Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13 (April 29, 2025)

April 29, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13

Blessings and Peace to you all on this cool bright spring morning here in Tucson, or Hawaii, or up in the mid-west of our country. It is so good to be back with you as we consider, what is this morning, a rather small passage from chapter 3 of Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians. Today, we need to pray that with so many changes in our country that we do not lose or forget the people who have the need to have the support and care of our government for their health and well-being. Please also pray for my sister-in-law, Connie, in Manistee, MI. Since my older brother's death, she has had quite a difficult time being caught up in her grief. Both Melody and I are hoping that the coming of spring along the Lake Michigan lakeshore will lift her spirits, helping her to find joy in her family and friends while learning to live with the grief that we all know on the loss of a family member or spouse.  May God keep her in His care bringing her peace and comfort.

Today we have a really brief passage from Paul which is a prayer. We will be taking a look at this prayer for the help it may give us in our own praying. But first, do you remember one of the first journeys into music that many of us had in elementary school? We had to learn to play an instrument called the tonette. We were guided by a teacher, and gradually learned to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” over a period of weeks, or maybe even months, until finally the whole class could play this piece of music in unison with some degree of competence.

Today, as we look at this prayer which Paul offers, we will gradually learn from Paul, just as we have from Christ in the perfection of the Lord's Prayer, how to form a truly praise filled, and genuine prayer of thanksgiving. By the way, how did you do on your tonette at that first unison playing of the song?  I can certainly remember that, and my first piano solo at church at our Sunday School Christmas Program. In both places at that time, I still needed a great deal of work to make either instrument make pure beautiful sound. So it is with prayer, and Paul's prayer can certainly be a model of the way that meaningful, beautiful prayer can be formed and offered to our Father in Heaven.

The first thing that we learn in Paul's prayer is that our prayer is grounded in the life and work of God Himself! Knowing this, is it any wonder that our prayers are so powerful? This helps us to understand that God and Jesus are inextricably connected! That is why our prayers to God are grounded in the character of God which we are able to understand through His action on our behalf in His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. When we understand this, we know that in God through Christ we are surrounded by His goodness, generosity, and sovereign love. For us this has already been revealed for us in the suffering, death, and Resurrection of Christ, and we pray knowing the truth and reality of God our Father in Heaven. In our prayers we do not just hope that God and Jesus are real, and their promise is true. No, we know this is all true, and our faith gives us certainty and helps others to come to know it too. We do not pray looking backward, no, instead we pray for this day, and for all the days of the future in which the promises of God through Christ will continue to be fulfilled for us, and for those who come after us in faith. As I have written this about Paul's prayer in these verses in Thessalonians, you might be feeling an absence of something. Did Paul forget about the Spirit? No, he did not! For Paul, and for us it is the very nature of the Holy Spirit that our life and faith in the fullness of the promises of God will always be fulfilled. This is why we name the Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, the Sustainer of Life.  She is always with us, guiding our lives, our prayers, and guarding our journey! It is the Spirit who helps us pray, sometimes beyond our own knowing, and when we fail to pray, or do not know how to pray, it is the Holy Spirit who carries our prayers to the Father, and who creates in us the desire to respond to God's lives by getting better at our life's journey.   The Spirit is quite a teacher, who is always with us, growing our faith and moving us forward in our journey with the Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Like the tonette concert, or my first piano solo at Christmas, practice, and modeling after the teacher, will move our skills, and our lives into our future with God.

God bless you on this day and keep you in the fullness of His Love. Pastor Kim