hotcoffee
New Member
1 Thessalonians 1:5 because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. 6 You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.
When Paul, Silas, and Timothy told the people of Thessalonica the Gospel, it wasn't like telling them some Mother Goose rhyme that they could hand down to their children. As they are saying in verse 5 here.... the Gospel came with the power of the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit that took it right to the Thessalonian's heart. It moved them and changed them. Without the power of the Holy Spirit it would have just been a story.... but it was much more than that. It changes people, the way they think, the way they act, the way they live, and the way they teach others.
They saw how Paul, Silas, and Timothy lived among them, not stuck in a temple. They weren't required to pay a tax or sojourn to a specific city to worship. Paul, Silas, and Timothy asked nothing of them, lived among them, invited into the homes of the people. The Holy Spirit used this example to move people to invite them in even when doing so might put them in danger. The people changed in spite of the fact that they could be stoned to death, loose their possessions, or worse. At times followers had to give up their own families who refused to believe and in turn refused to have anything to do with them.
Paul, Silas and Timothy also spread the word about how Jesus had been born into the earthly family of a carpenter instead of a rich palace. Jesus had walked among them rather than passing down His rules and ideas from the luxury of having people waiting to do his every desire. Jesus had lived like them. Jesus knew what human suffering really is. He was not sheltered by servants or angelic beings.... Jesus was a servant.
