Year 5, Day 290: 2 Thessalonians 1-2

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Guidance

• Guidance: God grants us His guidance.  Sometimes this guidance is God leading us away from temptation.  Sometimes this guidance is helping us to follow in a direction for which He has chosen.  Our default position should be to wait for God’s guidance and then follow when it comes.

2 Thessalonians 1-2 is largely a chapter offering guidance to the Thessalonian people.  They are experiencing persecution from all sides.  The Jews are accepting the Christians less and less.  The Romans are becoming hostile towards Jew and Christian alike.  It is getting to be quite difficult to be a Christian.  Even Paul himself is arrested often and taken to Rome to be tried for his faith.

In light of this reality, Paul sends this letter to the Thessalonians.  He doesn’t want them to fall by the wayside.  He doesn’t want them to lose faith when things get tough.  He doesn’t want them to be swayed under different teaching that makes life easier by compromising the faith.  He doesn’t want them to lose out on the promise to eternal life when it is free from God’s grace!

This is why they need guidance.  It is remarkably easy to fall prey to the wily ways of Satan.  It is easy to doubt yourself and start listening to the larger so-called wisdom of the world.  It is easy to get sucked into what the world is doing rather than be an oddity in the world as a god-fearer.  Paul knows all too well just how easy it is to fall when we are called to stand up.  Paul desires to guide them into a patient and enduring faith in the midst of the hard life of persecution that is no doubt coming their way.

<><