Wednesday, October 2 - 2 Thessalonians 1

2 Thessalonians 1

New International Version (NIV)

1 Paul, Silas and Timothy,

To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

² Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

³ We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. ⁴ Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.
⁵ All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and as a result you will be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering. ⁶ God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you ⁷ and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. ⁸ He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. ⁹ They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might ¹⁰ on the day he comes to be glorified in his holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. This includes you, because you believed our testimony to you.

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HELL
   When Noah and his family entered the ark, there eventually came a time when God closed the door.  This door was closed not only to protect Noah from the raging waters, but also to close out all those who, with evil at heart, rejected God and his love.  Their "reward" is to live in a world absent of the grace of Him who sought their hearts.

  While God is long-suffering, and "desires all humans to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," there will ultimately come a time when the door is shut.   This happens after God continues persistently to reach out to all so that they may know Him.  Their refusal to receive His gift by shutting Him out of their lives, rejecting the Gospel of Christ, and determined to live for themselves, is to spend eternity as they desired:  without Him.

   Hell, then, is complete and total separation from God -- an existence absent from His grace and mercy -- without His gifts and blessings.  It is the ultimate place where sin leads:  to the pit of greed, selfishness, hatred and anger.

   Thank God that, in Christ, we have escaped this natural consequence of sin.  He suffered HELL on the cross for us when He, bearing the sins of the whole world, was separated from His Father.  And then, He was raised to show that God accepted His sacrifice of atonement and opens the kingdom of heaven to sinners like us.
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¹¹ With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith. ¹² We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.