Week 48 1 Thessalonians
Paul is thinking back to his arrival in the Macedonian city and says: when you received from us the word of God’s message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which performs its work in you who believe.
When Paul got to Thessalonica nobody – as far as I know – knew who he was. No one knew his reputation as a high-profile apostle, or suspected he’d go on to have maybe a bigger influence on the church than anyone for two-thousand years. He was just a guy who showed up and gave a public address. And the people listening to him had a decision to make. Either this is just a speech the guy made up out of his own brain, or it’s a message from God.
Nine times out of ten you’ll think that the guy just made-it-up. Messages from God are pretty rare, pretty unlikely.
But for some reason people there in Thessalonica believed Paul. You wonder why someone starts believing in the Lord. Quits believing what he believed and starts believing what he didn’t.
The decision was theirs to make and some of them decided to turn from their idols and serve the living and true God.
A pretty momentous decision. You wonder what made them do it.
Note: quote from 1 Thessalonians 2:13 (NASB), 1:9 paraphrased