Episode 2: Work While We Wait

Erin Davis: Shannan, I think we are about the same age. I won’t make us tell people what age that is, but I’m going to give you a pop culture reference from when I was in high school and see if you remember it. Do you remember the Heaven’s Gate cult?

Shannan Painter: I do.

Erin: You do? What do you remember?

Shannan: I don’t remember a whole lot, except that there were many people who took their own lives.

Erin: Right, that’s right. They were part of a cult, and the leaders of that cult misinterpreted the book of Revelation. This comet called the Hale-Bopp Comet approached the earth. That happens like once every 4,000 years. They took it as a sign that it was time for them to enter into eternity. 

Thirty-nine people took their own lives because they thought that comet meant that that was what God wanted them to do. I don’t bring that story up because it’s a fun one to remember, but I think it is a reminder that interpreting Scripture about the return of Christ is a big deal! In this episode we’re going to aim to interpret it well and talk about why it matters.

Shannan: This is The Deep Wellwith Erin Davis. I’m Shannan Painter. We can make two mistakes when we think about the return of Christ. On one hand we can obsess over it and get bogged down in controversy about interpretation. The danger is that we focus so much on the end that we don’t build God’s kingdom right now! But the other danger is to stop anticipating the return of Christ. 

Erin’s about to show us how to walk a middle path as she continues the series in 1 Thessalonians called “Stay Awake.”

Erin: There is no doubt that the Bible speaks to Jesus’ return. As I mentioned in the previous episode, Paul wrote about the return of Christ over and over in 1 Thessalonians. It was also the focus of the follow-up epistle, 2 Thessalonians. So, the return of Christ matters!

But I find that we tend to gravitate toward one of two extremes. Either we ignore the theme of Christ’s return in Scripture, which, frankly, takes some maneuvering. There are more than 1800 biblical references to the second coming of Jesus. 

It’s mentioned in no less than seventeen books of the Old Testament and twenty-three books of the New Testament. Now, I’m not good at math, but that means that in forty of the sixty-six books of the Bible, the return of Christ is referenced. So if the Bible was a pie chart, the return of Jesus would be a big piece of the pie!

But it is mysterious, and parts of His return can feel scary, if we’re honest. And so, we put our focus elsewhere. If I’m being honest, teaching on the return of Jesus makes me a little . . . uncomfortable. I know that people have strong opinions and I’ve seen all of the charts (I probably haven’t seen all of them) but I’ve seen many of the charts about how people map the timeline and where people think the events of Jesus’ return are going to fall. 

Frankly, many of those people are smarter than me and better scholars than me, but my goal is to get you to know and love your whole Bible! And so, I just can’t sleep at night knowing that our tendency is to race past those 1,800 verses!

Then there’s the other extreme: we make eschatology our only focus. We become so consumed with His return that we forget something really important: we are on a mission right now! 

I doubt that you are at risk of joining a cult and putting your hope in a fleeting comet. But are you waiting well? Do you have a vision for what waiting well for the return of Jesus can look like practically in your real life? If you don’t, 1 Thessalonians can help. 

Again, this was a letter written to Christians, and I’m going to keep reminding you that these were commendable Christians. Paul dedicated a lot of space at the beginning of the letter just singing the praises of the people in this church in Thessalonica. Now, if you know Paul and you know his writing style, you know he wasn’t exactly known for his words of affirmation. I don’t think anybody has ever called Paul a warm and fuzzy guy!

But listen to how he started this letter: 1 Thessalonians 1:1–2:

To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace. We always thank God for all of you, making mention of you constantly in our prayers.

We recall, in the presence of our God and Father, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” (vv. 1–3 CSB)

He was giving them such high praise!

Now, if you want to read about the culture that these Christians were serving Jesus in, I would encourage you to check out Acts chapter 17. But let me summarize. Those who didn’t follow Christ in this era were hostile to the idea of truth being absolute. They were also hostile to those who claimed that Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life. And the more Christians sought to live obedient lives, the more the wider culture got offended by them. 

Does that sound familiar? It has never been easy to live for Jesus, and it has never been easy to wait for His return!

But since the Ascension, every follower of Jesus has longed to see His face, longed to hear that trumpet, longed to see Him come back. But the trumpet hasn’t been blown yet. I imagine these Christians in Thessalonica were a lot like the women who listen to this podcast. They were steadfast.

