It's true that we're better together,

especially when we are facing challenging times in our lives and in our world.

In our passage today the apostle Paul gives us essential advice on how we should respond

to circumstances and treat one another.

By following his advice advice we will excel in love and wisdom and be a great blessing to many

people not only in our local church but also to all the people we know in our daily lives.

So listen carefully as I read from First Thessalonians chapter five.

Please open your bibles or read along in the Bulletin.

Christ died for us so that whether we are dead or alive when He returns, we can live

with him forever.

So encourage each other and build each other up just as you are already doing.

Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord's work.

They work hard among you and give you spiritual Guidance. Show them great respect and wholehearted love

because of their work. And live peacefully with each other.

Brothers and sisters we urge you toward those who are lazy;

encourage those who are timid;

take tender care of those who are weak, be patient with everyone.

See that no one pays back evil for evil but always try to do good to each other and to

all people.

Always be joyful,

never stop praying.

Be thankful in all circumstances for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ

Jesus.

Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not scoff at prophecies. But test everything that is said.

Hold on to what is good, stay away from every kind of evil.

Now made that God of peace make you holy in every way

and mayor whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless

until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.

God will make this happen,

for He who calls you is faithful.

I don't know about you,

but I've had and an unsettling

couple of weeks.

Now normally, what I'm thinking about during the week relates to activities here at church,

my family,

my kids' soccer games,

swimming,

things like that.

But it's been a different

couple weeks for me.

When of the things, Andrea my wife came to me and said

“Oh I wasn't watching tv and you gotta go to the store and buy some soup”.

Why?

“Because there's an earthquake supposed to happen this week”.

Oh, ok, gotta make sure we stock up for the coming earthquake.

Okay great. “And by the way, can you check and see if we need to get that potassium iodide

for radiation.”

No we don't. Good, okay.

It's a little bit crazy

in the world right now.

The middle east. . .

a lot of stuff happening there very quickly.

Kinda wish it would slow down that we could take a little pause there.

But it's in times of crisis like these,

that you begin to think.

Now in my life, I have uh... I have lived through quite a few crises.

When I was overseas years ago

I was in a war zone at one point.

There were refugees coming from other countries

and let me say, we have it pretty good here in Sequim.

We should remember that.

But it is at times when things are unsettled

in the world and often times when they're unsettled in

our families, in our relationships.

I have, I have thoughts. One of the thoughts is,

Jesus? Are you coming back soon?

And if you've had a thought?

But I've had that thought the last few weeks.

But a second thought usually follows that one

for me. How should I respond?

There's a lot of negativity going on.

Lord, what do You want me to do in my thoughts and my attitudes

and my actions.

And as I was knowing that I was going to

teach today, I thought you know, maybe the church needs to hear some of this too.

I'll build a quiet time and see what the Lord tells me and

I'll pass it on.

So in some ways, what we're doing today is is some of that. How do we respond to

the crisis. The theme today is we are better together.

You have your notes in your bulletin and I want you to write something down on them.

It's a little phrase but something to keep in mind.

And that is: Crisis

Is Opportunity

Crisis

is opportunity.

Crisis or difficulties can rip people apart

or it can bring them together

like nothing else.

And our scripture passage this morning deals head on with this matter,

and give some

very helpful guidance

on how we can truly be better together in the church

in whatever comes our way if we respond appropriately.

The passage begins in First Thessalonians five starting in verse ten

It says: Crist died for us

so that whether we are dead or alive when He returns

we can live with Him forever.

So encourage each other and build each other up

just as you are already doing.

We need encouragement

and we need to know how to respond

during unsettling times.

Isolation is fruitless. Worry

is fruitless.

A few uh... I think it was last year. I did a small group study on this on First

Thessalonians,

and what really stood out to me

was this particular passage

was written to a group of people who expected Jesus to return at any moment.

Now that was two thousand years ago.

And this particular advice has been helpful through the entire church age

and it's very helpful to us today.

