So beginning my reading of the book of 1 Thessalonians, I found something interesting in the first chapter. Let’s look at the passage:

1 Thessalonians 1:8-10

8. And now the word of the Lord is ringing out from you to people everywhere, even beyond Macedonia and Achaia, for wherever we go we find people telling us about your faith in God. We don’t need to tell them about it,

9. for they keep talking about the wonderful welcome you gave us and how you turned away from idols to serve the living and true God.

10. And they speak of how you are looking forward to the coming of God’s Son from heaven - Jesus, whom God raised from the dead. He is the one who has rescued us from the terrors of the coming judgement.

That is amazing! Paul didn’t even have to say anything about the Lord in the communities surrounding the church of Thessalonica, because they had seen the transformation power that Jesus had in the lives of its people. It says two things:

1. They told of the peoples faith

2. They talk about how the people turned away from idols to serve the living God.

The first one is obvious - the people believed in God. They confessed Jesus as Lord, and therefore were saved and Christ-followers. But moving onto the second aspect requires a close look.

They didn’t just end with saying they believed God. The people (church ;)) took it to the next level. They allowed this new found faith to totally transform their lives, from a group of idol worshippers to servants of the living God. Not only did they confess there faith, but there lives backed it up, and look at the impact on the community.

This presents a question to each of us - are we letting our lives be totally transformed by our faith in Jesus, or are we just confessing that we believe in Him, yet in all honestly place things before Him, don’t have time for, or simply become lazy. Last time I checked, serving is an action. It requires an effort. And the effort Jesus is asking us to is to allow Him to totally transform us so that we can be living witnesses of Him - not just by speech, but through every aspect of our lives. Who knows, if we allow this work to be our testimony, proven and backed up by our lifestyle, then we might just leave an entire area talking about our faith in Jesus. And that, my friends, is pretty cool.