They knew they were loved by God; they had joy. News of their faith spread far and wide, and they did long for the return of Jesus. And yet, they still needed to be reminded how to wait well. We’re going to pick up this epistle in chapter 2, and we’re going to use the verses in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 to sketch out a picture of how to wait for Jesus’ return.

Let me read us 1 Thessalonians 2:1–12: follow along with me in your Bible: 

For you yourselves know, brothers, that our coming to you was not in vain.But though we had already suffered and been shamefully treated at Philippi, as you know, we had boldness in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in the [middle] of much conflict.

For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts.

For we never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness. Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.

So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us. For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God.

You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

As Paul felt about these believers, I feel about the women who listen to this podcast. I love that phrase, “affectionately desirous.” That’s how he felt about them. Now, Paul was not Jesus. He was a man. He was imperfect and very much in need of a Savior. But he is an example to us of someone who lived wholly devoted to Jesus after that experience on the road to Damascus.

We’ll see as this letter unfolds, he expected Jesus to return at any time. His belief in the imminent return of Jesus informed the way Paul actually lived. So how did he live? Let’s pull some specifics out of the text. If you like to make a list (you know I love to make a list!), you’ll enjoy this session. I’ll give you the points as we go.

Number 1: Paul boldly declared the gospel, even in the midst of much conflict. That comes from verse 2. Sharing the gospel is an assignment for all followers of Jesus, and it’s a high privilege! It's a “get to,” not a “got to.” Now, I haven’t always felt that way about sharing the gospel.

Many, many years ago I was on a mission trip in the developing world, and we were going door to door sharing the gospel. I felt so uncomfortable that I hung back from the group. I stayed on the street as they went up to houses.

And that night, as our team was gathered together, my friend Adam said, “Erin, I just loved how, while we were sharing the gospel, you stayed back and prayed!” And I let the whole group think that’s what I was doing. It wasn’t! I just felt uncomfortable sharing my faith.

But God has given me a passion through His Word. Now, I am not an evangelist, but I have come to see that the responsibility of sharing Jesus is for all of us who claim Christ. You don’t just have to take my word for it . . . you should never just take my word for it.

Listen to Matthew chapter 28:19–20. This is Jesus speaking:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

Go! And make disciples! That is our assignment. We often call these verses, “the Great Commission,” and I love to say we do that because we are on “co mission” with Jesus for the redemption of the world. So I’ll say it again: sharing your faith is a “get to,” not a “got to.”

And if you’ve ever been blessed with the experience of God using you to open someone’s eyes to their true spiritual condition and having them surrender themselves to Him, you’re going to want to keep doing it over and over and over!

But as I mentioned in the first episode, being willing to share the gospel boldly requires that our hearts stay soft toward the lost. It is so easy to fall into the pattern of “us vs. them.” 

Lost people act like lost people, so their lives do not look like our lives. We need to stay mindful of the grace by which we have been saved and ask God to give us hearts that are soft to those who don’t know Him. Back to 1 Thessalonians 2, listen to verse 4: “We have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.” I love that word “entrusted.” The idea is that the gospel is very precious; that we have the words of life, and God has entrusted that message to us that we might share it with others!

Boldly declaring the gospel while we wait for Jesus’s return is a theme that Paul repeats in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 9. He talked about his labor and his toil, he talked about working day and night. At what? What was he working so hard at? It’s right there in the text verse 9: proclaiming the gospel! Are you stewarding the message of the gospel well, while you wait? 

Are you sharing Jesus with your neighbors, with your coworkers, with your family? And there’s a question behind the question, “Would you boldly proclaim the gospel if you were awake to what Jesus teaches . . . that Jesus is coming back, and it won’t be long now!” Later in verse 4, Paul wrote, “We speak, not to please man, but to please God.” This gives us a second way to wait well.

Number 2: We live for God’s glory, not man’s acceptance. It was not easy to be a follower of Jesus in first century Thessalonica, and it’s not easy to be a follower of Jesus in twentieth century America, where I live.

How do we hope with the constant pressure to compromise? How do we respond when what we believe about God and His Word is rejected by the culture around us and the people that we love? We let God’s Word remind us, as often as we need it to, that we don’t live for the approval of man, we live for the glory of God.

