Insight for Living

Guest (Male): Every believer is a living letter that's written by the hand of God. So what's written on your pages? Peace in the middle of chaos, grace under pressure, a gift of quiet strength? Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll concludes his teaching series titled Steadfast Christianity.

In this message, Chuck points to the final words from Paul to the Christians in Thessalonica. Paul reminded these young believers that they are living letters of Christ, read by everyone around them. The same is true for you and me. Chuck titled his message, Your Distinguishing Mark.

Chuck Swindoll: Colossians 3:15, and let the peace of Christ rule. Rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. Now look back at the word you circled. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. This is the only time in all the New Testament where the original word translated rule appears. The only time, spoken only once and never again.

Do you know what it means? It means to act as umpire. Can you imagine the impact of a life that's at peace with himself or herself? I will tell you it would be revolutionary if the only thing we displayed throughout our week coming up would be peace.

It would have people asking us all kinds of things about how we have done it. Someone has said peace is that calm of mind that is not ruffled by adversity, overclouded by a remorseless conscience or disturbed by fear.

Chuck Swindoll: May the peace of Christ himself,

Chuck Swindoll: Second Thessalonians 3:16.

Chuck Swindoll: Continually grant you peace in every circumstance. Now, the next is the Lord's presence. When his living letter is on display, he is displaying his presence.

Chuck Swindoll: Verse 16 concludes,

Chuck Swindoll: The Lord be with you all.

Chuck Swindoll: Paul was from Southern Tarsus, and he would say that. The Lord be with you all. He has in mind every single believer who would read the letter then or in the centuries to come, every Christian, every Christian, is to remember the Lord's presence is there. That's what gives you peace. Remember, it is the Lord himself.

I think it is, how shall I say this? I think it is one of the distinctive marks of the believer. To have this sense of surrounding presence in circumstances that no one else can sustain. I have been in hospital rooms this week looking into the face of a man I love dearly. Only 56 years old at open heart surgery, and I saw peace.

I was in another hospital room where there had been the premature birth of a tiny, little sweet baby. And I looked into the face of a mother and of a young mother who had just had the child and I have seen the face of the father today and I have, I have seen the presence of God.

I have seen an absence of panic. I have talked to people over the phone who were choking back the tears because of what had recently occurred in their life. I will not take the time to explain it or describe it, but it would be enough to shock some of you. And I heard coming through their voices the presence of God, the peace of God.

Chuck Swindoll: Psalm 139. I would like you to listen to what the Lord says to you regarding his presence.

Chuck Swindoll: Oh Lord, you have examined my heart and you know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand. When far away, you know my every thought. You chart the path ahead of me. And you tell me where to stop and rest every moment. You know where I am. You know what I am going to say even before I say it. You precede and follow me. And you place your hand of blessing on my head. This is too glorious, too wonderful to believe. I can never be lost to your spirit. I can never get away from my God. If I go up to heaven, you are there. If I go down to the place of the dead, you are there. If I ride the morning winds to the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, your strength will support me. If I try to hide in the darkness, then night becomes light around me. Darkness and light are alike to you. You made all the delicate inner parts of my body and you knit them together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex. It is amazing to think about. Your workmanship is marvelous and how well I know it. You were there while I was being formed in utter seclusion within my mother. You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your book. How precious it is, Lord, to realize that you are thinking about me constantly. I cannot even count how many times a day your thoughts turn towards me. And when I awaken in the morning, you are still thinking of me. Isn't that great when I awaken in the morning, you are where you were when I went to sleep? Why? Because your presence surrounds me. That is not said of any other living creature but the living letter. The Christian. That's why you can have this kind of peace. That's why you can impact your world. That's why people sit up and take notice when a Christian steps on the scene, knowing who he or she is. He never leaves, he never forsakes. He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High will abide where? Under the shadow of the Almighty. That's our spot. And he never stops thinking about you and me. Amazing. Did you need to hear that today? Has it been a while since you have felt that close, as that psalm made you feel? It happened to me when I heard it. I thought, I can just feel his arms around me. I thought I was on my own yesterday and I found out he was there all the time. I have those same thoughts you have. I hear bad news just like you hear bad news. And I hear criticism like you hear criticism. And people coming at you from all different sides and you say, Lord, where are you? And that psalm says,

Chuck Swindoll: I have never left. Never moved. Why does that mean much?

