Sermon application - Thessalonians 1

This week, Pastor Steve's message was entitled, "Living what you believe", as he began his new series on Thessalonians ("Living in the Last Days")
text:

1 Thessalonians 1
1 Paul, Silas and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace and peace to you 2 We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers.
3 We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4 For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5 because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. 6 You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. 7 And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. 8 The Lord's message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore we do not need to say anything about it, 9 for they themselves report what kind of reception you gave us. They tell how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

As I was listening to the sermon, I took feverish notes, very excited to think about how many ways this sermon and passage of scripture could be applied to questions about our own lives.
Steve highlighted the points at the beginning of FAITH HOPE and LOVE. ... Funny, Paul touches on that later in 1 Corinthians 13... These are so key... and I realized that as we look at the above passage and listen to the sermon from this week, we can use the following questions and insert our own situations to make the questions especially applicable.

For example, what is going on in your life?
Are you under stress? relaxed?
Are you a parent? Are you single? Are you a student?
Think of your current circumstance and apply it to the blanks below, and see just how personal this gets.

1 - Faith, Hope and Love... What do these look like in our circumstances?
What does faith look like in the context of "______________"
What does hope look like in the context of ______?
What does love look like in the context of___________?
(Pray about the answers, wait on God for the answers...)


2 - If I don't have a hope that endures (about _______), where am I putting my faith? ("The ability you have to labor in love, is going to be affected by your hope and faith")

3 - (verses 7-9) - Everyone was talking about the Thessalonians faith, hope and love.
Is anyone saying that about me in this situation, ___________? Why? Why not?

4 - Pastor Steve mentioned Paul's desire for this church to become a mature church. To labor in love is a mature thing to do. As Steve put it, "Those of you who are parents understand that there are things that you do for love that you would not do for money"
What is the Lord asking you to do (as you grow in maturity) - that you would not do for money, but you would do for the love of Christ? What might you do in love in ___________(said situation) that you would not do for money?


5 - When we place our hope in Christ, our faith in Him, and are filled with love, it is not hard to trust Him.
What are you holding onto in your own hand that you might be able to let go of if you really allowed yourself to trust Jesus? (If you hold things in your hands, they become areas in which God does not have control)

6 - verse 6 - They became imitators of Paul and of the Lord.
Who are you imitating in _____________?
(Make sure it is God!)

7 - verse 6 - "in spite of severe suffering... you welcomed the message with joy."
Have you received God's word in affliction? with joy? This becomes an example.
"Your identity is NOT: your past, your failure, even what you did last night. Your identity is HIM."
What are you assigning to your identity as _____________ that is not of God?

8 - verse 8 - "the Lord's message rang out..."
How do you share your faith in_______________?

And a few final quotes from the message,
*"If you are living for this life, you are probably hopeless. If you are not living for heaven, you are not really living. Heaven is real. We need to live for it. It should cause us to live differently"
9 - If you were living for heaven and not for this life, how would your current situation with _________ be different?