1 Thessalonians 4 • Between the Fences
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
I'm going to ask that you look in your Bibles this morning at 1 Thessalonians chapter 4. And I mean to make no secret of my intentions, I mean to make you work for your borscht. [laughter] We're going to look very intensely at this portion of Scripture this morning, and I do plan on looking fairly intensively at what it means to know God's will.
We use that language so readily, and yet it is so difficult for us actually to discern what it means to know God's will. Well, God's will, how do I know what God wants? Whether the choices are about going to Timbuktu or marrying Nancy Sue, going to Washu or What's the Matter You?
See, I watch Rocky and Bullwinkle too.
Or whether I keep a business or change a job or we go to war.
How do I know what God's will is?
The Apostle addresses it very specifically in 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 1 through 12, where he is dealing with these people who he's told a great deal about the grace and mercy of God through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
But he's about to say in the next chapter, "And this same Jesus is coming again."
So the question is, what do we do now?
Between the resurrection and the coming again, what is God's will for us?
This is what the Apostle says.
Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord to do this more and more, for you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
It is God's will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality,
that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lusts like the heathen who do not know God,
and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him.
The Lord will punishment for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life.
Therefore he who rejects this instruction does not reject man, but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
Now about brotherly love, we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other, and in fact you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia.
Yet we urge you brothers to do so more and more. Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business,
and to work with your hands just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
Pray with me.
Father, it is our desire to walk with you and in the paths of your design.
But you know our frailty and our confusion.
We don't always know what path that should be.
Yet you who have given your Son, who would make his radiance shine in us, have also made your word alive in our hearts so that we desire to follow you. Help us now to do it rightly by giving us the instruction of your word and spirit.
This we pray that we might serve you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Some years ago now I was granted a writing sabbatical, able to get away from my teaching and administrative responsibilities at Covenant Seminary and go away to work on a book. Now I really did need to get some distance away because being too close to the seminary meant that the daily concerns would still creep in.
At the same time we couldn't be too far away because my wife was employed as the choir director at our church, and she had to be back in town a couple or three days a week to continue to lead the choir. So we moved out of our house to a cabin about an hour away from here and lived there for a year where I could be away from the daily interruptions but she could be close enough to continue to lead the choir.
One night she called me after choir and alerted me that it was snowing. What should we do? Well it hadn't been snowing very long so we determined to do this. The highways were still probably passable. So she should drive on out to the cabin. The really only treacherous portion of the drive was probably going to be that last mile and a half to two miles where you get off the main highway onto the twisting and turning country lanes. That's where it can really be slick and treacherous.
So we decided she would leave, get on the highways, and I would actually hike out from the cabin to the highway so that when she got off the highway and we got on the treacherous roads, if we slid off there would at least be two adults to push the van out of the ditch or to shepherd the kids back to the cabin.
Sounded like a pretty good plan until I got out and started hiking toward the highway.
The snow was coming much more rapidly than we had anticipated. It was in those little country lanes almost as though between the hills somebody was pouring milk into a cereal bowl. It was just filling up in the lane so that you could hardly see the road at all anymore. By the time my wife finally got there, there was no evidence of the road at all.
Still we had to get to the cabin so we began to inch forward in the van. In the direction we knew the road went kind of scary until we discovered something.
Even not being able to see the road, to see what was ahead,
could pretty much stay in the track that we should go
because of the fence lines that ran along beside the road. We couldn't see the road anymore, but we could stay between the fences.
And staying between the fences, we could stay on the track that we needed to go even though we couldn't see what was immediately behead.
I wonder if this passage of Scripture isn't directing us in some similar way. Telling us obviously that we are to follow God's will, but not telling us exactly what's ahead. Some Christians approach the Bible that way, as though it's some sort of crystal ball or Ouija board that's going to tell you immediately what's ahead. Instead, what's happening here is we are having fence lines described. A fence line of Christian righteousness and a fence line of Christian prudence.
So even though God does not say what is immediately ahead, He is telling us how to stay in His will, stay on the track of pleasing God by understanding what these fence lines are.
The fence line of Christian righteousness is the first subject. He says in verse 1, "Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more."
Now, the apostle is saying we've already told you what to do, and what we told you to do in the past, and you are doing in the present, keep doing in the future. More and more. What you have been doing and are doing, keep doing. Why?