Chuck Swindoll: The Lord be with you all.

Chuck Swindoll: Let's move on before I super irritate. Look at verse 17.

Chuck Swindoll: I, Paul, write this greeting, this is my favorite part. I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.

Chuck Swindoll: He is using an amanuensis, which is a two-bit name for a secretary. He has been using a secretary all through this letter. And he says, give me that pen. Well, maybe not exactly like that. May I have the pen, please? And so he takes the pen out of the hand of the amanuensis, and he writes,

Chuck Swindoll: I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand and this is a distinguishing mark

Chuck Swindoll: in every letter. This is the way I write. Arndt and Gingrich, lexicographers say,

Chuck Swindoll: This is the mark of genuineness.

Chuck Swindoll: That's what he is saying.

Chuck Swindoll: See all these other phoney baloney walking around with letters saying, this is a letter from Paul. Paul wrote this. You people need to know what Paul is saying about this. And all they had to do was say, wait a minute. No. That letter does not have Paul's mark. That is not his writing. That is forgery.

Paul says, when you read my letter and you see the way I have signed it, and closed off this letter, you know, that is authentic. Now, I am going to say more about that in a minute because I think we have all got a mark. If we are living letters, then we have the mark of the Lord Jesus, and that gets very exciting when you think about what that means.

So before I get on that, let me point out one more. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,

Chuck Swindoll: be with you all.

Chuck Swindoll: The Lord's grace. That's one more of those characteristics. He has talked about grace a lot. I think Paul has taken up the pen and written this these last two verses that appear in our Bibles, and I am not surprised he would mention his traveling companion, grace.

People have the idea that if they met up with Paul, they would meet a rather stern, strong-minded Jew who spoke for Christ and lived and died a martyr's death. I think you would meet the most gracious, seasoned saint, aside from the Lord Jesus, that has ever been produced by Christ. I think you would meet a man easy to live with. You would meet grace personified.

And if I have one major prayer for us in our future as a church, it is that our future will be marked by grace and not law, not tablets of stone, not a legal rigidity that requires people to measure up to our particular two by four standard. Not that they are to live as they please, but that they live as Christ is pleased for them to live.

I often think of the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, you may be able to compel people to maintain certain minimum standards by stressing duty. But the highest moral and spiritual achievements depend not upon a push, but a pull. People must be charmed into righteousness.

I have never read of anybody being whipped into righteousness. Never. I have never read a testimony that said, I, I lost a fistfight with Frank and I wanted to know his Lord because he beat me up. Or I was made to look like a fool because of Margaret and as a result, I am, I want to believe in Maggie's God because she had an ability to just whip me down out of shape. No, no, no.

I have heard a lot of people say, you know, there was a winsomeness, there was a contagion, there was a warmth. There was, may I use it, there was a charm that drew me in. There was compassion. There was room to wobble. There was space to learn. There was acceptance and forgiveness.

Chuck Swindoll: May the grace that marked our Lord Jesus Christ be read in your letter.

Chuck Swindoll: Is it, is it there? People must be charmed into righteousness. Now, you and I know that the purpose of a passage like this is not simply to satisfy our intellectual curiosity. We are not here just to go over Greek words and find out the tenses of verbs and to locate the theology found here and mark there. No, the purpose of this is to apply it.

If we are living letters, and we are, if we are salt and light, and we are, if others are to see our good works and glorify our Father, and they are, then the whole purpose is to see how this living letter part applies to living. So it has to start with the question, who am I?

Do you know who you are? You can never represent the one you follow if you do not know who you are. There are no multiple births in God's family. There are never twins even. There are certainly not identical twins. You know, even in a large crusade where people flood onto the field of a stadium by the thousands to give their hearts to Christ, you know how all of them are saved? One by one. Because each one is an individual.

Who are you? What is your individual uniqueness? May I use it? What is your distinguishing mark as a letter of Christ? Corinthians says we are members of the body. Ephesians says we have various gifts. Thessalonians mentions this distinguishing mark in the letter. Let's look at Ephesians to give it an idea of what you might be. Look at Ephesians chapter 4. Look at verse 11 and verse 12, okay?

