Unshakable: Living Faithfully Through the Tough Seasons of LifeSample

Unshakable // Building Solid Foundations

Life isn’t getting any simpler. It seems like more things demand our attention every day, more ideas that challenge our faith, and more issues we need to respond to. Following Jesus in this complex and chaotic age isn’t easy, but more than ever, our world needs to see what an unshakable life looks like. Where else will our friends and family discover God's unchanging power and love? Where else will they find hope that cannot fail?

An unshakable life isn’t about somehow becoming immune to doubts and disappointments. We don’t deny the reality of pain and suffering - but we can face the trials that get thrown at us without losing heart, without getting distracted, without giving up. That’s the kind of life we all long for, the kind of life we want to experience when things aren’t easy.

So how do we build an unshakable life?

As we go through the book of 1 Thessalonians, we’ll get a deeply personal insight into the kind of life we all desire - a life that stands strong when tested. It’s a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to a group of new Christians who had paid a significant price for becoming believers. Paul himself had originally introduced them to Jesus, and from the start, there were three things about them that stood out. He lists them in verse three - works of faith, labors of love, and the endurance which hope sustains. Each of these three characteristics is an echo of what Jesus himself had taught.

About twenty years earlier, Jesus had finished his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, with a discussion about what an authentic relationship with God should look like. He told his disciples that the true life of faith would never be that popular and that many people who claimed to be godly would just be faking it. The temptation would be to measure people by the words they speak, the ideas they endorse, and the religious activity they are busy with, but Jesus warned that unless his followers applied his teaching to their lives, then their lives would be like a house built on sand - it wouldn’t survive when the storms came. A life that produces good fruit, a living faith that is ok with being in the minority - that can withstand the worst circumstances that get thrown at us. His point is that an unshakable life starts by intentionally building the reality of God’s Kingdom into our daily choices and priorities.

And that’s what Paul loved about how the new believers in Thessalonica had responded to the good news of Jesus. Their lives showed a new set of priorities with a fresh loyalty to the things of God (faith in action); their relationships had been reshaped by a commitment to invest themselves into the needs of others (love in action); their focus and attention were placed on a set of values which looked beyond this material world (hope in action). They weren’t perfect, but they had survived, unshaken by the attacks on their faith - because they had solid foundations.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of becoming just a fan of Jesus, not a follower. To be so familiar with his message (and even with church culture) but to live a life that values the same things that the world around us does. An unshakable life is confident that God is good, that He is with us and that He is busy on our behalf. That kind of confidence grows when we put the things of God first in the day-to-day, when we make space for grace-giving relationships, and when we get in the habit of drawing our strength from the promises of God. That’s the foundation Jesus wants us to build our life on, so it won’t collapse when the tough times come.

1. What’s one thing I could do to put my relationship with God first this week?
2. Is there someone in my life with a need I could easily meet?
3. When circumstances are hard, where/who do I draw strength from?