and even beyond. In fact, their passion for evangelism was the talk of the town for miles around.
What was their secret?
In the same first letter to the Thessalonians, we get some insights: The baby Christians knew they were chosen by God; the gospel had made a deep impact in their lives, and they had experienced God’s supernatural power. None of them had been mentored with leadership skills, none of them could boast any kind of spiritual heritage, but despite their lack of knowledge and training, God used them.
If we were to look for examples of spiritual maturity in the pages of the New Testament, we might point to well-known characters like Paul, or Peter, or those trained under them; those who have been faithful in serving God over many years, in which case you can forget the Thessalonians. They don’t qualify.
And yet Paul tells us they had become a model church to all others within hundreds of miles.
Now, I don’t want to minimise the importance of education, training and the maturity that comes with years of serving God, but maybe we can learn from young Christians too; especially those who have experienced God’s love and power and the deep impact of the Gospel. I, for one, would like some of the joy and zeal of these baby Christians to rub off on me.
The best is yet to come. God bless - Terry
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