57 - Leading Someone To Christ

Life Lessons with Dr. Steve Schell

If you’re just reading through Acts and come across these few verses about Thessalonica, you might be left with the impression the mission there was something of a failure. Paul, Silas and Timothy were only in the city for a short period of time. Some people came to Christ, but it wasn’t long before fierce persecution arose and the missionaries were forced to flee, leaving these new believers on their own. It would be natural to assume that when left alone without the apostles to guide them, and facing the fury of a hostile community, these new believers might have renounced their faith or, at least, stopped speaking openly about their faith.
That’s what you might assume if you just read this passage, but that’s not all we know. Paul wrote two letters to them within probably a few months of his departure. He, too, was worried, so he sent Timothy back to check on them. And when Timothy returned and reported what he found (Ac 18:5; 1Thess 3:1-8), Paul was thrilled, and wrote the letter we call First Thessalonians, and shortly after that he heard the church was confused about the Lord’s return, so he wrote Second Thessalonians.
What we discover when we read these letters is not a church struggling to survive. Instead, we discover people that are thriving and spreading the gospel over the entire region. How is that possible? What on earth did these missionaries do to those people? What kind of seed did they plant in their hearts that would keep growing even without mature leadership and in the midst of persecution? Frankly, the result of the mission to Thessalonica is a miracle. Under normal circumstances that church shouldn’t have survived. But it did, and it grew…and we need to discover why. Because whatever those apostles taught or did to those people that produced such lasting life-change, we need to teach and do for those we lead to Christ.