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[Music] Hi, I'm Pastor Tom Holliday and I want to welcome you to Daily Drive
Time Devotions. We're starting a new book this week, Second Thessalonians,
following up on our study of First Thessalonians that we ended last week. These
two books, First and Second Thessalonians, they focus on how to live the
authentic life, the life that God made us to live.

One of the themes of this second book, Second Thessalonians, is how to endure in
trouble. How do you live the authentic life of hope when you face real troubles
in this life? Now a lot of people ask, "Why a second letter?

" When you read through it and compare it to First Thessalonians, you find out
there's no new subjects. There's the same emphasis. There's the same pointed
emphasis and a better understanding of our standing in Christ and the hope that
we have the second coming.

So why a second letter? Well, to me, it's an example of the fact that we don't
always get it the first time. The Holy Spirit needed to inspire a second letter
because they needed to hear it again in order to live it out in their lives.

And I need to hear the truth many times sometimes in order to be able to live it
out in my life. I can't just hear it once and understand it. I have to hear it,
be reminded of it again and again so that I can live it.

Second Thessalonians chapter one is a shorter chapter. So as we dive into this
week, let me tell you something I'd like to do. I would like to take some time
as we walk through fewer verses each day this week to show you some different
methods of Bible study, some different ways to study the Bible, and sometimes
when you read just a few verses, how you can gain a lot out of a few verses.

For instance, one method of Bible study is called character study where you
study a person and you sort of see what the Bible has to say about this person
all throughout the Bible. And Second Thessalonians chapter one verses one and
two obviously lends itself to that kind of a study because it starts with names.
Let me read those verses to you.

Second Thessalonians one one and two. Paul, Silas, and Timothy to the church of
the Thessalonians and God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace and peace
to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now remember these two letters, first and second Thessalonians, are the most
personal of all Paul's letters in their beginning. He doesn't begin with a title
like he does in all of his other letters. He just says Paul and here it's Paul,
Silas, and Timothy.

You read these three names and they had had an influence in the beginning of the
church and so Paul writes from all of them in the encouragement of this church.
As you read these three names, they lend themselves to a particular kind of
Bible study called a character study. Now how do you do a character study?

Well it's pretty simple. You look up the name of a person and you read all the
verses that you can find about them and as you read you ask yourself some
questions. Now many times you'll ask yourself two or three questions about that
person as you read.

Here, since we have a shorter study today, I'd like to just ask one question and
I think this is the one question you should always ask in any character study
and the question is this, "What can I learn about following Jesus from observing
them? " Now sometimes the lessons are negative lessons. This is what I shouldn't
do.

Sometimes they're positive lessons. This is what I should do, but you ask the
question, "What can I learn about following Jesus from observing them? " You go
on to one of the online concordances and you look up a name like Silas and you
find out every time his name is mentioned in the Bible and then you follow
through and learn what you can about him.

Now this starts with Paul. Paul, Silas, and Timothy. If you did this character
study of Paul, we'd be here for weeks.

That would be quite a study. From the book of Acts, we know very simply that
Paul was a Pharisee, a religious leader who persecuted the church and on the
Damascus road he saw the light and his life took an entirely different
direction. From Paul, we learned that no one is beyond the point of making a
radical change, but rather than focusing on Paul in this character study, I'd
like to focus on those other two names, Silas and Timothy.

As we think about them, they remind me of four types of people who served with
Paul or who were a part of Paul's life, I should say, in the way that he served.
Four groups, I would say. Paul had in his life partners, he had mentors, he had
friends, and in his ministry he also had opponents.

Partners, mentors, friends, and opponents. I'd like to take a quick look at each
of those together, beginning with partners because that's who Silas and Timothy
were. They were partners of Paul in ministry.

They were people who served directly with Paul. They actually served Paul in the
ministry that he was in. Silas was a believer in the Jerusalem church who was
sent with Paul and Barnabas to carry the news of the fact that Jewish believers
were accepting Gentile believers into the church.

Paul had gone down to Jerusalem to talk to them about whether they would accept
Gentile believers, and they had said yes. When they sent Paul back, they said,
"Let's send Silas with you, a part of our church, to affirm what we believe. "
Well, Silas became friends with Paul and he became his partner on his second
missionary journey.

As you read the life of Silas, you see the guy who sang songs with Paul in a
Philippian jail and that he and Timothy, for a time, worked together without
Paul when Paul traveled off to Athens sharing the good news with churches,
starting churches. That's a quick, very quick bio of Silas. Timothy.

Timothy, well, Paul called him his son in the ministry. Timothy was a Gentile
whom Paul met on a missionary journey and then who began to accompany Paul. He
went on several missionary journeys with Paul.

