SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/7/2014 8:45 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Gentleness
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 Thess. 2:7
Message of the
verses: “7
But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares
for her own children.”
In today’s SD we begin a new section in our journey
through the second chapter of 1 Thessalonians as we look at the spiritual
leader through the metaphor of being a nursing mother and then we will look at
the spiritual leader as a father. We
have seen Paul as a steward in the first six verses of 1 Thessalonians chapter
two which shows Paul’s inner life, but now we will look at the apostles outward
functions of the divinely approved spiritual leader. It is a practice of Paul to use different
metaphors in his writings to the different churches and people that he wrote to
and in this case he uses spiritual parents as his metaphor. Paul wrote the following to the Galatian
church: “Ga. 4:19 My children, with whom
I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.” I learned some things from my daughter when
she was pregnant with her fourth child when she told me that every child that
she had she had to make a commitment of her body being used two years for that
child. I suppose that she may have meant
one year and nine months for the first nine months was for her pregnancy and
then the next year was nursing the baby.
It takes a lot of commitment to have the use of your body for the
benefit of another person and that perhaps is why Paul used this metaphor when
writing to the church at Thessalonica.
We will only look at verse seven in our study for
today: “7 But we proved to be gentle
among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children.” I want to begin with a quote from Warren
Wiersbe: “Paul also nourished them. First Thessalonians 2:7 can read ‘even as a
nursing mother cherishes her own children.’
What is the lesson here? A nursing mother imparts her own life to the child. This is exactly what Paul wrote in 1
Thessalonians 2:8. You cannot be a
nursing mother and turn your baby over to someone else. The baby must be in your arms, next to your
heart.” As I read this the first time I
began to better realize what my daughter was saying about her commitment to her
child.
John MacArthur writes “As mothers are absolutely and
indisputably essential to the wellbeing of children, so spiritual leaders who
minister with a mother’s gentleness, intimate affection, sacrificial love, and
unselfish labor are essential for the health of the church.”
We see that verse seven begins with the word “But” and
Paul is contrasting how he and Silas, and Timothy cared for the believes with
those who were false teachers, those who were telling lies about Paul, those
who were operating by the deceitful abusiveness of Satan’s agents. Paul proved to be gentle among them.
John MacArthur writes that the word “gentle” is at the
heart of this verse. “It means to be
kind to someone and encompasses a host of other virtues: acceptance, respect, compassion, tolerance of
imperfections, patience, tenderheartedness, and loyalty.” This is quite the opposite of those in Paul’s
day, and even our own day who want to exploit people into getting their money
and other favors from them, favors we spoke about in earlier SD’s.
We will end this portion of this SD with another quote
from John MacArthur who explains what “tenderly cares” means. “The verb rendered tenderly cares literally
means to warm with body heat. The loving
mother would take the little one in her arms and warm the child with her own
body heat. Such a vivid metaphor
perfectly illustrates the kind of personal care the Thessalonians
received. Paul, unlike the enemies of
the truth, was not harsh or indifferent, but tenderly nurturing.”
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: One thing that I
can say for sure is that after reading this passage and the commentaries that I
read to help me better understand this verse, I realize that mothers have a
great role in the lives of their children.
Now I knew that they had a great role, but this just reinforces it to
me. There are great problems with
motherhood in today’s world as many mothers, with the influence of their
husbands, put their babies into day care centers where they can never get the
love and attention they need to help their children grow in the proper
way. I realize that much of this has to
do with money problems that are in our world today.
My Steps of Faith for Today:
Proverbs 3:5-6.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Leviticus.”
Today’s Bible question: “What does the name Israel mean?”
Answer in our next SD.
4/7/2014 9:49 AM
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