Chuck Swindoll: Ephesians 4:11. Christ, who has ascended into heaven and has given his spirit. Christ gave some as apostles. He gave some as prophets. He gave some as evangelists.

Chuck Swindoll: Some of you are evangelists. It is not a reference to Billy Graham. Though we respect him as an evangelist, that has that's he just one among thousands in God's family that happened to have the gift of evangelism. You have the gift of evangelism? Some of you do and I, I have to tell you, because I do not have that gift, I at times envy people with that gift. I mean, they will speak to folks about Christ and the lost person sits up, listens and for you know it, he is born in to God's family.

Some men in ministry I know have the gift and they can stand before a crowd, present the gospel and you, people just come like crazy. That's a gift. It's a wonderful gift. But it's only one. That may not be your gift. Now the next one, pastors and teachers. I perk up like a Doberman when I hear that because that's my gift. That's what God has made me.

That's my distinguishing mark. What's yours? It does not say all of it here, but it might be helping behind the scenes. It could be showing mercy to people in need. Some of you have that wonderful gift of compassion. It could be counseling. That's one of the gifts. At least implied in the scriptures. It could be organizational gifts. Some of you come upon that which is chaotic and you have the ability to bring order.

It's wonderful to see people with organizational gifts bring order out of chaos. Happens to be one of my wife's gifts. One of the gifts of my wife. I said that the wrong way, didn't I? I have only one wife and she has among the other gifts, the gift of organization. And it is amazing how she can take a chaotic situation and turn it into order. She thinks orderly. I mean, the socks are alphabetized. I put the grey with the black one time and I am still limping as a result of that. It's not true. It is not true. She has that gift.

Some of you have the gift of giving. And giving 40% of your salary means nothing. 50%, 60, 80%. That's just a delight for you to do it. That's your gift. Some of you are given to prayer and you are people of faith and you never know what it is to doubt God. As you simply go to him and God amazingly it seems, brings it to pass exactly as you asked. That's your mark. Paul's was writing letters. Aren't you glad he exercised his gift?

Can you imagine the Bible jumping from the book of Acts back to the little letters of Peter and James and Jude and Revelation and missing Romans and and Corinthians and Galatians and Ephesians? His mark is in that book. What is your mark? What can you contribute? You can contribute the exercising of your mark, your gift.

You can teach. You can serve. You can minister. You can evangelize. You can write music. You can counsel. You can write letters. You can pray. You can name it. That's what you can do to contribute to the cause. Now, how do you maintain it? I have got about 60 seconds left, so find Second Corinthians chapter 9 really fast. Second Corinthians chapter 8. Let's do it there.

We have lost 10 seconds, so get with it. Second Corinthians chapter 8. I will give you four words on how you can maintain your mark in this fast-moving world. 8 of Second Corinthians chapter 8, verse 5, referring to the people of Macedonia who gave and gave and gave outside the ability that you would expect from them.

Chuck Swindoll: They first gave themselves to the Lord.

Chuck Swindoll: The word is personally. How do you maintain your mark? Personally. I do not maintain my mark through my wife. She does not maintain her mark through me. You do not maintain your mark through your pastor. You maintain your mark personally. It is your contribution to the body. That's what gives it value.

I mean, can you think of a Picasso with the word Smith at the bottom? I mean, it would have no value at all. It has got to have the guy's name. It has got to have the mark. Your personal touch. I am running out of time. Chapter 9, look over at chapter 9, verse 6.

Chuck Swindoll: Second word, bountifully. Now this I say, he who sows sparingly shall reap sparingly, he who sows, there is the word, bountifully shall reap bountifully.

Chuck Swindoll: I would have time to develop this context, but I do not. Yeah, he is talking about giving. Giving bountifully and that would be an application not only money, but time and effort and energy and skill and art and whatever. Third, verse 7.

Chuck Swindoll: Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion. God loves a cheerful giver.