He says in verse 2, "For you know what instructions we gave you
by the authority of the Lord Jesus."
What does it mean to stay on the path of Christian righteousness, to stay inside that fence line?
Verse it simply means recognizing that fence is put there with God's authority.
"You are to honor the path of Christian righteousness because it is established by the authority of God."
Recently we went to a New Year's Day parade, and there seemed at times to be a great place to park, fairly near the parade, but there was this yellow tape that said, "Do not park by order of Metropolitan Police Department." Well, to us it seemed like a better place to park,
but there was a higher authority that said, "Don't go past this line."
There are many times in any Christian's life where we will believe they would be actually better to erase that figure.
Tell that account. Make that choice. Go that direction. Go to that person.
And yet we who have God's instruction recognize that with His authority He has said there are certain things that are out of bounds for the Christian.
And this is not to be determined by your will or the opinions of men or the philosophy of the age. The authority of God has said there are certain things that are beyond the fence of Christian righteousness. And God's authority is to be honored first if we are to stay within His will. To recognize that fence has been given with the authority of God above all other authorities or preferences or choices or opinions.
Having recognized the fence is laid with God's authority, He begins to give some of the actual instructions of that fence. Verse 3, "It is God's will that you should be..."
What do you think the next word would be? It's God's will that you would be successful.
It's God's will that you would be happy and healthy all the time.
Is that what it says?
It's God's will that you would be sanctified. What does that word mean?
Holy?
Pure?
Like Jesus?
It's God's will that you would be more and more like Jesus. One of the most powerful influences in my life was a young preacher who asked the question simply what time, "What can you as a human being guarantee is the will of God?"
Not many things in this life. Sometimes we seem to think that we could guarantee certain things. "As long as I operate with honesty and integrity, I will have success in my business." God's guaranteed it. Has He really?
Would you say to the Christians in the Sudan who for their faithfulness to God,
who had their villages bombed, been driven into starvation and out of their country, have lost children, house, home, culture, out of faithfulness to God, have lost everything?
Would you say for them, "It's God's will that you would be happy, healthy, holy and successful."
How would you say it if the Apostle Peter and the Lord Jesus Christ say, "It is God's will that you should suffer"? Do you know that God says that in His Word?
It is God's will that His people should face a degree of suffering in this life. Because then they will recognize that they are dependent upon Him. That this life is not the end of things. That they do not come to Him simply for their own selfish gain. But rather, we get knowledge of Christ by sharing in the fellowship of His what? Of His sufferings.
Well, if we're really a gospel preaching, holy, rightly led church, we will grow.
Is that so? Is that an absolute guarantee in the Word of God?
What about the Christians of the French Reformation who out of faithfulness to God, were driven from their churches, out into the hinterlands. So that if they were found worshiping God's, the preachers were executed, the men were put in galleys, the women were put in prison, and their children were taken away for the rest of their lives.
And as a result of that dispersion of the Huguenots, faithful Christians went across Europe spreading the gospel.
While their churches internally were destroyed.
Were they not faithful? No, they were very faithful.
But it was God's will to sanctify them. To make them more and more like Himself. To have them more and more turn away from the things of this world. And to turn to dependence upon Jesus Christ. Not only so that their hearts would know the deepest things of glory for this life and the life to come. But so that the whole world may know. I can only do not know the will of God for your life or my life other than this. It is God's will that I and you should be more like Jesus Christ. And God says He will bring into our lives what is necessary in order that that be accomplished.
Now He gives some fairly specific instructions of our roles in that, in this passage. He goes on to say it is God's will that you should be sanctified. And then at least in one dimension of life begins to describe that in the area of sexual purity.
He says that you should avoid sexual immorality. That each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable. Not in passionate lust like the heathen who do not know God.
So we understand that it is not only honoring God's authority, it is actually obeying His word that is staying within His will. In this area of sexual purity He is saying you are not to be like the heathen, simply pursuing your own lust. God is establishing His words purity for the marriage relationship in which sexual expressions occur, for the pleasure of man and the glory of God.
But outside of that sexual relations are impure and wrong.
And so He establishes that line. He says you are not only considering this for yourself. In verse 6 He said, "And in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him."
