Insight for Living

Bill Meyer: Everyone wants to live life to the fullest. Survival isn't good enough. We want to make the most of our days and our years. So we chase the obvious answers: more money, staying healthy, climbing higher, achieving more. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll reveals the surprising secret to authentic living. It's not about accumulating or accomplishing more. It's a challenge to anyone who's been running on life's substitutes. So let's pick up the study now in 1 Thessalonians 3 to reveal the surprising elements that will transform our ordinary lives into something extraordinary.

Chuck Swindoll: Now the apostle says in his nights and during his days, there's a consistency in prayer: continually praying. And it's not a frivolous kind of "now I lay me down to sleep" or "dear Lord, bless the missionaries." It's not that kind of thoughtless prayer. It's prayer that says, "most earnestly," its requests. There's a fervency in it. In fact, it's specific: "that we may see your face." That's one request. Why would he pray that? Why didn't he catch a ride and get back to Thessalonica? He tried, friends. He tried. Chapter 2, verse 18: more than once, and Satan thwarted him. So he says, "If Satan's going to get in my way, I'll just say, 'God, sick 'im.'" That's kind of a Swindoll paraphrase, but that's the idea. I'll say, "Lord, I can't seem to get my way back to Thessalonica. You do it for me. Satan keeps cutting in on my stride. I ask you, Lord, to push him back in his lane and you open my way up." So I pray specifically about that.

And second, "I pray that I may complete what is lacking in your faith." What a great prayer. Ever prayed that? You know, I have to confess to you when I read that, I thought, I can't remember ever praying that. "Lord, I really want to minister so that I can complete what is lacking in someone else's faith." That's a great thought. Talk about putting a new dimension, a third dimension, in a teaching ministry or a helping ministry. Our ministry completes the loop. It puts people back on their feet. It gives what's needed for there to be a complete sense of stability. Look at verse 10 again. See the word "complete"? "And we may complete what is lacking in your faith." It is a great Greek word. The term means, in other places, to restore a fellow Christian who has wandered. Galatians 6:1: "restoring such a one in a spirit of meekness."

It's used, for example, for putting a joint that has been out of place back in place. It's used for mending a broken bone, used for mending a torn fishing net, used for outfitting a fleet of ships for battle, used for equipping an army to do its work of invasion. It's always completing something where, without it, it would be incomplete. Something is missing. Paul's prayer is that he would be the threads in the net. He would be the reinforcements, if you please. He prays that he would be the one who would be the healing balm in the brother who has wandered from the faith. He prays, and in doing so, he really lives.

Could it be that we don't really live because we carry the burdens that only God was meant to handle? Could it be that part of the reason life isn't as happy and delightful for us as it used to be is because we have taken responsibilities for things that are not ours to handle? I think so. And that's why I mention an earnestness in prayer. Let me encourage you. Let me go further. Let me challenge you to get serious about prayer. Start your day with it. Continue your day in it. Finish your day with it. It doesn't have to be hours and hours. It can be two, three, five, eight minutes in which you turn the day over to your God, or turn that situation over to him, or ask him to unravel the thing so that it goes back together in a new way.

I had lunch this past week with friends who had ministered over in Eastern Europe. And they said one thing that stood out in their mind was how people really made things last, because they don't have the privilege of going down and buying another half-dozen pair of jeans. You get a pair of jeans, they last as long as you can wear them, and then your brother gets them. And as long as he can wear them, then his brother gets them. And they're passed right down the line. In fact, they will remake sweaters. They'll unravel them, and they'll take all of that yarn and they'll reravel them into another sweater. And they keep making other sweaters out of the same yarn.

