Sunday, June 2, 2019
“Yahoo! This is awesome!” You yell as you leap off the rock outcropping
into open space, falling, until you finally splash into the icy, clear mountain
lake.
The embrace is bone-crushing. Love flows from him into you and from you
into him, this friend you once called your best friend, but are now seeing
again after many years of separation.
The tears flow out of your
eyes. You have no control over this
flood of emotion that has blindsided you.
You know exactly what it is about and yet have no words for it.
Excitement and icy
exhilaration. A long-overdue
reunion. Cold cocked by grief. Whether it is joy, love, sorrow, or something
else, we have emotions that cannot be held in.
They must be released. This is
the sense in 2 Thessalonian 1:3.
First
century Jesus follower Paul is writing his second letter to a church he
planted. They are a faithful group, but
have had to deal with tragedy that sparked confusion about Jesus’ hoped-for
return. Paul writes to answer questions,
correct mistakes in thought and behavior, defend against false teaching that
threatens the Thessalonian Christians, and re-establish right teaching about
Jesus.
However,
before he gets to the meat of the letter, there’s something he has to say, a
feeling he can’t keep to himself. “We
must always give thanks to God for you, [my Thessalonian] brothers and
sisters,” he says. That phrase “we must
give thanks” has this sense. Paul feels
he owes it to the Thessalonians and owes it to God to thank God for the people
of this wonderful, stressed out church.
Why? His reason is the core of
the message this morning.
Again,
verse three. “We must always give thanks
… because your faith is growing abundantly and the love of every one of you for
one another is increasing.” Because
faith has grown and love increased among the Thessalonian Christians, they
endured persecution from pagan Greeks.
Mocked, shut out of local commerce, even beaten, these Christians have
kept the faith in the face of painful trials.
Confused by false teaching about the resurrection, these believers have kept
their eyes on Jesus.
Paul
is so thrilled by their endurance in spite of the threats, he tells them he has
boasted about them to other churches.
“Hey you Philippians! Hey you
Corinthians! You have got to see how committed
the Thessalonians are!” Their faith has
grown to abundance, beyond measure. Paul
exaggerates a little, but he never hesitated to be critical in his other
letters when critique is called for. He
is truly amazed at the growth of their faith and the increase of their love for
each other. The Greek verb gives the
sense that the love in the Thessalonian church is constantly increasing.
Faith growing to abundance and love
increasing more and more produces in a church an environment of warm
relationships. The church becomes a
family that’s committed to building each other up and supporting one another
through thick and thin. Our church has
experienced some losses this year and you might even say we’re a little bit
down. But I see in us a commitment to
grow in faith and increase in love.
We’ve been learning about the Growing Young approach to church. A philosophy developed by the Fuller
Theological Seminary Youth Institute, Growing
Young encourage churches to invest in the discipleship of people aged
10-25, Generation Z and the Millennials.
We believe that if everyone in our church contributes to developing
young people as Jesus’ disciples, we will all grow in our walk with
Christ. We will become a more welcoming,
service-minded church.
We’ve been studying the core
commitments found in churches already successfully growing. How are we currently doing with these
commitments in our congregation? What
changes can we make to increase our ability to live out these commitments? We’ve looked at shared leadership, also
called keychain leadership; empathy; and, taking Jesus seriously. Today, we’re on the fourth core commitment –
warm relationships. Churches that grow
young create space for people to be in genuine relationship with one
another. In these churches, “brother”
and “sister” mean something – something very good and much needed.
In our Thursday night prayer meeting
this past week, we prayed for one of the young people in our church who is
facing some challenges. She has grown up
in our congregation and is now in her 20’s.
A retiree at the prayer meeting remembered taking this young person to
basketball and football games numerous time over the years. This retired person has been Growing Young long before we ever heard
of the Fuller Youth Institute program.
Through her love of sports and her love of young people, she has been
connecting with children, teens, and 20-somethings for years. When she heard that one of “her” young people
was struggling, she felt it. She prayed
for that young person from her heart.
For her the connection happens
through sports. For you it might be
yardwork or dartball or construction or school tutoring or music. The interest is the point of connection. You can invest your life in a young person. Warm, true relationship forms. You will be a friend and mentor for someone
who needs it. When you pray for that
person, you will find yourself connecting with God’s heart at a level deeper
than maybe you even thought possible.
People of all ages crave a warm,
welcoming environment where deep relationships grow. Pause for a moment and gauge the relational
temperature in our church from your perspective. Is this a place where you connect with
others? Do you feel welcomed and
loved? Do you have true friends whom you
can trust and call on in this church family?
We want the church to be a warm
community, but we shouldn’t pretend that it is.
Some find their best lifelong friends within this body of
believers. Others feel disconnected and
have real trouble plugging in. If that’s
been your experience, don’t fear. In
looking at the Thessalonian church as our model for a warm, welcoming family,
we don’t just consider that they had faith and that they loved each other.
Their faith was growing and ours can too. Ask
God to expand your faith. Whatever your
relational experience at HillSong has been – warm or cold – pray for God to
expand your faith. This starts out as a
work of the Holy Spirit in you. We open
ourselves to what God is doing in us. Pray for the church. Ask God to move in the coldest hearts among
us, softening us, so that we welcome one another. Paul was excited to see the Thessalonians’
faith grow. Ours can too.
He was just as happy to see them
respond to God’s love revealed in Jesus, by increasing their love for one
another. Among us, love can continuously
increase. Fix in your mind’s eye the
image of Jesus welcoming you into His embrace.
Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love for you and in Him you have
blessed life as a child of God.
Now, let that love of God, expressed
in Jesus, begin reforming your heart.
That reformation of the heart becomes real as you express the
Christ-love growing in you to your friends here in the church family. This takes risks. So take them.
Speak to something this morning that’s in the church that you don’t know
that well. “Hi. Good morning.
I’m Rob. I just wanted to say I
am happy to see you today.” That’s a
place to start and love increases from there.
We have to start somewhere.
From there, like the church member I
mentioned in the prayer meeting, your life interests can be the context in
which you begin developing relationships.
If you have found our church relationally cold, or you feel distant,
pray for growing faith and increasing love.
And find ways you can connect with people. If you’re not sure where to start, give me a
call this week and we can work on it together.
There is a misperception that young
people are locked in with their phones and are completely happy tuning out the
world, especially the adult world. It
seems their most important relationships are with people in social media,
people they’ve never met in person. The
attractive thing about the phone is they can control it – just turn it
off. The truth is, like everyone else,
young people crave human-to-human contact.
As one young person in the Growing
Young study quipped, “The internet can’t help you move into your
apartment.”[i] Virtual relationship cannot surprise you with
a needed smile or embrace. They cannot
have you over for dinner or go to a game with you.
Growing in faith and increasing in
love embodies the mission our HillSong leaders discerned from God at our March
leaders retreat.
What do we do? We follow Jesus. He embodied love as he welcomed all people
into his circle.
What do we do? We love others; the second of his two
great commandments. Love your neighbor as yourself.
What do we do? We share hope. Our abundant faith and ever increasing love –
the Holy Spirit expressed in and through us – gives us hope and gives hope to
all the people God leads to us.
God is calling HillSong to be a
church of warm relationships. Among us,
Jesus is Lord. People are loved. And hope grows. And we want you to feel yourself fully
welcomed, fully a part of this circle of family relationships.
Paul concluded 2 Thessalonians chapter
1 saying, “We always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of
his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith, so
that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him,
according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” We strive to respond to God’s grace so that
our faith will grow, our love will increase, and the name of Jesus is glorified
among us.
AMEN
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