To the Philippians, when he wrote to the Philippians, Paul said of Timothy, "I
have no one else like him who seeks after the interests of Christ. " Timothy
later served the church in Ephesus as a pastor and that's when Paul wrote "First
Timothy" to him. It was a letter sent to encourage him.

He needed to encourage him not to be timid, not to let anyone look down on him
because he was young. These two men, Silas and Timothy, were amongst many
partners of Paul in ministry. The truth is, to apply this to our lives, we all
need partners.

People that we work with from day to day in the tasks that God has given us to
do. God did not mean for you to go it alone. Not in your family, not in your
work, not in your ministry.

Partners not only share the load, they also bring other gifts and abilities to
the ministry, to the family, to the work that you do not have. One of the kinds
of relationship that we need in life is that partner relationship. A second kind
of relationship, and it's not mentioned in these verses, but I thought it might
be interesting to look at all the kinds of relationships that Paul had.

Paul also had mentors in his life, primarily a guy by the name of Barnabas. You
might remember that he was the man who encouraged Paul to get started in
ministry. When everyone else was afraid of Paul because he persecuted the
church, and now he was a new believer, and people thought, "Oh, sure, he's a
believer.

He's just saying that so he can find out where the churches are to continue to
persecute them. " When everyone else doubted Paul, Barnabas believed in him. He
encouraged him.

The very idea of Barnabas's life was that he was an encourager. He gave Paul the
encouragement that he needed at the start, and he was with him in their first
missionary journey together. Now, it's interesting that although Barnabas
encouraged Paul to get started, they didn't stay together all their lives.

They were to divide later over differences of who would go with them on a next
missionary journey. That's a reminder to me that you rarely stay all your life
with your mentor. You almost always move on.

That's good for you, and that's good for the mentor. That's good for the mentor
because they can continue to do their job and go do for someone else what they
did for you, but it's also good for you because you often will have tasks that
are different, that are what are in their heart. This idea that you're mentored
by someone and have to stay with them the rest of your life is not a biblical
idea.

Paul had mentors, and they worked together for a while, that enabled them to get
his start and his launch into ministry. Paul also had a third group. I would
call them friends in ministry.

If you read through the book of Acts, names like Priscilla and Aquila, Apollos.
These were friends that he would meet with from time to time, and they'd do
ministry for maybe a few days or a week or so, and then they'd go their separate
ways and continue to do their separate ministries. Some people I've noticed
become so laser-focused on their place of work or their place of ministry or
even on their family that there is no space in their life for anyone who's not
contributing to those things.

It's sort of this idea of, "Well, if you're not helping me get my job done, I
don't have any time for you. " Well, that's unhealthy. That's unbalanced in the
end because you need the broadening influence of friends who have the same
heart, but they're expressing it in a different arena, in a different area of
life.

Paul had friends in ministry. He also had a fourth group. He had opponents.

There were some who were enemies of what Paul was doing. In 2 Timothy 4, Paul
writes of one of these, "Alexander the metal worker did me a great deal of harm.
The Lord will repay him for what he's done.

You too should be on your guard against him because he strongly opposed our
message. " Some of these opponents had acted as if they were friends of Paul at
first. Maybe they even had been friends of Paul, but then they turned on him or
more accurately, they turned on the ministry that they were doing.

As I read what Paul has to say about opponents, I learned from him to be honest
about opponents. He admitted the hurt. He forgave the wrong.

He was on his guard, and then he moved on. He admitted the hurt, said, "This
hurt me that this person has become an opponent of me. " He forgave the wrong.

He didn't allow it to hurt him in that way to turn into bitterness. He told
others to be on your guard against this person. He wasn't so naive as to not
warn others about this person.

You can forgive someone and still be on your guard to not let them do the same
thing again. They have to rebuild trust, and then Paul would move on. He didn't
get stuck on the opponent so that he could not do the ministry that God had
given him to do.

Paul had partners. He had mentors. He had friends.

He had opponents, and when you think about your life, you have people in all
these areas. As we spend some time together focusing on God in prayer today,
would you focus on questions in your life about these four groups? When it comes
to partners, just ask yourself before God, "Am I trying to go it alone?

Am I trying to do it all by myself? Where do I need to get some partners? Where
do I need to appreciate the partners that I do have?

" When it comes to mentors, ask yourself before God, "Am I accepting
encouragement? Am I allowing others to help me to grow in the way Christ wants
me to grow in the area of friends? Have I made space in my life to work with
others whose focus might be different but whose overall task is really the same,
whose heart is really the same?

" Or maybe you need to talk to God about opponents. Are you ready to quit
because someone has discouraged you, someone has disappointed you? Say to God
right now, "God, I admit the hurt.

I forgive the wrong. Help me to be on my guard where I need to be, but also help
me to move on. " Jesus, we pray this together.

We put this before you together in your name. Amen. Well, join us tomorrow.

We're going to be looking at verses three to four of Second Thessalonians
chapter one.