Chuck Swindoll: Cheerfully is the third word. Think of the value of cheer in the exercise of a gift. Can you imagine if I came to the pulpit and said, well, let's all open our Bibles. This will not last long, there is not a lot here for you, but I have been depressed about this for two or three days. I mean, I can hardly sleep Saturday night. I am so excited about being in this place and giving the gift. That's my contribution to the body and it's the most thrilling part of my conscious life is doing what I am called to do and the same I want for you. It's a cheerful thing. That's why I meet up with pastors and they look whipped and beaten. You know, they have what I call the pastoral slump. Usually one shoulder is a little higher than the other. Heard about a, I do not have time, but I am going to tell you, heard about a gal that was in a grocery store line and she was moving through and a fellow behind her, you know, uh, very distinguished looking. She turned and looked at him and she said, uh, are you a minister? He said, no, I have just been sick. I have just been sick. Give me a break, Jack. Why do we have to look sick? Because we are dedicated. The last word is broadly, verse 9.

Chuck Swindoll: He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor, his righteousness abides forever.

Chuck Swindoll: It's crazy to drop all those on you, but I can't develop it. Personally, bountifully, cheerfully, broadly, let it out. Get at it. Do the thing called ministry and watch God work. I tell you, when he finds a letter that has got his mark, he makes it authentic. It's wonderful. I would like us to bow for a few moments, just to think about this, okay?

Some of you need to turn your life over to Christ. Let's just face the music. Face the facts. You have played around with it. You are no more a letter for Christ than the man in the moon. You have learned the language, you have run with Christian people, you may be even joined a church, but you are not a Christian unless you know Christ. Christian is a follower, a disciple of the person of Christ. Take that step right now.

You know, a simple prayer, Lord, I am lost, I I need you, I do not have you as my God and my Savior and I am, I am tired of living a lie. I need cleansing, I need hope, I need a purpose. Purpose. I need to be authentic instead of a fake. Now Christians, you pray right now. You for all you know, you are sitting right next to a person who does not even know the Lord. May look distinguished and be warm and and gracious, but may not know the Lord. Pray for the person who is on your right and on your left.

Lord, today has been a great day. It is not even near over, but it has been such a marvelous thing to be together, to think your thoughts, to log time in on this earth. It's amazing to think what the psalmist has said, even the days of our lives are recorded in your book before there was even one of them. How glorious is your history, and we are privileged to be a part of it. Some need peace, some need a reminder of your presence. Some need to know their distinguishing mark, and all of us need to be exercising them. Encourage us with what we have learned and more importantly with how we apply the truth of this wonderful book. In the name of Jesus, who gave us this letter and has written his name on our lives. His name we pray. Amen.

Guest (Male): And with his prayer, Chuck Swindoll brings us to the close of our eight-part journey through Second Thessalonians. From the opening verses to these final three, the message has been consistent and compelling. You are not a bystander in God's story. You are a living letter, bearing his mark, carrying his peace, extending his grace to a watching world. That's your distinguishing mark.

If Chuck Swindoll's study through Second Thessalonians has increased your appetite for God's word, there is a companion resource made just for you. The interactive Bible study workbook for this entire series, Steadfast Christianity, is available today. It's the perfect tool for going deeper on your own or working through these eight messages with a small group. To order it, call us at 800-772-8888 or visit insight.org/offer.

Every leader eventually hits a moment when the opposition feels bigger than the calling. The critics are loud. The obstacles are real. And somewhere in the quiet, the question surfaces, is this even worth the effort? Nehemiah faced that moment. He was building something that mattered, surrounded by people determined to stop him. But he refused to come down from that wall.

In his book, Hand Me Another Brick, Chuck walks you through Nehemiah's blueprint for leading with courage, clarity, and unshakeable faith. Whether you are shepherding a congregation, raising a family, or leading a team at work, this book will show you how to build something that outlasts you. Get in touch with us right away so we can get you a copy of Chuck's classic book on leadership. We will send you Hand Me Another Brick when you make a donation to Insight for Living.

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Guest (Male): I am Bill Meyer. Chuck Swindoll begins an encouraging series called Esther: A Woman of Strength and Dignity. Monday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Your Distinguishing Mark, was copyrighted in 1986, 1991, 2002 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.