The 3rd week of this year’s Advent messages looks at the gift of Joy. It cannot be complete without pain, it will completely persevere and will be complete with prayer. (John 16:19-24)
The 2nd week in this year’s Advent Messages we look at the gift of Love and how transformative love requires knowing god personally, is counter-cultural, unites the Body of Christ and changes the World.
Week 1 of this year’s Advent Messages looks at our Living Hope who gives us confidence, calls us to persevere with a purpose and come from God’s power.
One of the most glaring in a good way, characteristics of this church is that they are only commended not criticized. This is rare in these letters. So, in a very real way they are a sort of community par excellence. As such, any church would be wise to imitate their example. If we did, what would be the result… Our faithfulness and absolute trust, even in the face of trials, and a secure future in His Kingdom.
This church’s sad situation is dire. They are dead and we will see from the text the nature of the apparent self-inflicted wounds that have brought them to this point. Jesus declares that their works are not done. There must never come a point when we retire in the Christian life. If our devotion to Jesus is only ever talked about in the past tense, that’s a problem. This church is called to “think back” on what they had received and heard. To whatever degree, they had forgotten the Good News. We also see they are living a way of life influenced and sullied by the culture rather than being cleansed by Christ. Let’s not commit ourselves to the ways of the world and instead commit to the ways of the word.
The church at Thyatira seems in many ways to be a solid church. But … they had made and were continuing to make a critical error, namely tolerating an immoral teacher that encouraged compromising on Kingdom truth. This could not continue. Nor can it continue in our own lives (individually or corporately). The words of King Jesus here in this text are helpful to know how to combat our common enemy, and they come back primarily to two key questions we must answer correctly.
The role of prayer plays a crucial part in the life and ministry of the Church. It is that vital connection and communion that we have with the triune God. Many times, we look at prayer from our side of the fence but today we will look at things from the other side of the fence, the modeling Christ did (His earthly heart for us) and continues to do for us (His heavenly heart for us).
In a world full of confusion and shifting values, God’s Word is the firm foundation we need.
There are three things to emphasize as we look at and unpack this letter, the allegiance to our King often means we cannot acquiesce to our culture, knowing our faith helps us hold fast to the truth and refute error when we encounter it and responding with repentance is always important for those who follow Jesus.
(1 John 4:7-12)