Simply A Night Owl

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ ~ 1 Thessalonians 1:3

Paul and Silas had done their job in Thessalonica, converting Jews and Gentiles alike along with some pretty prominent women in the city.  There was so much jealousy on the part of the leaders, they went out and found the worst people in the worst part of the city and essentially, formed a lynch mob.  This group went out hunting Paul and Silas.  When they couldn’t find them, who did they take it out on?  The converted saints received the brunt of their ire.

Thessalonica was a trade and communication center; the largest city in Macedonia and the capital of its province.  Let’s see; big city, lots of people and cramped living space.  Add hunger, thirst, strife and commodities horded by the leading class.  In a word, suffering.  Does this sound familiar?  Can you name a place like this that exists today.  Sounds to me like it might be exactly the place where the enemy is going to launch attacks in and from.  This is why it was such a ripe harvest ground for Paul and Silas and why wherever there is suffering in this world now, that’s where I should be.

I am called to a work produced by faith in our Lord.  My lasting resolve to continue on in spite of the trials and tribulations, the successes and failures is not from wishful thinking.  It comes out of a firm confidence that I am loved and cared for by my Lord.  It is that love out of which my labor comes.  I love my Lord and I love my fellow man.  As a Christ Follower, it is also my goal that none should perish. 

Consider this.  Every time you knock on a door, you might be looking into the eyes of a spousal or child abuser or possibly the recipient of that abuse.  You might meet the hopeless single mom who is raising three kids by herself and working four jobs to do it.  The next person you talk to at the coffee shop might be thinking about ending their own life.  Our mission takes us into the drug impoverished neighborhoods and the alleys where the homeless alcoholics sleep in cardboard boxes and get their next meal from a dumpster.  It’s a crazy, scary world out there.  How is that we can have the fortitude to go out and be missional when, by its very nature, our mission leads us to the places that we least want to go to and to the things that we really don’t want to see? 

We go there because we know that Jesus would go there.  We go there because we know that Jesus goes with us.  We go there because of our faith, hope and love.  Faith hope and love are all over the New Testament and quite often, like in the prayer for the Thessalonians, together.  In the end, it’s all going to boil down to faith, hope and love and we all know which of these is the greatest.

That’s why we go.