1 Thessalonians 1 the Bible reads Paul and Sylvanus and Timotheus unto the church of
the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering
without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus
Christ in the sight of God and our Father.
Wherefore also we pray always for you that our God would count me worthy of this calling
and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and work of faith with power.
And that was Paul's prayer for them.
That they would fulfill all good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with
power.
The work of faith has power.
They doubt the power of the Gospel today.
You know, a lot of these Baptists, they would never come out and say it and maybe they don't
even realize it, but they're closet Calvinists.
They're closet Calvinists.
You know, I remember when I first got saved, I got in a Baptist church.
Man, I wanted to light the world on fire.
I wanted to tell, I'm there just sitting at stoplights and watching cars go by at red
lights and just thinking, who's going to tell all these people?
Who's going to spread this Gospel?
I found a Baptist church that was, you know, they went out and did visitation and things.
Here we go.
This is it.
And then I remember just not, shortly after that being told that, well, you know, if people
want to get saved, they will.
That's not the truth.
You know, we, we are the ones that have to bring the Gospel.
I mean, look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 4, verse 1, therefore seeing we have this ministry.
It's our ministry.
It's ours.
What's the ministry?
You know, it's not just getting together and singing and preaching.
It's going out and doing the work of preaching the Gospel.
We have, as we have received this ministry, we faint not, but have renounced the hidden
things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God as seed-fleet,
but by the manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the
sight of God.
But if our Gospel, whose Gospel is it?
It's our Gospel.
I mean, this is God's word.
He's saying, look, it's your Gospel to go preach.
Jesus did all the hard work.
You know, he's the one that did everything for us to be saved.
Now he's just saying, now it's your Gospel to go preach it.
This is our ministry.
This is our Gospel.
And if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.
Meaning this, that if we put our light under a bushel, they're not going to get saved.
That they are going to go to hell.
Soul winning is not only a work of faith, it is a labor of love.
I mean, think about this.
It was love that compelled the Lord Jesus.
It was love that compelled him to come down here and die for all of us.
You know, sometimes I just think about it more and more.
I can, you ever been in those really rough areas?
You know, and you see people living in squalor and things like that.
Or you just see the sin that people get into.
Or how wicked the world is today.
And sometimes I just shake my head and say, why does God even look at us a second time?
How does he even give any of us a second look?
And yet he does. Why?
Because he loves us.
It was love that motivated him.
We know the verses, you know, for God so loved the world.
And his love, it didn't wane when things get difficult, did it?
You know, and Jesus, you know, suffered more than any other man.
But did his love for us wane when they were crucifying him?
He drove those nails through his hands when they put that crown of thorns on him.
When they were scoffing him and mocking him.
When he's up there suffering on the cross.
Did he say, maybe I don't love these people as much?
No.
He says in Luke 23, I'll read to you.
And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, and there they crucified him.
You know, we just read over that.
That's heavy. That's serious.
They crucified him.
And it's then said, Jesus, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
You know, he loved us even when mankind was doing horrible things to him.
And I just want, and I'm using it as an example.
So the next time you go to some door and someone just kind of says,
I'm not interested, he starts to close the door.
You don't walk away just like, oh, well, there must be a rep of me.
You're going to burn in hell.
I mean, people get these attitudes out there though.
I mean, I'm kind of making fun of it, but it's true.
I've seen some things with people that I'm like, where's the love?
Don't you love this person?
Didn't you come to their door because you love them?
So what does it matter how they treat you?
If you love somebody that, you know, it should matter how they're going to treat you.
I will basically have a professional faith that baptize you.
In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Bury the likeness of our Savior's death.
Raise the walk in the name of the Savior.
Amen.