In the culture of that day the apostles reminding the people of God your sexual immorality does not just affect you, it affects others.
If you were a man it affects the woman that you would sleep with, or her future husband, or present husband, or her future life.
You are not just to be thinking about you, you are to be thinking about others too in the area of sexual expression.
All of this of course is not limited to sexual matters at all, but it is the example that the apostle is using. You stay within the fence line of what God has said for your sake, but also considering others as well. As you begin to think of these principles that God has established, He is saying you are to honor Christian righteousness by obeying the standards that God has given, recognizing that they come with the authority of God. And nothing else is to substitute for that authority. Those are principles you know, but I wonder if you can think of how they work out.
Two principles I think of that come readily to mind if we think of I want to stay on the path of God's will or these. First, if God has addressed an issue, we are to do as He instructs. If God has addressed an issue, we are to do as He instructs. No one should be thinking, "I wonder if it's God's will if I should be faithful to my spouse." I ought to pray about that.
God has already addressed that issue.
I wonder if it's God's will if I should cheat on this exam.
No, God has already addressed that issue. If God has addressed the issue, we are to do as He has instructed. It's not now up for discussion, or even in the right wrong sense, praying about it so that you could find an option other than what God has already said. I can remember a particular time in which some friends of mine had actually rented an apartment to a pastor and couldn't get rent out of him and finally went and confronted him and he said he was praying about whether he should pay his rent.
Well, God has already addressed your obligations in that regard. Where God has already addressed the matter, we do as He instructs. But there's a second dimension. If righteousness is being called for on the basis of the authority of God, then we don't add authority where it does not exist, which means this. This will shock you. If God has not addressed the issue, do as you wish.
If God has not addressed the issue, do as you wish. Now, obviously, Christians don't wish to disobey God. I'm not talking about just taking license to take advantage of God, but I am talking about not demonizing options or sanctifying preferences.
Don't you know how we demonize options? Sometimes we do it as young people when we're making choices about colleges, for instance.
I've got two righteous options. Neither one of these is being pursued for evil purposes.
So I have two colleges and I'm trying to decide what to do. And sometimes in the Christian world we begin to say, "Well, you know, one's God's will and one's not God's will."
So people begin to go into choice paralysis. "Oh, no! One of these isn't God's will. If I go down that path, I will be evil and out of God's will." Listen, if God has not addressed the issue, do as you wish.
God loves you. He's certainly powerful enough to redirect you if it's not the path He wants you to go down. We don't create, give moral status to options that God has not addressed in His Word. If choices were apples and we had a basket full of apples, we wouldn't say to ourselves, "I wonder which is the righteous apple and which are the evil apples."
We would say, "Praise God, I have a basket full of apples."
And sometimes in life we should say, "Praise God, I have a basket full of options. I'm not quite sure which one I should choose, but I'm not evil because I do this job or that college or that wife." Oh, forget the last one.
We're not evil when the choices are righteous, as God's Word determines, and we don't know which one may lead us into the future, but there is nothing evil in the options. Now, the contrary has to be taken into account, too. We don't sanctify our preferences.
Say, simply because we have a preference by our feelings or our makeup or inclination, that it's holy because it's our preference. Let me ask you, which is more holy? Do you go to 8 o'clock or go to 11 o'clock?
Oh, you think you're more holy because you cut the difference.
No, no. One's not more holy or righteous than the other. God has given options. We rejoice in the wealth of options. And we don't because of our preference. Now, think of how that destroys often the Christian. I have a preference about music or politics or a job or a geography or timing, and I begin to, without the authority of the Word of God, to sanctify my preferences.
Now, granted, there are things, choices that have to be made, and they have to be made according to care for other people and Christian prudence and so forth, but we do not have the right of taking to ourselves the authority of the Word of God, where it is only our preference, where God has not instructed, do as we wish. I learned something early in my pastoral ministry that has served many times when often Christians are at loggerheads about their preferences. It's to ask this question, which is more wrong?
Now, I'll tell you up front, this is a trick question. Professors have the right to do that. I can tell you, it's a trick question. Which is more wrong to allow what God prohibits or to prohibit what God allows?
Which is more wrong?
