ADORATION – Reflect on God’s Greatness
UNITY When Scripture speaks about God’s attributes it never singles out one attribute as more important than the rest. Every attribute is completely true of God and God’s character.
John can say that “God is light” (1 John 1:5) and then a little later say also that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Each attribute is simply a way of describing one aspect of God’s total character or being. God himself is unified, completely integrated, and infinitely perfect in all of these attributes.
The reality of God’s unity transcends our understanding, but if all of God could be understood by our minds He would cease to be God.
Praise God for His Unity
Praise God that He is perfect in love and perfect in justice all the time. Praise God that He executes wrath and He is merciful. Praise God for His unity. Praise God that He is perfectly all of Himself at all times.
CONFESSION: Confess your sins to God and receive his continued mercy.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9
THANKSGIVING: Giving thanks to God for his specific blessings in our lives.
“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” Psalm 100
SUPPLICATION: Bringing our requests to God.
- Bring your personal prayer requests to God.
- Pray for those in our church who are sick. Ask God to comfort them and heal their bodies. Pray that he would use this sickness for His glory.
SCRIPTURE READING:
1 Thessalonians 2 New Living Translation
Paul Remembers His Visit
2 You yourselves know, dear brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not a failure. 2 You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet our God gave us the courage to declare his Good News to you boldly, in spite of great opposition. 3 So you can see we were not preaching with any deceit or impure motives or trickery.
4 For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts. 5 Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you well know. And God is our witness that we were not pretending to be your friends just to get your money! 6 As for human praise, we have never sought it from you or anyone else.
7 As apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to make some demands of you, but instead we were like children among you. Or we were like a mother feeding and caring for her own children. 8 We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too.
9 Don’t you remember, dear brothers and sisters, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled to earn a living so that we would not be a burden to any of you as we preached God’s Good News to you. 10 You yourselves are our witnesses—and so is God—that we were devout and honest and faultless toward all of you believers. 11 And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children. 12 We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in his Kingdom and glory.
13 Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received his message from us, you didn’t think of our words as mere human ideas. You accepted what we said as the very word of God—which, of course, it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe.
14 And then, dear brothers and sisters, you suffered persecution from your own countrymen. In this way, you imitated the believers in God’s churches in Judea who, because of their belief in Christ Jesus, suffered from their own people, the Jews. 15 For some of the Jews killed the prophets, and some even killed the Lord Jesus. Now they have persecuted us, too. They fail to please God and work against all humanity 16 as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last.
Timothy’s Good Report about the Church
17 Dear brothers and sisters, after we were separated from you for a little while (though our hearts never left you), we tried very hard to come back because of our intense longing to see you again. 18 We wanted very much to come to you, and I, Paul, tried again and again, but Satan prevented us. 19 After all, what gives us hope and joy, and what will be our proud reward and crown as we stand before our Lord Jesus when he returns? It is you! 20 Yes, you are our pride and joy.
SCRIPTURE REFLECTION:
Look at verse 12 again, “encouraging, comforting and urging you to live lives worthy of God, who calls you into his kingdom and glory.” This sums up Paul’s life message. He encouraged, comforted and urged people towards God honoring lives. What is your life message? Not what would you like it to be or what is a slogan you might say that it is. What would others say your life message is? Be careful about being too hard on yourself. Depending on how you are wired you might think either too lowly of yourself or too highly of yourself. Try to think accurately about yourself. Do some accurate reflection because if your life message needs some adjustment then by all means get to it. What do you talk the most about? Again, be careful about overthinking this. You don’t want to be frozen in place, worried about every conversation. On the other hand what we talk the most about is a pretty good measure of what is in our hearts. If you do some evaluation and don’t really like what you talk about the most or how you talk about life and others…then begin to pay attention to what is happening in your heart. What can we do about our hearts? We will talk about that tomorrow. Today, just do some honest reflection about your life message. If it is, like Paul’s, encouraging, comforting, and urging others to live worthy of God then be grateful and keep it up. In fact, consider how you might do this more and more. If you are not happy with what you feel to be your life message then be grateful for the fact that you can change. Ask God to help you do so.