Living Christianly Part1 | English Devotion | NHFCSG

Living Christianly Part I 

1 Thessalonians 5: 12-15 

Christians are to recognize their leaders in 5 different ways.

1. Leaders are recognized not by their title but by their service. The title describes what that person really is before God and man.

 

1.  Leaders are recognized as being over the congregation in the sense of ruling and providing headship, as a shepherd is over the sheep. This describes a clear and legitimate order of authority.

 

1. Leaders are recognized as those who admonish the congregation. To admonish means to caution or to reprove gently; to warn. While its tone is brotherly, it is big-brotherly.

 

1. Christian ministers, who preach the whole truth, and labour in the word and doctrine, are entitled to more than respect; the apostle commands them to be esteemed, abundantly, and this is to be done in love.

 

1. If a Christian can’t esteem and love their pastor, they should get on their knees, asking the Holy Spirit to change their heart as long as they believe God has placed them to show esteem and love.

 

 

The mark of true Christian faith is that it changes everything you do and say. It affects every area of your life. 

Four special attitudes, Paul says, are required for this

First, 

1. Be patient 
2. See that none of you repays evil for evil
3. Encourage one another and to all
4. Help the weak ones

1. Patience is willingness to keep trying over and over again. Non-retaliation means that you do not strike back and try to get even with someone who may have hurt you in the process of helping him or her. 

 

1. Believers who go regularly to church, and profess to believe the Bible, often seem to go along with practices of the world around them with hardly any consciousness that what they are doing is unbiblical and really wrong. They evade paying their bills. They cheat on their taxes. They ignore needy people. They fail to keep appointments. 

 

1. Some people need encouragement. People may think they do not belong and cannot contribute anything, must be helped to find their place because they do have a place. In the wonderful picture of the body at work, in First Corinthians 12, the apostle says, "The ear cannot say, 'Because I am not an eye I am not part of the body.' No," says Paul, "even if it says that, it does not make it any less a part of the body," (1 Corinthians 12:16). 

 

We are to help each other find our place, give them something to do and encourage them in the work that they are doing.

 

1. Help the weak ones." This means especially those whom Romans 14 describes as being "weak in the faith" (Romans 14:1 ); those who do not know very much about the doctrine of the Christian life, who have not learned the truth that sets them free and need extra help. Perhaps they are not sure of their salvation, or they feel guilty about the past and do not sense they have really been forgiven yet by God. 

 

A Christian may no longer act as he did before he came to Christ. This is very clear in the letters of the apostle. How does this reflect on your living ? 

 

Let us pray 

Heavenly father, help us to hold our leaders with esteem, understand the authorities that you have placed above us, help us to change ourselves with the 4 attitudes that you have shown us today. In Jesus name. Amen.