Now these two points, these two postures, go hand in hand. We stay soft-hearted toward the lost. We share the gospel, but ultimately, we don’t live to be people pleasers. We plant gospel seeds and we trust God with the fruit.

Paul expands on this in verses 5 and 6 of chapter 2. We don’t seek glory from people. We don’t use flattery. We don’t want any ear ticklers here who are just saying what people want to hear. It’s cliché, and it’s true: “We live our lives for an audience of One.” We ask ourselves, if Jesus came back today, would He find me living for Him, or would He find me living for the approval and applause of others?

Verse 10 tells us that Paul and his co-laborers sought to live holy, righteous, and blameless lives. That gives us number 3 on our list: we wait well by seeking to live holy, righteous and blameless lives.

When Jesus came back, Paul wanted Jesus to find him and his disciples living like He called them to live. A gospel-transformed woman who is waiting well lives a holy, set-apart life. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my relationship with God to feel like a cop in the rearview mirror. 

I don’t want to just not do things because He might come back any moment . . . and then I would get caught! I want the fact that He will return to keep me tethered to the set-apart way He has called me to live. In light of Jesus’ return we want to live holy, righteous and blameless lives.

The fourth way to wait well comes from verses 11 and 12; let me read them to us again: “For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.”

Three action words there: exhort, encourage, and charge.This is family talk. We’ve already talked about how we engage with the lost. This is about how we treat each other within the family of God while we wait for Jesus to come back.

First, we exhort. That word is “to urge.” That’s what we’re doing in this season, we’re urging each other: stay awake, stay awake! Keep reading your Bible! Keep thinking about Jesus’ return! We’re urging each other in the Lord.

The second is to encourage, that’s “to strengthen.” There are people in your life, brothers and sisters in Christ who, right this moment, need to be reminded that Jesus is coming back, that it’s a promise that the way things are today isn’t the way they’re always going to be.

So we exhort—we urge each other, we encourage—we strengthen each other. And then we charge—we call each other higher. What do we urge each other with? “Stay awake!” What do we encourage each other with? “Jesus is coming back!” He will not leave us here forever! He is going to redeem everything that’s broken!

And because that’s true, we call each other higher. We call each other to live holy lives, not because our salvation depends on it. Salvation is grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, period! 

But because we really are in the process of being the Bride getting ready for the Groom, we encourage each other to tirelessly share the gospel. We encourage each other to put our hope in Jesus, not in temporary things.

Let me read you 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, verses 19–20, it ends this way: 

For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy. 

Have you ever thought about what you will brag about to Jesus when He returns? That seems like a strange thought!

The book of 1 Thessalonians was written by the same Paul who said that the only thing he had to brag about was his weakness. He wrote that in 2 Corinthians 12:9. But Revelation 20 tells us that one of things that will happen after Jesus comes back is that our deeds and works will be exposed before the throne of God.

Now, none of it will be enough to earn our salvation. That was taken care of by Jesus on the cross. But the ways we have lived for Him or for ourselves will be fully exposed for us to see. Now, Jesus already sees them.

What will we have to brag about when all of our human accomplishments and awards burn up? According to Paul, it will be the lost that we witness to and the saints that we strengthen. Those we love well in Jesus’ name. 

Paul is saying, “You are my crown! You’re my glory, you’re my joy! Because I have gotten to share Jesus with you! I have gotten to encourage you to stay awake. I have poured the gospel into you and I have seen you pour the gospel into others, and that has become a reward that I’m going to brag about to Jesus someday!”

It’s an old saying, but a beautiful one: “Just one life, ’twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last.” 

To live like Scripture calls us to means that we don’t hunker down and hide waiting for Jesus to come back. We share the gospel. We live for God’s approval, not man’s. 

We live set apart holy lives, distinct from those who don’t know Christ. And to each other, to the family of God, we never stop encouraging, exhorting, and calling each other higher. And we invest our time, our talents, our energy, our tears, our prayers, our efforts in the things that will last forever!

I mentioned the poem, Only One Life, Twill Soon Be Past. It was written by C. T. Studd, and I want to end this episode with the last few stanzas as our prayer.

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Oh, let my love with fervor burn,
And from the world now let me turn,
Living for Thee, and Thee alone,
Bringing Thee pleasure on Thy throne!
“Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.”

