that you keep on doing what we told you to do to please God, not in a dogged religious plod, but in a living, spirited dance.

1. THESS 4-5

that you keep on doing what we told you to do to please God, not in a dogged religious plod, but in a living, spirited dance.

11-12Stay calm; mind your own business; do your own job. You've heard all this from us before, but a reminder never hurts. We want you living in a way that will command the respect of outsiders

God, who is making you a gift of his Holy Spirit

GOD, I NEED YOUR HOLY SPIRIT TO HELP ME!
I HAVE TO STOP DOING EVERYTHING IN THE FLESH!

Since we're creatures of Day, let's act like it. Walk out into the daylight sober, dressed up in faith, love, and the hope of salvation.

I SPEAK THIS OVER ME: I WALK INTO THE DAYLIGHT SOBER, DRESSED UP IN FAITH, LOVE , AND THE HOPE OF SALVATION!!

And be careful that when you get on each other's nerves you don't snap at each other. Look for the best in each other, and always do your best to bring it out.

16-18Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.

23-24May God himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. The One who called you is completely dependable. If he said it, he'll do it!

2. THESS 1-3

Our God gives you everything you need, makes you everything you're to be.

I ALSO NEED TO SPEAK THIS OVER ME!


If your life honors the name of Jesus, he will honor you

May Jesus himself and God our Father, who reached out in love and surprised you with gifts of unending help and confidence, put a fresh heart in you, invigorate your work, enliven your speech.

MAY GOD PUT A FRESH HEART IN ME, INVIGORATE MY WORK, ENLIVEN MY SPEECH!

But the Master never lets us down. He'll stick by you and protect you from evil
I NEED TO HEAR THIS REASSURANCE!

May the Master take you by the hand and lead you along the path of God's love and Christ's endurance.
I AM NOT ALONE IN THIS!!!

I NEED TO TEACH THIS TO MY CHILDREN: "If you don't work, you don't eat."

ROM. 1-4

gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on to others who receive it by entering into obedient trust in Jesus

But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can't see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being.

the God we bless, the God who blesses us

Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself


God is kind, but he's not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.

But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up. Being a Jew won't give you an automatic stamp of approval. God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind.

we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.

IT COMES DOWN TO FAITH AND TRUSTING GOD!
16This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God's promise arrives as pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that's reading the story backward. He is our faith father.

Abraham was first named "father" and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn't do but on what God said he would do.

19-25Abraham didn't focus on his own impotence and say, "It's hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child." Nor did he survey Sarah's decades of infertility and give up. He didn't tiptoe around God's promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That's why it is said, "Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right." But it's not just Abraham; it's also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.