{"id":5347,"date":"2022-12-06T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-07T00:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5347"},"modified":"2022-12-02T17:57:55","modified_gmt":"2022-12-03T00:57:55","slug":"the-messenger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5347","title":{"rendered":"The Messenger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We wrote on <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5333\" target=\"_blank\">Saturday<\/a> about the remarkable results from Paul&#8217;s preaching the gospel to the Thessalonians. Today let&#8217;s see one of the reasons for those results: the quality of the messenger. In chapter 1, Paul says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>&#8230;You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. (1 Thessalonians 1.5, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What kind of men were Paul and his team?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=1+Thessalonians+2&amp;version=ESV\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Chapter 2<\/a> describes them in detail:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Boldness even after persecution and conflict<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No attempt to deceive<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Not men-pleasers or glory seekers (pastors and others of us who are public speakers could learn a lesson here)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Gentle<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Self-sacrificing<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Holy, righteous, blameless<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The goal was people walking with God in a godly way<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The messenger counts! A messenger whose goal is clear:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>For now we live, if you are standing fast in the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 3.8, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Paul wasn\u2019t a hit-and-run evangelist. Once I was in a relatively small meeting of men, and the guest speaker invited men who wanted to begin to follow Jesus to &#8220;just make eye contact with me.&#8221; Later, this speaker reported in a ministry newsletter that &#8220;Eight men committed their lives to Christ&#8221; in that meeting. Really? I was there, and neither I (one of the leaders) nor this speaker even knew who these men were. He didn&#8217;t invite them to come up and talk with us. Nothing. Paul put no stock into \u201craised hands\u201d or &#8220;eye contact&#8221; but into changed lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This Advent season we celebrate the coming of One who also cared about changed lives. Who made no attempt to deceive. Who was gentle, self-sacrificing, holy, righteous, and blameless. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>And the angel answered her, \u201cThe Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy\u2014the Son of God. (Luke 1.35, ESV)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>\u201cSay to Daughter Zion, \u2018See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey&#8230;\u2019 \u201d (Matthew 21.5, NIV)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We wrote on Saturday about the remarkable results from Paul&#8217;s preaching the gospel to the Thessalonians. Today let&#8217;s see one of the reasons for those results: the quality of the messenger. In chapter 1, Paul says: &#8230;You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. (1 Thessalonians 1.5, ESV) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=5347\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Messenger<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-1of","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5348,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5347\/revisions\/5348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}