We look at a rough passage that ultimately calls upon the church in Thessalonica to stand firm and hold tight to the traditions that they have been taught by Paul and his companions.
In the first chapter of this letter, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy talk about how they must thank God for the growing love and faithfulness of the church in Thessalonica, and how they are confident that when Christ returns, their persecutors will be cleared out, and they will have a clear path to God.
At the end of this letter, with Paul prepared to die and Timothy his primary apprentice, the letter is focused on handing off the ministry from one who has finished the race to one who has a long time left to go. We find a call to look at our own vocations, where God is…
We take a brief detour into the Luke reading this week and find Jesus encouraging us to bring our experiences of injustice, our frustration, our pain to God in prayer. We are invited and instructed to assault God with our prayers. Will we do so? Or will we lose faith?
In our second stop in 2 Timothy, we find a call to, “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendent of David.” We look at what it means to remember, and to remember this, specifically.
As we begin our tour of 2 Timothy, we take a hard look at shame. As Paul tells Timothy not to be ashamed of Christ or of Paul’s chains, we find that these are important words in an honor-shame culture, and important words in our culture, still filled with honor and shame.
As we continue to wrestle with the way 1 Timothy calls for the maintenance of the culturally expected social hierarchy of its context, we find that God is inviting us into the fullness of life that is possible when we are content and godly, and urging us to avoid being distracted from the gospel by…
What do we do with passages in scripture that we don’t like? We enter into the text as foreigners in a new land, trying to learn and explore that which we do not understand. We thank God for the opportunity to learn, to be challenged, and to grow.
We look at the remarkable story behind Paul’s letter to Philemon (and his church). We find in it a radical call to trust the work of the Spirit in the church.