I find myself getting bored with a lot of things recently for the simple fact that just about everything has been done before. Not only has everything been done before, but I can experience it all through the interwebs and across the airwaves. Every new thing I discover already has a history to it that I simply don’t have the energy to contribute to.

Great songs have been written. The video games have been beaten. The causes have been fought for and the soldiers frozen as statues on the battlefield. The connections drawn from every direction to every node and around again. Everything reachable by boat or plane or truck has already been claimed and depleted of its resources and fences erected round its natural beauties.

The most obvious example for me was the Bible. For all its merits, the Bible is only a couple thousand pages. Those pages have grown yellow and been ripped and worn for use a billion times over. I never for a second doubt its capacity to blow my mind and speak into the dark recesses of my heart with divine magnanimosity, but I couldn’t help but feel that all the archeological excavations into it had actually managed to kill my curiosity for it. To find something new in ground so well trod would take more years with my hand to the shovel that I grow weary thinking of.

However, after given a suggestion to teach from 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, these specific feelings are quickly subsiding. You see, the other way to get to something so far undiscovered is to simply have equipment that packs a punch at your disposal. No one is freer to lend their tools than our Lord Jesus.

So I am going to share something that was shown to me. I did some grunt work to prove it, but God led me to it subtly. It’s a substory in the Bible that I think deserves a little attention.

1 Thessalonians was written by Paul, from Corinth. That is where this story will end. Chapter 3 shows Paul removed from his pastor role and much closer to a homesick friend role. Read it. Paul writes with an incredible amount of emotion as he writes to a group of people that he misses dearly and is extremely concerned for their welfare in the midst of people who hate them. Timothy has returned from a trip to Thessalonica to visit the new-founded church that Paul had to leave due to resistance to the spreading of the gospel. Timothy was sent because Paul could not stand being apart from them and not knowing that they are still in the faith. The news Timothy returns with is all good and Paul is ecstatic.

The story starts in Thessalonica. Acts 17 opens with Paul, Silas, and Timothy ministering in that Macedonian city for a short while before some religious leaders come looking for their blood and they are warned to flee before they are found. They go to Berea, were they are pursued again by the same people. Paul takes a boat to Athens and has Silas and Timothy follow immediately after him.

Now, this is the key to the story that will be missed in reading through the book of Acts: Timothy’s mission back to the Thessalonians ours at this point and is not mentioned in Acts accounting of it. We know this from 1 Thessalonians 3:1, as Timothy was sent while Paul was in Athens. If you read on in Acts, you get the impression that Silas and Timothy didn’t reunite with Paul until Corinth, his next stop. That is not the case.

Paul’s ministry in Athens is a well-known passage of Scripture, but there is a little-known view of it that I happen to ascribe to and the rest of my tale depends on. That view is that as awesome as Paul’s preaching was in Athens, it was a failure. He went about it wrong. What he did wrong is that he doesn’t preach the whole Jesus message, leaving out the crucifixion as the linchpin of salvation and reuniting with God. The reason I believe that it was a failure is that Paul never preaches like he did in Athens again. We know that because in Corinth, he discarded all of the amazing intellectual proofs and cultural connections for a simple gospel tale (1 Cor. 2:2).

In fact, we see that change take place in Acts 18. “When Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with preaching the message and solemnly testified to the Jews that the Messiah is Jesus.” (v. 5) From this point on, he preaches Jesus as the end-all-be-all to spiritual reality. Because of this Paul faces persecution again.

Note the first part of that verse. It was when Silas and Timothy returned to Paul. Where were they returning from, again? Silas seems to be a mystery roamer, but Timothy was returning from Thessalonica with the good news of their faith.

Here’s my theory: it was this news and the continued love of the Thessalonians for Paul that inspired him to get back on track in ministry.

“Evidence?” you ask. Okay. The first is that Paul change isn’t really a change because he is, in fact, reverting back to exactly what he taught in Thessalonica! ‘As usual, Paul went to them, and on three Sabbath days reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and showing that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead, and saying: “This is the Messiah, Jesus, whom I am proclaiming to you.”’ (Acts 17:2-3) I believe the word from the Thessalonians brought Paul back to something that he knew, but lost.

Also, Paul himself stated that the news from the Thessalonians had a major impact on him spiritually: “Therefore, brothers, in all our distress and persecution, we were encouraged about you through your faith. For now we live, if you stand firm in the Lord.” (1 Thess. 3:7-8).

So here we see an amazing story where the devotion of a new group of believers actually pulls their spiritual founder back to the foundation he laid for them.

It is all because of the amazing love that pervaded their relationship. Paul’s letter to them, especially chapter 3 is dripping with emotions of affection and longing and concern. Because he invested to heavily in them, mere words of love from them was enough to draw him out of the pit of depression due to failed ministry and out onto the battlefield of truth vs. persecution.

May I love that much and continue to be faithful to the Word of God that is living and powerful.

Ches