That's what God does. He takes the sweater that I give him, and he looks at the mess I've made it, and he unravels it, and then he puts it back together, and it looks different. And it's now like a fresh garment. That happens when I pray. I'm unraveling my sweater, and I'm giving him the ball of yarn, and he gives me back a new garment. Earnestness in prayer. Oh, but if we make a list on what it means to really live, it would not be having a lot of money or staying young. It certainly would not be those things we've looked at earlier. It would have to include things like joyful in a life of gratitude. It would have to include earnestness in a life of prayer. And look at verses 11 and 12. We can't leave out abounding in love, can we?

"Now may our God and Father himself..." Now this is a personal operation. "And Jesus our Lord direct our way to you." And it's not over. "And may the Lord cause you to increase and abound in love..." Watch it. "...for one another and for all men, just as we do for you." Abounding in love. Sounds almost like a benediction, doesn't it? "Now may our God and Father himself and Jesus our Lord..." Maybe it's meant to be that. Maybe his great concern for these Thessalonian believers was that they would realize there's a connecting link between the living God and their love life. May he himself, personally, along with Jesus Christ the Savior, cause your love not just to be maintained, but to abound and increase.

I smile when I say that because I have seen our children have their love abound and increase for one person until it led to courtship, and then it led to an engagement, and then it led to marriage. It abounded and it increased. Now, the same progress is in mind here. Allow me a little pedantic moment. See verse 12, the word "for"? Abound in love "for" one another. Circle that. "For" all men. "Just as we do for you." I have those words marked in my Bible on purpose because there's a little preposition, a little picking preposition in the Greek text that is what I call a preposition of penetration. *Eis* is the word, and it means "into."

If I were to take an ice pick and push it into a volleyball, clunk, it would go *eis* the ball, to use the term. It's the word for getting down deep into. And he's using it three times here. May your love increase and abound deep down into one another, children of God. But don't stop. We're going to get down right liberal about this. May your love increase into all men, just as I have a love that is into you. Get the idea? I want to give you a thought about love. Let's spell it. L-O-V-E. Kind of in a column, okay? When I think of L, I think of, in this love relationship, if I really get into someone's life, I think of listening. I think of respecting them enough and accepting them with tolerance so that I am gracious to hear what they have to say. Just to listen.

I demonstrate love to someone when I take time to listen to that person. O is overlook. When I listen to the individual, I overlook the flaws so that I can affirm. Most of us are all too well aware of our flaws. When we forget them, there are a number of people who are willing to point them out. But nevertheless, when we are deeply related to one another in love, the thing that keeps us close is that other person overlooks the part of me that I know oh so well is unattractive, unpleasant. Overlook. V, I would say, would represent value. I value you. You value me. We have a mutual respect. It isn't a blind spot kind of respect. We're aware of each other fully in our love relationship, but our value of each other overshadows whatever we may say by way of criticism.

And E would have to be express. Love is demonstrative. Love is something I do. Did you see *The Burning Bed*? That awful television film in which a battered wife tried to endure in a home with this maddening husband who beat her to an inch of her life? Tragic scenes. My wife and I sat up until almost 12:30 talking about our feelings regarding it. I suppose what disturbed me the most is that all the way through the story, the man kept saying, "But I love you. But I love you. You see, I have this love for you." And one time I remember my wife put her hand down firmly on the back of the sofa and said, "He does not. He does not. That is not love. That kind of expression is not love. And all of the saying of love will not convince a battered wife it is love." When I love, I don't batter. I don't batter.

Men and women, I don't know of any quality that will draw the lost to us like this one. Aristides, while describing Christians to the Emperor Hadrian, said, "Oh, they love one another. They never fail to help widows. They save orphans from those who would hurt them. If they have something, they give freely to the man who has nothing. If they see a stranger, they take him home. And Hadrian, they are so happy. It must be their love." Yeah. What's the result of this? The result of joyful gratitude, the result of an earnest prayer, the result of abounding love: these things that make up real living. Well, there's got to be one other link in the chain.

