“For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you, for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God, as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith?

Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”
1 Thessalonians‬ ‭3‬:‭9-13‬ ESV

As we continue to read through Paul’s letters to different churches, one thing becomes abundantly clear: the heart that claims Christ contains a genuine concern for the spiritual health and well being of others.

Paul is constantly concerned, praying for and sending people to check on those church plants that he has helped establish in these different towns. His heart is with these people. His thoughts are for them. Paul has legitimate concern and care for these people. It’s not just a matter of managment or quality control. He’s not writing them asking what offering was the week before or how many people were at the free community ice cream social. No, he is concerned for their hearts, that they stand firm through temptation and that they are doing the work of the gospel.

His heart desires truth and love to be active in their lives and he is going to stop at nothing to make sure they are solidly planted in their faith.

For you and I today, as we reach out to to others for the sake of Christ, inviting people to church, having conversations of faith with them, our hearts should have a similar concern. It is wonderful when people come to Christ and are baptized into Him, but we know the journey doesn’t end there, that is where it begins. We must follow up, disciple them, and show them how to live in Christ.

‘But, Ben, I don’t feel like I have my own life together, how can I guide someone else? Shouldn’t I get my own life right first?’

Good luck with that. You let me know when you have achieved perfection this side of eternity. You let me know when you have so balanced and ordered your life that there is no more flaw in you. Until then, you keep doing that work that Christ has commanded you to do.

He first commanded us to love, because this is how people would know t hat we we belonged to Him. He then told us to go and make disciples. Both of them commands. And as we make disciples, and love people, our concern is naturally (in Christ) going to be for them. Or faith is others-centered and there is no other way around it. This is what God a has set up for us in Christ Jesus, that we would die to self and live as Christ, putting others first in love for the sake of the message of grace in Him.

You cannot be a Christian and ignore/disobey these commands. Period.
This is our faith, that we would live this love and share this faith. It immediately shifts our focus and concern, and it makes us more like Christ who first loved us in this way. GoLove someone today and fulfill the law of Christ. Share your faith, grow someone in theirs, and live as The Lord intends us to in His Name.