This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions. We're taking a look at 1 Thessalonians
chapter 2, verses 6 to 9 today, the last part of verse 6, our third day in our
look at this chapter. We're going through a checklist of how we can live the
kind of life that God wants us to live, do the kinds of things in our life that
truly last, and as we look at these verses, these are powerful verses about
spiritual leadership.

Be gentle, share not only the good news but your life, work hard day and night,
those are the kind of phrases in these verses. Live in a holy and honest way, be
like a mother with her children, be like a father with those that he is serving.
As you walk through these verses, we talked the last few days about motivations
that last, these are verses about the actions of our life that last.

As you look through these verses, it's amazing. They are far more simple and
seemingly small than we initially think. You look at your actions.

Three things we're going to look at in these verses that make all the difference
in the world. Your care for people, your love for people, and the way that you
work hard for people. Look at your actions.

First, look at your care for people. Last part of verse 6 through verse 7 says,
"As apostles of Christ, we could have been a burden to you, but we were gentle
among you, like a mother caring for her little children. " When you care for
other people, there's something important to remember.

Our emotions and our actions are not always attached. You can care for someone
without feeling like caring for someone and it is still legitimate. Let's walk
through this.

Paul writes to these people at Thessalonica and he says, "We could have been a
burden to you. " As an apostle, it would have been appropriate for Paul to ask
them to support him with food and shelter while he served them to start the
church. He was working all day long for their benefit and obviously he needed to
eat, but because of their need, he chose not to exercise that obvious right.

That meant he had to preach all day and then he had to work all night. He was a
tent maker and so he worked into the night sewing tents and he did this. He did
this not begrudgingly.

He did it because he cared for them. "We were gentle among you," he says, "like
a mother caring for her little children. " If you're a mom, let me ask you, was
there ever a time at 3 in the morning when your baby woke up and you had to go
feed that baby?

Because dad sure wasn't getting up. You had to go and feed that baby. And at 3
in the morning, you really didn't want to do that at that moment?

Or did you find yourself thinking, "My baby woke me up at 3 a. m. How sweet.

" Is that how you felt? Of course not. The emotion and the action aren't always
immediately attached.

In fact, sometimes the greatest care and the greatest gentleness is when you do
the right thing and love someone even though you really don't feel like doing it
at that moment. You've had a long day and you feel just like getting home,
flopping down in a chair and watching TV. And as soon as you get home, you find
out that your spouse really needs to talk.

And you do it even though you don't want to. That's care. And if you do it
without complaining about it, that's gentleness.

So when you think of caring for other people, whether it's people in your family
or people at your office or in your school or friends, it's important to realize
that the emotion and the action aren't always immediately attached. You can care
even when you don't feel caring. You can be gentle even when you don't feel
gentle.

And what often happens, what usually happens is this. When I start to act in a
caring way, I start to feel more caring about the people in my life. First, I
act with care and then I begin to feel it.

In fact, I was writing this Bible study yesterday and I didn't feel like it at
all. But then I began to act. And eventually, hours later, the feelings came.

It's the way it works with care. You care for people. That is an action that
lasts.

It's simple, but it is lasting. You love people, Paul says. That's a second
action that lasts.

He says you love people sacrificially. You're giving yourself for them. Verse 8,
he says, "We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only
the gospel of God, but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.

" That's sharing your life. That's sacrifice. In fact, he says we were delighted
to do this.

Why was he delighted to share his life? He was delighted because of the way that
he valued these people, these people that he loved. "You have become so dear to
us," he says.

You will not. I will not act in love towards people that I do not value. But
when you value people, love will go to surprising extremes.

I was reading recently about St. Patrick. St.

Patrick's Day is the celebration of a missionary. I don't know if you knew that.
At least it should be, because St.

Patrick was a missionary. He was born just before 400 A. D.

He grew up in Scotland. When he was 16 years old, a marauding army from Ireland
came over and took him away from his home, his family, and they enslaved him for
six years in Ireland. After six years, he escaped from Ireland, went back to his
home, and began to train to be a missionary.

When he finally became a missionary, guess who he decided to go and serve? The
very people that had come and taken him away from his home. Now that is
sacrificial love.

He went to a people who had once enslaved him to tell them the good news of who
Christ really is. That is sacrificial kind of love. That's why we still remember
his life today, because of that kind of love.

Who is it that you can love in a way that lasts today? That needs to be a
heartbeat question of our lives. None of us, none of us are perfect in this.

We've all got to grow in this. But the more I grow towards this, the more I'm
going to make a lasting impact on this world. You care for people.

You love people. And if you want to do that which really lasts, you do a third
thing. You work hard for people.

Verse 9, Paul says, "Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship. We
worked hard night and day in order to not be a burden to anyone while we
preached the gospel of God to you. " Ministry is hard work.

Serving other people is hard work. Living a life that lasts, it's hard work.
"Tool and hardship," Paul says, "work night and day," that's hard work.

It's always hard to put the needs of others in front of yourself. It's always
hard work to find the passion to put an interest in the success of a colleague
at work. It's hard work to do the right thing.