The answer, of course, is they are both equally wrong, because whether you prohibit what God allows or allow what God prohibits, you've made yourself the lawgiver. You have given yourself the authority of establishing what God's will is, and you don't have that authority. Only God is given the authority, and where He has not instructed. We do not have the ability to establish new standards for His people. Now, I don't do any good if I don't come to the hard issues.
I think of a man who came to me once a few years ago, who earlier in his life had divorced his wife for biblical cause.
Got that much? Divorced for biblical cause.
Now, later in life, he was considering remarrying.
And as a leader in the church, he went to various people and said, "Do I have a right to remarry?" Because after all, the Bible says the leader in the church should be a husband of one wife.
Can I do this?
Now, you must know that there's a lot of question about how we deal with that, particularly where there was a biblical cause for divorce previously.
And some of his Christian friends who wanted to help him, they said, "You know, better to err on the side of caution." Heard that language? "Better to err on the side of caution." So lest you cross some standard of God, best to do nothing here, best not to marry. Let me ask you something. What were those friends actually doing?
If they could not say with the authority of the Word of God, this is wrong, then do they have the right to create standards for someone else's life?
You can debate me afterwards on that subject. I mean to take you right into the hard things. But I mean for you to think very carefully about establishing preferences for other people as their standard of holiness, when we cannot prove from the Word of God with that authority that that is what the Word of God establishes. I have no question when the Word of God is clear, then we act accordingly.
But we do not impose preferences on other people because to do so, even for what we think are godly purposes, is to establish for ourselves an authority that God has not given. Only God's authority establishes the standards. To cross them or to create new ones is not our right.
So the first fence line is fairly clear to most of us. We understand that we are to stay within the bounds of Christian righteousness.
But what about those matters where we say it's not righteous or unrighteous, but actually I've got a choice to make here.
Now what?
Look how the apostle is dealing with this. If you deal with verses 1-8, the apostle is basically dealing with prohibitions, the clear things that are crossing the fence of Christian righteousness. But in verses 9-12, we have another principle coming into play. It is the principle of Christian prudence, weighing with Christian wisdom the priorities of God for making choices. I want to just kind of list it technically for you. What is Christian prudence? It's using biblical principles and priorities to make wise choices among righteous options.
Not unrighteous and righteous. Both are righteous. I've got two good things to do. Do I need to stay in this business? Do I need to get out? Do I need to stay in this location or move? Is it best for my family that we continue in this relationship with this difficult couple that live next door to us? Or is it best that we separate ourselves?
There can be righteous reasons to do either thing.
So now what do I do?
Verses 9-12 begin to establish principles, things to take into account for Christian prudence. Verse 9 perhaps is the most clear for us.
"Now about brotherly love, we do not need to write you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other, and in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you brothers to do this more and more."
What's the first principle? We're saying the principle of Christian prudence is to ask the question, "Is this choice loving?"
Just think about it. Is it loving what I'm considering doing? Does that come into the priority mix as I'm considering what to do?
I'll tell you, as a young pastor, one of the most courageous choices between righteous options that I ever heard someone make
was a woman in our church, married to a man, who I will tell you at times just seemed mentally unstable.
He was abusive, very difficult, abandoned the family more than once.
In my mind, she had every biblical cause to separate from him. She did not.
I asked her one time, "Why not?" And her answer was very simple, "Because he needs me."
Very sacrificial, very loving choice. I believe she could have righteously and biblically left him. It would have not have been an evil for her to have done, nor addressed, nor leaving or abandoning the Scriptures.
Yet even though she had that right, she chose to stay with him because that was also her right to do if she chose to, but she chose that option out of love for him above all things.
It's going to be very difficult decisions, but the Apostle is bringing into the mix of our priorities, not only is it clearly wrong, but if it may be a right thing and another choice may also be right, are you examining it out of concern of love for others?
Beyond the question of is the choice loving, he begins to press us to consider whether the choice is legitimate. Look at verse 11. "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands just as we told you." That first line, "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life." Some commentators have said that means make it your ambition to have no ambition.
Well, not quite. If you would take the converse of what it says, make it your ambition to lead a noisy life. You get some of the sense of it. Is your ambition simply to make a noise about yourself? Is it primarily you who are in view?
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet, to mind your own business. Is what you're about just sticking your nose into other people's affairs, it's not only that, is it are you, are you truly concerned just about you?
