The Grands Letter (1 Thess/GLJ)

Dear Grands,

1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, “For you recall, brethren, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. 10 You are witnesses, and so is God, how devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behaved toward you believers. 11 Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children, 12 so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. 13 For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe.”

Redoing some things in my office at home, I came across a lot of pictures – pictures of my parents and my sister and myself. Our parents labored to encourage my sister and me to grow up into the likeness of our LORD and Savior, Jesus Christ. To be sure, our parents walked in Christ’s likeness, and they encouraged us to live and behave as nearly to His likeness as we could.

Surely, we made mistakes along the way; but we never forgot their example or their teaching. Today we both trust that we are walking in a manner worthy of the LORD whom they taught and mirrored before us.

I didn’t check with Carol prior to scripting and sending this letter, but I’m sure she agrees that they did the best they knew how, and that meant their following Christ and demonstrating His likeness in their own lives. I know when we each left home, we did so with the determination to live for Christ, as we had been taught. Today, we thank the LORD for His Word and for His performance as a pattern for which to follow.

Solomon wrote: “Train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). Hopefully, we are living to His standard.

Heartily in Christ,

Gene L. Jeffries, Th.D.

United States of America

“We will never know that Christ is all we need

Until He becomes all that we have.” –Corrie ten Boom