“Only one life!” Yes, only one!
Now let me say, “Thy will be done;”
And when at last I hear the call [perhaps he’s writing about the trumpet call, there].

I know I’ll say, “’Twas worth it all!”
“Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.”

Only one life, ’twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.
And when I am dying, how happy I’ll be,
If the lamp of my life has been burned out for Thee

Lord, teach us to wait well. Amen.

Shannan: If you keep the return of Jesus in mind, it will help you spend your time doing what really matters! Erin, thanks for reminding us of that. 

Erin: I was 100% reminding myself. I need constant reminders!

Shannan: We all do! So if you all want to remind yourselves as well, we have a book by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth called Heaven Rules! It’s about Daniel.

Erin: It’s one of my favorites! Daniel lived in a time of a great deal of turmoil. He was promoted; he was demoted, but he never lost sight of God’s kingdom. It helped him handle life’s ups and downs.

Shannan: We’d love to send you a copy of Heaven Rules! as a way of saying thanks when you support The Deep Well.

Erin: Yes, The Deep Well is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family, and I am so grateful that it is possible to do this because of listeners who give to the ministry.

Shannan: When you make a donation of any size we’ll send Heaven Rules! Visit ReviveOurHearts.com/thedeepwell. It’s time for Erin Unscripted. . .and one point you just made was a hard hitter to me!

Erin Unscripted

An important phrase to me recently has been soli deo gloria, which is Latin for, for the glory of God alone. It’s something that I have wrestled with most of my life. I think I want to say I’m a recovering approval junkie, but I think even that is a little euphemistic.

The truth is that I am prone to wrestle with the idolatry of wanting to be thought of well and having that elevated over what God thinks of me. It’s an important reminder for me personally that we have an audience of One. That helps ground me on a regular basis that my actions, my decisions should all be funneled through that lens of, “Whose glory, whose approval am I living for?”

Erin: And I think one really healthy way to live in light of Christ’s return is to remember that when the trumpet blasts, everything is going to fade away . . . everything! Every word of praise from man, every word of criticism from man is going to fade away. It’s just not going to matter! 

And, of course, we still are women in the world, we still interact with people. I don’t want to adopt a mindset of, “Just hunker down and think about the return of Jesus!” because that’s not what we see in Scripture. But we can try to remind ourselves that there’s going to become a moment when that fades away, and how can we ask the Lord to help our heart get there sooner?

I love that phrase, too, soli deo gloria. It’s been very liberating for me. When people say, “Ah, I just love your teaching!” or “I love your podcasts!” or “You have great kids!” or anything that I could give myself glory for; the Lord has helped me reflexively say soli deo gloria, or glory to God! Because He deserves all the glory for all of it!

And when criticism comes, and it does, to also think of that being for God’s glory. How can I respond for God’s glory, how can I learn for God’s glory. So, it does reorient us. Then if I could expand it to the wider culture, I think Shannan, us being followers of Jesus in 2024, Western world, we’re now beginning to grapple with not being the home team anymore . . . and we still want to be! 

We still want the culture to approve of what we believe. We still want the culture to celebrate what we celebrate. We still want the culture to think we’re great. And we’re losing that ground which I think ultimately is a victory, but we’ve got to come to a place of comfortability with that. 

We don’t serve Jesus for the approval of man. We certainly don’t serve Jesus for the approval of a lost culture. I’m not saying that will ever be comfortable, it’s not comfortable, but that’s what it means to live for God’s glory. 

When we’re misunderstood, when we’re mistreated, when we’re marginalized, when we’re misquoted, when we’re made out to be something that we’re not . . . to live for God’s glory is to know that it’s still worth it!

Shannan: Yes, you mentioned that as culture shifts, and it’s not as much the popular belief or we get more pushback . . . I would add, even in an area where I would say it’s pretty friendly to be a Christian—where I live regionally in our country, it’s pretty friendly to say that you go to church—I’ve also seen that there is a higher rate of people who are not awake, or are sleepy, in this culture.

So I love that you pointed out that it’s not doing us any good, that it’s beneficial for us to move to where we get more resistance, and we have to make decisions based on who we’re living for and what’s valuable to us, even if it costs us something, because it forces us to wake up, in some senses.

Erin: Yes, I think our brothers and sisters in parts of the world where they’re truly oppressed and persecuted would affirm what you just said. The return of Jesus is real to them because they are under governments that oppress them.