Are you taking advantage of others in order to accomplish your purposes? It's difficult in this culture where we do praise ambition and hard work and we recognize it is the responsibility of people to properly use their gifts for income and care of family and the purposes of the church of Jesus Christ. We are to impress upon them their responsibilities, but the responsibilities are for the kingdom purposes of God and not just about themselves.
Are you just concerned for making noise about yourself? Then that's not a Christian priority, even though the world may praise it. So as we are considering priorities and choices, we are saying, "Is this just about me?
Am I considering the biblical principles and priorities I'm making these choices? I brought with me into the pulpit today this little bitty book. Can you see how small that is? That's, I don't know, three inches by two inches and maybe three quarters of an inch thick.
This little bitty, leather-bound book has over 600 pages in it, just paper thin with little bitty print of songs and scripture readings and prayers. You know when it was used? It was used by a circuit writer on the American frontier, a circuit preacher.
I sometimes bring this into the pulpit because it helps remind me about the priorities of certain people. I have walked, maybe some of you have too, the paths of some of the early preachers of the American frontier like Francis Asbury, in the Carolinas, walking the paths between the trees and hills and going over the rocks that he rode on his horse with little Bibles like these. And I think we praise him now for his great courage about bringing the gospel across the frontier. But think of his day. Surely he must have wondered, "Why can't I be in Boston with all the great preachers? Why can't I be in Philadelphia or New York? Why do I have to be out here all by myself doing nothing? Nobody knows I'm doing anything out here. It can't possibly be important. I'm just preaching to the squirrels and the bears."
Because he believed he was fulfilling God's purposes, and no one else was going to do that. It was his special calling he believed, given the gifts he had, the personality he had, the opportunities God had given him, he was to pursue that. Not primarily for his self. It wasn't to his advantage at that time.
But God had called him to that, and so he believed that's what he should pursue, given how God had made him.
We're to ask the question, "Is what I'm doing legitimate, given what God has made me?" I think about young people sometimes who are simply trying to meet the expectation, trying to satisfy parents and trying to satisfy their calling with the gifts God has given them to.
Business people who are saying, "I'm simply doing this out of obligation either to family expectation or I've just been in this job so long, I hate it but I can't do anything else." And I think at times, "Are you considering working with your own hand?" The way God has made you, the talents he's given you, the desires he has given you, are you able to bring the fullness of the giftedness that God has given you into this profession?
Because part of what any Christian does is says, "I am to examine not just other people's business,
not just making a noise about myself, but am I able really to work with the hands and the gifts God has given me and bring glory to him in what I'm doing?"
I'm to be making legitimate choices and finally responsible choices. That's verse 12.
"You're to be acting so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders so that you will not be dependent on anybody." Now, here's what was happening in Thessalonica. Some people were looking so much toward the nearcoming of Christ Jesus that they said, "Why work? Jesus is coming back? Well, I've got to eat today. You got any food?" They were just not making use of their gifts and talents, but developing dependency.
And what happened to the testimony of Jesus Christ as a result? He was damaged.
And so the Apostle is saying, "Even though you're in the church, you consider how your choices affect the testimony of Jesus Christ to outsiders, the nurses with whom you work, the business associates that are all around you."
The people who were in the coffee club.
The choices you're making are being observed by non-believers.
Even as you are making choices among righteous options, you're not just to be thinking about, you could be considering the impact on people around you and how the gospel of Jesus Christ is being given credibility or shame by the way in which you are presenting yourself to the world and the choices that you are making. Not only are you considering just the impact of your testimony, but whether it's doing something to you too, is it creating dependence?
I think of this sometimes, and forgive me if it gets too personal, about people who choose to go to the mission field or even to the seminary.
And at times there is no plan at all for taking care of the family for which God has made people responsible. It's just the sense of, "I feel I should go."
Well, God has called you to responsible actions for your family first. He gave you the family their responsibilities. Are you just creating dependency?
Because God doesn't give you the right just without a plan. Granted, people can be charitable and they can be giving and they can be supportive. But if there's really no plan but just kind of this faith wishing, when God has given responsibility, then we are to examine whether Christian prudence is truly being expressed here.
Is there dependency being created where God has not given that license because He is saying to us, "You have responsibilities and you are to be carrying them out to the glory of God."
