Word of Encouragement (4/16/2021)

“I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge—even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you—so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:4-8).

In this prayer, Paul is not asking for anything; he is giving thanks to God. He calls God “my God.” You can sense how close he feels with God. How do you feel about your fellowship with God? Is it close enough that you regularly call God “my God”? Two things are necessary for this. The first is for you to know the objective reality of your intimacy with God. Through your union with Christ, you have been adopted as God’s child. You have been given the Spirit of adoption, by whom you can cry, “Abba! Father” (Rom. 8:15). If you can call God “Abba” (“Dad”) based on your legal adoption into the family of God, you can certainly call Him “my God”.

The second is the subjective dimension. Just because you enter what is supposed to be an intimate relationship with someone doesn’t mean you get to experience the expected intimacy. Intimacy is a two-way street. Both parties must want closeness and work hard at it. Paul was able to call God “my God” because his heart was wide open toward God as God’s heart was wide open toward him. I hope we can all delight in calling God “my God” and “Abba! Father!” because our hearts are open wide to Him in glad surrender. We will see how important this is as we reflect on what Paul was giving thanks for.

For what was Paul giving thanks to his God? For some material blessings? For a time of comfort and prosperity? No, he was thanking God for the Corinthians! When was the last time you thanked God for someone in your life? I hope you are blessed with many wonderful people, who show you God’s love in tangible ways. And I hope you don’t take them for granted but regularly give thanks to God for them as well as thank them directly.

But, if you know anything about the Corinthians, you know that they were far from being perfect; in fact, they brought much grief to Paul in many ways. But they were not all bad, either. Paul’s thanksgiving for them shows that Paul did not allow their faults to color his view of them in a completely negative light. He did not need the Corinthians to be faultless and perfect before he could appreciate them and love them. How about you? Are you keeping someone at a distance because your focus on his faults blinds you to some good qualities he possesses? Are you holding back the praises he rightly deserves because he is not perfect? And do you not give thanks to God for them despite what God is doing in his life, slowly but surely, because he is not yet what you want him to be? Has God not accepted us and loved us wholly, despite our many faults and sins, in Jesus Christ? If our perfect and holy God did this for us, doesn’t this obligate us to love our “neighbors” and even give thanks to God for them even though they are not perfect in our sight?

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