And Paul is talking here about the hard work of serving others. As we talk
through this heart check of working hard in ministry, I've got two tips to share
with you. These are tips from decades of struggling to learn what it means to do
the work of ministry faithfully, to do it well.

Tip number one, lesson number one, from the example of Jesus and the example of
His disciples, is the process that you go through in ministry. It's a common
process. You'll likely recognize it.

It has three stages. It goes from, "I could never do that," to, "I'm doing
that," to, "Doing that is hard work. " One, two, and three.

First, I could never do that. If you look at some service that somebody's asked
you to do, some ministry they've asked you to do, and you think, "I could never
do that," now they say you should be involved in doing this. Maybe it's traffic
ministry or teaching Sunday school or teaching a Bible study to adults.

And your thought is, "Not me, never, there's no way I could do that. " Even if
it's making an impact in your own home to the love of Christ, making an impact
at work through your witness, you think, "I could never do that. " That's step
one.

It happened with Jesus' disciples. They watched what Jesus did. The miracles he
performed, and they thought, "No, why am I ever going to be able to do what
Jesus did?

I could never do that. " But then comes step two very quickly, and that is, "I'm
doing that. " You launch out by faith, which is the only way, by the way, to get
started, and you find yourself out there doing traffic ministry.

I'm doing it. It's scary out here. These people go fast, but I'm doing it.

Or you look at yourself and you say, "I'm teaching a Bible study," and in the
back of your mind, you think, "What in the world am I doing, but I'm doing this.
I'm loving my kids like I never have before. I'm doing that.

" It's sort of impressive when you're doing that for the first time. Jesus'
disciples were very impressed. They went out and they did some miracles, and
they came back and said, "It was incredible.

We were doing that. " And Jesus looked at them and said, "It's exciting, but
rejoice even more that your names are written in heaven. " Don't forget the main
thing Jesus reminded them, because Jesus knew the next stage, and he was getting
them ready for it.

The "Wow, look at me. I'm doing that" stage only lasts for a little while, like
the first time you ride a bike. The excitement of a new thing.

You very quickly go to something deeper, something more meaningful. I would say
it's this stage. Doing that is hard work.

It's hard to keep loving people. In traffic ministry, it sometimes rains, and
people are not always nice to you. A Sunday school class with 23
three-year-olds, that's hard work.

There's no way of getting around it. And Paul reminds us that it's hard work,
but the hard work is where the lasting joy is to be found, and the lasting
impact is to be found. There are a lot of people who get stuck at these stages.

There's a lot of people who get stuck at the "I could never do that" stage. They
never get past that. They never allow God to begin to use them.

If you feel like God could never use me, well, join the rest of the human race.
We all feel that way. I am glad that God uses people who feel like they can't be
used.

He has a place for all of us. He has a place for you. That's what his word
clearly says.

So don't get stuck at the "I could never do that" stage. But there are even more
people, I think, who get stuck at the "I'm doing that" stage, at the excitement
of a new thing. As soon as the excitement turns to faithfulness, they start to
look for some new excitement.

Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't change. That doesn't mean we shouldn't grow in
our lives. But I've seen many people move from ministry to ministry to ministry.

They love their family a little bit. They go and love their work a little bit.
They witness for a few minutes.

Then the excitement of the initial, the new, goes away. Just because you move to
the "it's hard to do that" stage doesn't mean there's no more excitement left.
There's a different kind of excitement.

There's an excitement on the other side of faithfulness. There's a joy there.
There's a joy in the "I'm doing this even though it's tough.

" It's indescribable. So stick in there. Keep doing it.

That's lesson number one about the hard work of ministry. And lesson number two
from the life of Jesus is working hard does not mean you never rest. Jesus
rested.

He worked here on this earth for three years and yet the Bible says he often
withdrew to lonely places and he prayed. He took time to be alone with God.
There are many times when he took his disciples aside and he said, "We need to
rest for a little while.

" Jesus rested. Who are we to think that ministry is so important that I should
never rest? I should just keep on keeping on.

If you feel guilty when you rest, you're not going to last. God built rest into
our lives. It's one of the Ten Commandments.

The Sabbath day, keep it holy one day out of seven. Doesn't matter which day I
believe, one day out of seven. If I build out of my life that which God says has
to be a part of my life, I am not going to last.

You need to build rest back into your life in order to last in serving others
and making an impact in this world. When I allow him to motivate me to do the
things that make a difference in this world, that, that will last and I want to
live a life that lasts. So here's the simple checklist, care, love, work hard.

Sounds almost too simple, but the result is immeasurable and eternal joy. Let's
pray together. And as you pray today, ask yourself, who needs my care?

Who needs my love? Who needs my work? Start by praying for them.

Care for them in prayer right now. That person that has come to mind, express
your gentle care for them in words to God who loves them. Express your
willingness to sacrificially love them.

In fact, do so right now by giving up some of your time to pray for them. And
ask God to give you wisdom as to what you could do for them. It might be hard
work, but the hard work is where the joy is.

It's where the impact is. Not our hard work, but the hard work that comes in
response to our faith, to the love that God has for us. Who needs your care?

Who needs your love? Who needs your work? Jesus give us wisdom, we pray, in your
name, Amen.

Tomorrow we're going to look together at verses 10 to 12 of this chapter.