Philippians - Living in the WordSample

Key Verse:

2 Thessalonians 1:3-4

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. Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.

Reflection:

How could it be that people who are hated and persecuted by their neighbors are flourishing in their faith? Endurance. Just like an athlete trains their body by putting it through increasingly strenuous exercises, we too grow spiritually through the hard things that we endure. Endurance is not a passive survival of the things that life throws our way. Endurance is the active repurposing of the trials we face to strengthen us and grow us in Christ. Yes, life for the church in Thessalonica was hard, but their devotion to the kingdom of God and their faith in the midst of trials drew them closer to God and to each other.

Response:

When you go through hard things in life, is your tendency to draw closer to God or not?

When life is great, and you don’t have a care in the world, is your tendency to draw nearer to God or not?

Reflect on the difficult things that you’ve been through and ask God to reveal to you the ways that He has grown you in those trials. If you are currently going through something difficult, ask God for the faith and endurance to make it through.