Skip to main content

Thanking God For Growth

             We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. (II Thessalonians1:3)

 

            I’ve been trying to be more appreciative of people lately – being thankful for their help, their encouragement. Sometimes, I don’t do it very well, and people think I’m putting them down. Maybe they’re right, but in my mind, I’m trying to express love to them and gratitude for them. In today’s passage, Paul wrote about how it was right for him to be thankful to God for them because God was causing them to grow in faith and love. It’s right for us to be thankful to God when people grow – not just in their faith and love, but in other ways. It’s also right that Paul told the Thessalonians about it, because Paul’s thankfulness, expressed to both God and the Thessalonians, would act as spiritual sunshine, producing further growth.

            This is part of the Body aspect of any organization, but particularly for Christians. As you grow, your example encourages my growth. As I overcome struggles, someone else is encouraged to trust. As someone else trusts, you develop courage, which leads me to become more gentle, and someone else to rejoice.

            As I think about what I’m trying to do as I applaud, encourage, and engage with neighbors I don’t like (see the post from several days back) it is so that they can use that “sunshine” to grow and in the meanwhile, my not liking will lesson as I strengthen my capacity to love.

            So the notion that it is “right” that we thank God for growth, the growth is there, it is also right for us to do so in the hearing of the ones who are growing – or even that we thank them – because God uses it to cause them to grow. But we must be careful as we take on “project people” that we remember the goal is not our glory. The goal is for both us and them to grow as a result.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Virgin?

           Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)           This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)           But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”            “How will this be,” Mary asked the...
Post a Comment
Read more

Higher Thoughts

  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the  Lord . “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)           The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments,   for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord      so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (I Corinthians 2:15-16) If you read about the ancient gods of the various peoples, you’ll find that they think just like people. In fact, they think just like the sort of people we really wouldn’t want to be around. They think like the most corrupt Hollywood producer or, like hormone overloaded teens with no upbringing.   It’s embarrassing to read. I have a friend who argues that because God is not just like us, He is so vastly dif...
2 comments
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more