Three Thessalonian traits

remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father, - 1 Thessalonians 1v3


One of the nice things about the way God gave us His word in the New Testament is that He uses letters to local churches to do so much of it. As He does so it is easy to see how our local churches, and how we as part of them, measure up.

Paul commends the church at Thessalonica for three things in this part of his introduction. He talks about faith, love, and hope, but he makes an application for each of them.

The church there was praised for their:

Work of faith
Labour of love
Patience of hope

The work they did not was not to impress anyone. The work they did was not results based. The work they did not based on monetary reward or human recognition. In other words, their work was not based not on sight, but on faith.

Their labour for the Lord likewise was not from outside pressure. They did not serve the Lord so that they could build up a reputation for themselves. The love of Christ is what constrained them to labour for Him.

They had patience based not on what they could see, but on the calm assurance that God would do His work and on the eternal hope that awaited them.

To put in simply, as they served the Lord they had learned not to set their affection on things below, but they looked above. The were more concerned about the things they could not see than the things they could see,

My question for the day? What motivates my life and my service for Him?