The result, verse 13: "so that." See the result in those words? "So that he..." Who? God the Father himself, verse 11. "So that God the Father may establish your hearts unblamable in holiness." What a finale. You want to really live? Abound and be established in holiness. Holiness before men? No, that's not holy. Men and women have reduced the standard of God so that anything goes. If it feels good, do it and get rid of your guilt, because this is the me era. We are in foggy, fuzzy times when it comes to purity, aren't we?

In fact, it is so important, this matter of holiness, verse 13, that he spends the next eight verses of chapter 4, verses 1 to 8, developing the thought of moral purity. And he talks straight. Wear your steel-toed shoes when we get into that. It's going to be tough sledding. Hold your place here and go to 1 Peter chapter 1. Verse 13: "Therefore, gird your minds for action. Keep sober in spirit. Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance." You had a reason to walk by lust in your early years. You were ignorant of God's ways. But you're not ignorant anymore.

Verse 15: "In contrast to that lifestyle, like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves in all your behavior, because it is written, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.'" I'm so grateful that's in the book. That tells me my standard is to be as holy as God is holy. That tells me my only way of reaching that is through the person and victory of Jesus Christ. I can't do it in my own strength. I must have the Savior, or I will lower that standard to fit my ability to produce. But I am to be holy even as he is holy. Now back to 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, verse 13. Establishing our hearts unblamable in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

He's looking ahead to the ultimate day when we're with him, and he sees it as a finished, completed fact. But it's not so right now. Let me give you a book to buy on the subject of holiness. It's called *The Pursuit of Holiness* by Jerry Bridges. It's a grand book. In the book, he likens the battle for holiness, get this, to nations at war. One defeats the other, as at Calvary our Lord Jesus Christ defeated Satan. But the losing army, though vanquished, then takes to the hills and fights on as a guerrilla movement. Fighting off sin, Bridges says, is like beating back continuing guerrilla attacks. Isn't that good? Isn't that true?

That's why we need corporate worship. We're coming in from guerrilla warfare. That's why we need to be together. That's why we need support groups. That's why we need the fellowship of one another. Guerrilla warfare is a lonely place to be. I mean, they're shooting back. They're winning some battles. More on that next time. Left to ourselves, we substitute. Mentally, we substitute knowledge for wisdom. Emotionally, we substitute feelings for facts. Spiritually, we substitute the temporal for the eternal. We really want to live. There's joy in gratitude. There's an earnestness in prayer. There's an abundance in love. And there's an established stability in holiness.

Now, as we begin to grow, let's go back to where we started. Mentally, we become wiser. Emotionally, we become stronger. And spiritually, we become purer. That's what happens when you grow. Mentally we get wiser, emotionally we get stronger, and spiritually we grow purer. You know what? I want to confess something to you. I tend to make assumptions in my preaching and teaching. I tend to assume that people who hear me are already in the family of God. It's easy for me to forget that many have not yet come to the Savior. And you know what happens when you try to carry out these exciting principles in really living without Christ?

It's like driving your car with water. It's like filling up the tank with H2O and then trying even to get the thing to start. Frustrating. It can, in fact, ruin a good engine. It takes gasoline to operate. It takes power to put that thing on the road. It takes Christ to handle the mental, spiritual, and emotional assaults that we face. With all of that in mind, listen to Chuck Colson's story coming from his book *Loving God*.

"As I write this, it is exactly 10 years since I visited my dear friend Tom Phillips. As the Watergate scandal exploded across the nation's press, though I felt an awful deadness inside, I didn't think I was searching spiritually. But while Tom's explanation that he had accepted Jesus Christ shocked and baffled me, it also made me curious. He was at peace with himself, something I surely wasn't. Tom explained it all to me that sultry August night. I couldn't show too much interest, of course. I was senior partner of a powerful Washington law firm and a friend of the President. But as I left Tom's house, I discovered I could not get my keys into the car ignition. I couldn't see them. The White House hatchet man, as the newspapers called me, the ex-Marine infantry captain, was crying too hard.

