I Don't Remember Much About Thessalonians

Or I have not heard much about Thessalonians. I had been in a church (or another) for a long time and I rarely heard anything from two books of Thessalonians in New Testament. The predominant theme of the sermons preached at me is "God loves you, Jesus died for you, believe in Him, and you're forgiven." Even the talks at Christian campus group settings were pretty much the same. It was all about what God has done for you and you should come to Him for anything. The relationship they talked of was "God and I are like best friends and I should sing praises to Him because He made me special." The deepest talk I ever heard that I could best summarize was "faith in God gives purpose to life." The books that we often looked at were the Gospel books (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Psalm 23 and a tiny bit of the rest. For 6 years, that was all I had known.

Evangelism is the biggest part of the Christianity. We have to spread the Gospel because God is so awesome. Oh yeah, Jesus commanded us to [Matthew 28:19-20]. But how? What is the attitude that we should have when we talk about Jesus Christ with non-believers? The churches offer programs as a conventional way of evangelism that is appealing to people. Some offer classes for church members to become like evangelists.  Once the "trained evangelists' speak gospel to a non-believer, they move onto the next like an assembly line. They hold debate as if they are hopeful that at least one person in the audience will be persuaded. They hold a funeral service to reach out to mourning people using the loved one's death as a tool. They have to be "on fire" in order to spread the gospel.

I wonder if they truly looked at the whole New Testaments at how the apostles speak gospel to bunch of strangers. Rather importantly, if they looked at how the apostles DID with the gospel; not just only SPEAK but ACT and LIVE the gospel. Although God gives talent of evangelism to some people [Ephesians 4:11], Apostle Paul said we all should do the work of an evangelist [2 Timothy 4:5]. So what does it look like when we evangelize like he did? If we look at 1 Thessalonians, we can see how Apostle Paul, Silas and Timothy together evangelized to people when they were in Thessalonica [1 Thessalonians 2].

"You know, brothers, that our visit to you was not a failure. We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition. For the appeal we make does not spring from error or impure motives, nor are we trying to trick you. On the contrary, we speak as men approved 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 flattery, nor did we put on a mask to cover up greed–God is our witness.

We were not looking for praise from men, not from you or anyone else. As apostles of Christ we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.

Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you. You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children; encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory. And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe.

For you, brothers, became imitators of God's churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the Jews,who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to all men in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last."

As you can see, Paul, Silas, and Timothy evangelized to some Thessalonians for a while; serving them, teaching them, loving them, praying for them, providing for them, helping them, encouraging them, thanking God for them and suffering for them. Not only together did Paul, Silas and Timothy share gospel, they shared their lives. They set examples of how they lived as Christ did as they depended on the power of the Holy Spirit. When Thessalonians were ready on their own, Paul and his disciples went to another city to do it all over again. Meanwhile in another city, they continually prayed to God for Thessalonian church to keep in faith and pass it along onto others within city by doing the same. The faith was going strong as ever. Why? They wanted to please God and they loved people so much. They knew how difficult it would be but they served anyway with God and for God.

This is a great passage to learn from about sharing the gospel and working as an evangelist. I wonder why nowadays the churches rely on their own set of wisdom or programs instead of the Bible. The biggest deceptive excuse they use is that people changed over the years and what apostles did wouldn't work on people today. Well, look at what this sorry excuse did to us today. If the Bible is all we need, then why there are so many deviated how-to books? If love ain't what we need in evangelism, then what is [1 Corinthians 13]?

I totally encourage you to read First and Second Thessalonians. Keep in mind that prayer is very important to this work.