Waiting for Christ's return.

Now we don't know when that's gonna happen.

Obviously they didn't know then,

but the important thing to remember

Is that Christ died for us.

It doesn't matter if we live or die

before he comes

the promise is that by trusting in His salvation

we will live with Him forever.

That is what we're supposed to keep our mind focused on

is that we will live with Him forever.

We are to expect His return,

but we are to

work together and have a certain attitude in the process of that.

Ad that's what this passage is about and I'm going to take some time to unpack that

for us today.

Tere's another

verse that I really have drawn upon the last few weeks, and that's that God did not give us a spirit

of fear

but a spirit of power,

of love and of a sound mind.

Not a spirit of fear.

Fear tends to do something to us.

It produces a feeling of weakness

it produces distrust

and it produces disorientation

And if you'll notice here

what the Holy Spirit does is it counteracts all those things. Instead of weakness we have

Power;

instead of distrust we have love;

instead of disorientation we have a sound mind.

That's what the Holy Spirit wants to do in us

during unsettling times.

How do we achieve this?

How do we work it out? Well, First Thessalonians has

four essential pieces of advice for us

in this, in this following passage.

These are things that we can do

as we wait.

These are things we can do to be active.

The first one

is to practice showing

honor

even win we disagree.

To honor those who are your leaders in the Lord's work.

They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance.

Show them great respect and wholehearted love

because of their work

and live peacefully

With each other.

First Thessalonians five.

And in Romans

it says take delight in honoring

each other.

Now you wonder why is that the first piece of advice is

honor

others. In times of crisis,

honor

Others.

Well the reason for that is it's

so easy to tear others down when we're worried.

It's so easy to question motives

when we're worried.

And when we we're afraid we do that more easily

than not.

It's harder to assume others' motives are good.

And I am really glad that I get to give this message today because Scott is gone.

And I have the privilege of working with him day In, day out, going to meetings,

watching him as a leader,

and I want to say to you, just so you know, that Scott is the real deal.

Scott

intimately cares about this church,

about the people of this church

and helping us to grow and to to go forward.

Now he's not perfect,

and he let you know that on Sunday morning which is good too.

If you've been listening to him over the last Weeks and of course of the last years, you know

that he's very honest about his shortcomings.

but that's it

as a way to help us all

to grow and to go forward

in our christian life. So we need to honor

our leaders

and that

attitude that he brings here as our as senior pastor

carries over into the staff,

it carries over into the session, the elders; if you ask anybody that's involved in that

they'll tell you the same thing.

They'll nod and say the same thing.

And that is a an assurance for us is a church. Especially

in times

when things are uh... unstable when news is bad.

We have that rely on and we can honor

uh... all that's going on.

Now that doesn't only apply to our leaders but it applies to each other too. It says here

Take delight in honoring each other.

Take delight.

And one of the disciplines I want to encourage you to do,

Especially if the news continues to be bad. If you wake up every day and hear the bad news every day

It's that it's depressing.

I want you to take every piece of bad news and I want you to think -

How can I find something good to comment on as well.

Every bad piece, I'm gonna find something good to comment on as well. I'm gonna find somebody

to honor

instead of mistrust.

That little phrase that kept in my mind - the first one is

crisis is opportunity.

The second one is,

when things get bad

the church gets better.

When things get bad

the church gets better. It doesn't always get better

if people are fighting with each other, it doesn't get better. But if the church understands first

of all that they're being led in a good. direction

the church gets better

when things get bad.

I . .I lived this firsthand

a number of times during those crises

that I experienced overseas. One of the ones that stand out in my mind uh... so strongly was

when we had a refugee crisis in Albania.

We had thousands and thousands of people coming from another country

as refugees into our towns.

And it was the first time that I've ever seen churches take off their names, and not

worry about their denominations.

But they instead served these refugees. They love them, they gave them food, they provided refugee

camps they took him back to their homes after the war was over -

incredible things that people did.

I saw people praying together that never prayed before together,