Communities

I waas away in a place with no wireless connection for over a week. I kept doing my blog but couldn't post them so now I am a week ahead, but I will still post them one at a time.

1Thessalonians 1:2-5 We give thanks to God always for you all, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brethren beloved by God, that he has chosen you; for our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction.

Paul was so sure in his writings to the Thessalonians about the nature of this community and so also of the individuals that were in it. I have been blessed to have been a leader in a number of communities about which I could write with the same kind of surety. I could write to the community at Camp Dennen that the Lord says, I have seen your great faith and the many ways you live out the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. I pray constantly that God will continue the powerful work he has done in you until the final day of his coming. I could write to the church gathered at Park Avenue that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ commends the work of the Holy Spirit in your midst that has raised up leader upon leader to continue the work Jesus has left for those who love him. What an honor and a privilege it has been to be sent by Christ to be a leader among such men and women, because each of you taught me and showed me the path of servanthood that God had planned for me. I only hope that I would never write these things out of any sense that I had done anything to be proud of, but rather that I could in some moments revel in the knowledge that God used this frail vessel to be part of His glorious work. I could watch His Holy Spirit move as He transformed lives before my very eyes. Some see Paul as prideful or sometimes even judgmental as he wrote words like these, but I think, if he was anything like me, that he just admired what God had done and what he was sure God would do among these faithful leaders of the early church. I know I am grateful for those who have shared and those who continue to share the journey with me.