Daily Devotions 1st Sept 2017

1 Thess 3: 12

May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you.

Paul is making this statement that indeed our capacity to love unconditionally can be increased by God’s grace and enabling. It is God who gives us the ability to love as He pours out His love to us. In turn we can release the same to others. In spite of the rioting and hatred that he has experienced from the Jews everywhere he went, Paul grew even stronger by the day as he knew it was God’s enabling that made him grow.

As love in Paul increases, his ability for love and patience also increased. Reading from the scriptures, we can visualize the very difficult times he had sharing the gospel to the people. Looking at the present day demography, we can see that these Middle East people are not at all easy to deal with.

Just look at the heckling that is going on daily at the temple mount by those that are Antichrist. They do that on a daily basis whenever the see any Jews up at the temple mount, they will start their loud heckling.

We see only a little of this now but can you visualize that the heckling was many times worse that what we see today. They were also very violent as they often beat up the apostles when they could get their hands on them.

Paul had confessed that there were times when he was beaten even to the point of near death.

Imagine that Paul had to endure such hardship but yet he never lost his focus on the needs of the people which is salvation. He was willing to pay the price so that the gospel can be preached and as many lives as possible be turned back to God.

We too will face heckling, insults and physical violence sometimes. But just like Paul let us continue to love the people even though they slander and persecute us continuously.

As leaders, this is the price that we must be prepared to pay because the devil will use those he can to try and destroy us and bring our ministry down.