Parting Instructions

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     First Thessalonians 5:14 says, “And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”

     The junior/senior prom was a big deal in our school in Rolling Prairie, Indiana.  I was on the prom committee for one of them, planning where it was to be, usually a big hotel in South Bend, the menu and the entertainment. The girls on the committee didn’t want peas on the menu for fear of chasing one around a plate and having it fall on a prom dress, so green beans were always chosen.  It was the custom to stay up all night with activities here and there.  My mother would always give me instructions that were to be obeyed without fail and were emphasized in short sentences as I would go out to the 1955 Pontiac.

     The Apostle Paul does somewhat the same thing here as he often does, giving a list of short “imperatives” that are to be obeyed without fail.  The closing chapter of this book list a least seventeen different commands which, when you look at them, seem to take a lifetime to complete.  The passage for today has four such commands that are important for us to do.  They are practical for our lives and ones that I need to reemphasize about ever month or so.  The last one in the passage, “be patient with them all” is especially difficult for me.  Patience is not one of my strong attributes.  I do better with some of them, but they all need to be better and I would guess that all of us have the same needs.  I would like to think that I help the “weak” in the faith to be stroner but sometimes I wonder about that also.  Start at verse twelve and go through the list and pick at least one or more and begin to work on it in your life.  There is one that says, In everything give thanks as you see in verse eighteen.  In fact we learn that giving thanks is the “will of God” for our lives.   How about praying without ceasing or not quenching the Holy Spirit in someone’s life.  You can see why it takes a lifetime just to get them to be a part of your character.  As you go out the door today, your mother may not be giving you  your marching orders, but the Apostle Paul did.  Praise God today that we have a plan of the day for our lives..