That night, I was confronted with my own sin. Not just Watergate's dirty tricks, but the sin deep within me, the hidden evil that lives in every human heart. It was painful and I could not escape. I cried out to God and found myself driven irresistibly into his waiting arms. That was the night I gave my life to Jesus Christ and began the greatest adventure of my life. A lot of skeptics thought I wouldn't last, that it was just a ploy for sympathy, a foxhole conversion. I don't blame them. If the tables were turned, I'd have thought the same thing. But not once in these 10 years have I doubted that Jesus Christ lives. There is nothing of which I am more certain. And not once would I have turned the clock back. My lowest days as a Christian—and there were low ones, seven months' worth of them in prison to be exact—have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House. The years before conversion were death. The years since have been life, and the adventure of loving God, the purpose of that life."

You may have money. You may have a fine education. You may have youth. You may have an adventure in front of you on the horizon that is absolutely exhilarating. You may have your life put together in an organized manner. You may even be a friend of the president. But you're dead without Christ. Dead. You may appear living to everyone around you, but you're living on substitutes. You haven't life. All you have is the ability to breathe. All you have is a heart that continues to pump. But you haven't life indeed. You are dead. And I point you today to the only source of authentic, eternal life: Christ. Believe in him now.

Let's bow together. I speak to young and old alike. I speak to all today who will give me the time to listen. And I say, in all the love I can muster, without Christ, if you die, you will go to hell. With Christ, when you die, you will go to heaven. There is a hell, there is a heaven, and there is a hurry. Decide now. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. The substitutes will fade into insignificance as you take Christ. With him will come wisdom, purpose, stability, meaning, forgiveness, hope, and security.

Thank you, Father, for loving us. Thank you for telling us the truth. Thank you for the joy that accompanies life with God. For the privilege of earnest prayer. For the blessings that accompany the child of God in everyday living. May we be established in holiness. May we be people who walk in dependence upon you. And may you work faithfully to bring those who have not yet trusted you unto yourself. I pray through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Bill Meyer: Aren't you glad that we serve a God who wants us to live our best life? Not as the world would define best life, but as God defines it. And his ways are far more satisfying than anything the world could offer. You're listening to Insight for Living and the Bible teaching of Chuck Swindoll. We're engaged in a 12-part study through Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians. Chuck titled this study *Contagious Christianity*. Our team has put together a printed Bible study workbook that follows the same process Chuck used when preparing all 12 sermons.

It's a spiral-bound Bible study workbook that guides you through Paul's letter and leaves plenty of room for making personal notes and observations. Look for the searching the scriptures Bible study workbook titled *Contagious Christianity* at insight.org/offer. You know, laughter is a virtue of contagious Christianity. Happiness in the form of laughter springs from a fully satisfied heart. It's a tell-tale sign of contentment. Along those lines, people often contact Insight for Living and tell us how much they appreciate Chuck's laughter.

That joy is contagious. And today we're pleased to offer a three-CD collection that contains some of Chuck's most knee-slapping illustrations and insights. Every one of them is based on a biblical truth, wrapped in a hilarious anecdote. Call 800-772-8888 or visit insight.org/offer. Thank you so much for giving generously to support the ministry of Insight for Living. It's your voluntary gifts that make Chuck Swindoll's teaching available on the radio and all the other platforms that carry Insight for Living.

As a result, men and women all around the world are learning how to receive God's grace and to share his grace with others. It wouldn't be possible without supportive friends like you. You can make a gift today by calling 800-772-8888 or visit insight.org/donate. You can also send a gift in the mail by writing to us at Insight for Living, Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas, 75034. No one is above temptation. I'm Bill Meyer, urging you to listen when Chuck Swindoll presents straight talk about moral purity, tomorrow on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, *What Does It Mean to Really Live?*, was copyrighted in 1984, 1985, 1993, 2003, and 2024, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2024 by Charles R. Swindoll, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.