I will tell you where I think I have occasionally done damage. It is in pastoral ambition. Before I went to the seminary, I was pastoring a small church in a small town.
The Lord blessed in numbers, we grew, we built a new church. And pretty much as we were hammering in the last nail on that new building, Covenant Seminary told me it would like for me to come as a professor.
I will tell you I felt almost strangled in that little town. I so much loved the people but wanted out of there. I jumped. And as I look back at it now, I will tell you I think I was wrong. If God truly wanted me at Covenant Seminary, He could have called me another time. He is powerful enough, authoritative to do that. But I made a choice that left those people in a lurch. It did damage to them and it did damage to the reputation of the gospel and that community.
I apologize to them. I try to warn other students now not to do the same thing because I was thinking more about me.
Now the Lord has blessed what I have done at Covenant Seminary. I am so thankful. But I recognize that it is more out of His graciousness than the wisdom of that decision. I should have been more concerned for the damage I was doing others as well as the future I was providing for myself.
There was another time in my life, some years later, which I had been at Covenant Seminary a while, and trying to decide about whether I should stay or go to a wonderful church that was calling me. It was actually during the sabbatical that I was telling you about right at the beginning.
And I thought and thought and prayed and visited and did all those things and ultimately decided to stay at Covenant Seminary. It was because, given who I was, the gifts God had given me, the way He had made me, and with my best prudence, what I, with the mind He had given me, to determine about the needs of the seminary at the time. I felt that it would damage the seminary for me to leave at that time. I stayed.
About three months after that, Paul Coistra, whom you loved, decided he was going to leave. And the presidency was offered to me.
Now, I didn't know that was ahead at all. All I knew is that a few years earlier I had made a wrong decision, and I was trying not to repeat that about just thinking about myself regardless of my obligations to the institution I was in. And trying to make a prudential decision, I ultimately saw God's hand of blessing, even though I did not know what was on the path ahead. I simply tried to stay within the fence lines and believed He could take care of things from there. I know you all have lots of choices. You'll make choices in these days about businesses and families and colleges and churches and futures.
I hope as you do, you begin to think in terms of God's will, not just for yourself, but honoring the authority of God's Word. You are asking the question, "Is what I'm choosing to do righteous or unrighteous? Regardless of how good or bad it may seem in the moment, if it is unrighteous, I cannot cross that fence."
And is it prudent? Is it loving toward others? And is it legitimate with the priorities of God's Word? And is it responsible, as I am responsible not only for my life, but for the testimony of the Gospel and the ability of God's people? All of those things have to come into play, and then you say, "But now I can't be sure, I'm still unsure!"
Well, of course, you're not God!
Duties are ours. Events are God's.
We do the right thing and trust God to take care of the rest. Why do we trust Him to take care of the rest? Because of those words right out of the first verse.
The Apostle just used this language, that we are doing these things because we are in Christ Jesus. We're in Him.
Why is it that I can, not knowing the future, but staying within these fence lines, move forward with such freedom that God is going to use me, that God will use my life as He intends?
Maybe it's just singing it this way. Remember that snowstorm I told you about? If you could just compress all of that down, that scene of the country roads and the snow coming down and us trying to creep through the snow to get home, staying between the fence lines. If you could just press it all down into one of those snow globes that they sell in the department stores at Christmas time, where you shake them and you see the snowstorm.
And recognize that while we can't see, couldn't see the next steps in the path, that whole snow scene was in God's hands.
We were in His hands. The God who loved us and gave His Son for us. As long as we were staying between the fences, we were in His care.
Not knowing what was ahead, not knowing all that would come, yet having this confidence. Between those fences, there is God's great love. He who gave His Son for us holds us in the palm of His hand. And even when we're not sure of the future, between those fences, we are sure of Him and in His will forever.
Pray with me. Father, I pray as your Apostle has just asked that you would give to these people,
your Holy Spirit, cautioning them about crossing a line of Christian righteousness that your word is clearly described, but providing for them a heart of such love for you that they will also be guided by love and legitimate purposes and responsible purposes for others.
In this is such great freedom and happiness to know that where we go, even in difficulty, as we are between these fence lines, we are in your hand and will know the blessing of your will. Grant us that freedom and courage and confidence we pray that we might serve Jesus well. This we ask in Jesus' name, Amen.