Daily Devotion – December 9, 2020 – Dr. Pat Taylor Ellison
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
5:16 Rejoice always,
5:17 pray without ceasing,
5:18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
5:19 Do not quench the Spirit.
5:20 Do not despise the words of prophets,
5:21 but test everything; hold fast to what is good;
5:22 abstain from every form of evil.
5:23 May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
5:24 The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.
In this little sermon to the Thessalonians, Paul tells the church to be true Trinitarians: God has a will for them, it is made plain in Christ Jesus that they are to rejoice and pray always, and they are to test all things and hold fast to what the Spirit tells them is good.
Do not quench the Spirit – do not despise words that seem to come from God in prophesy. Instead, test everything as a community and then abstain from evil but hold fast to what you discern to be good.
Do congregations nowadays do spiritual discernment? Or do they instead quench the Spirit and despise prophesy, the opposite of what Paul is telling them to do? In the many congregations I have learned to know well in my work, spiritual discernment was not immediately favored. It took a lot of teaching and practicing before people would choose it as a habit. And even then, it became a habit that could quite easily be discarded for more expedient ways of testing ideas, such as voting or letting a dominant voice decide the outcome.
But that is not Paul’s advice. Paul knew that the Spirit was at work in the Thessalonians, and that the congregation needed to give the Spirit some elbow room to accomplish its purposes. And the congregation’s leaders believed him. They made room for the Holy Spirit to speak to them and help them to discern what was good and what was not good.
As local churches everywhere on earth continue to work as communities during this pandemic, I hope that they do spiritual discernment to listen for what the Holy Spirit is calling them to hold fast to. I hope that the habit of listening for the Spirit and watching for the Spirit’s call and work among them strengthens and grows until, when they can be with people face to face once more, they can hit the ground running, filled with a living shared sense of God’s call to them. What a miracle that will be.
Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you giving us the Holy Spirit to advise us, call us, and give us purpose to do your will. Thank you for giving local churches vocations. Help us to listen for those calls. Amen.