Because they could lose their lives for following Jesus, they are awake! In a way, we’ve been lulled to sleep by our acceptance. Nobody wants persecution. I wouldn’t say I long for persecution. That’s not a true statement for how I feel, but those hardships do have a way of waking us up to what is true and what is real and where our hope really is.

And if a day comes where we live, where there is an uptick in that kind of oppression for God’s people, we can also have a lot of hope that it’s also going to make us very alert to the return of Christ. He uses it all, for sure!

Shannan: Erin is teaching today in front of an online audience, and one of the listeners named Mary in our chat has said, “I can relate that. I, too, have the same sin of wanting approval, and it is an idol. A recent family squabble can be attributed to that very sin of mine. I have some work to do, to ask for forgiveness and repair that relationship.

Erin: Whew! Me, too, Mary! I think that idol rears its ugly head so often that we don’t always recognize it for what it is. We’re all approval addicts! That’s part of our fallen nature that we want the world to be about us, right? And that means a need for a kind of constant affirmation.

That has ruled my life for much longer than I have wanted it to, and has impacted way more relationships than I wanted it to. And I have not been able to destroy that idol by just telling myself, “Don’t need approval, don’t need approval, don’t need approval.” But by staring at Somebody more worthy and realizing that Jesus is the One who deserves it all! 

I love that passage in Revelation where it describes the twenty-four elders casting their crowns in front of Him. It doesn’t matter what the crown is—your money, your looks, your achievements, your friendships, your family—it needs to come off of your head and be thrown at His feet because He’s so much more worthy! 

So I think the longer we look at Him and understand who He is and how worthy He is, we won’t have to have the approval so often. But I’m with you! It’s a hard idol to destroy. And Mary just commented again.

Mary: I would have spoken this when you asked, but I’m sobbing right now! Thank you, this teaching has touched me deeply. Thank you for your diligence to teach us.

Erin: There’s only one thing for me to say to that comment: soli deo gloria. All glory to God! He does it. Let’s pray for Mary. 

Lord, thank You for Mary, thank You that You divinely brought her here today because You saw a need in her heart and You wanted to address it. Thank You that Your Word is sufficient. We pray for this relationship that’s fractured by sin, and all of us in this room can understand the hurt of our sin hurting others, and so we pray for a repair.

We do pray that You’d help her to turn from that idol and to give you all of the glory, because You deserve it. We pray that she would be okay with not being accepted and not being approved of and not being celebrated, that she would turn those efforts toward celebrating You! So we just pray that You would continue to speak to her and give her soft-heartedness. It’s in Your Name I pray, amen.

Shannan, you are a pastor’s wife, and that comes with a lot of tentacles in this area of needing approval or wanting approval. Is there anything the Lord has shown you as you’ve walked through these years of being a pastor’s wife?

Shannan: When I first stepped into that role it was really hard for me. I navigated a lot of hurt because friends had expectations of me and people in the church had expectations of me, and I constantly had to ask myself, “What am I believing to be true about God right now?”

And when I know His character and what His expectations are of me, it’s a lot more freeing. So, as long as I can keep that at the forefront: “Lord, what do You want me to do? Who do You want me to give my time and energy to?” that has allowed me to let go of some of the other things.

I have had people believe very wrong things about me and my intentions, and that has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to navigate—being misunderstood in that role. But it’s also helped me grow a lot. It’s helped me see things from a different perspective and have a heart for people a little bit more. But it’s hard! 

It’s hard not to worry. It’s hard not to think that there’s pressure to act a certain way, dress a certain way, present myself a certain way. But again, back to your point of an audience of One, God’s approval, that’s what I have to at the end of the day know. He knows my heart. He sees me, and He’s the One I have to answer to.

Erin: Yes. Your thoughts make me want to do what Paul told us to do, which is to exhort, encourage, and charge. I want to call us higher. Sometimes in the body of Christ we can be hard on each other when someone starts to live for an audience of One, when someone truly starts to live that undivided life where they are unconcerned with the approval of others, and it starts to look radical.

The rest of us can kind of be like, “Hey, simmer down a little bit!” Or we can take it as a reflection on our own walk instead of just realizing, “This actually is how God calls each of us to live.” Even in the area of reminding each other of the return of Christ, I think there’s a temptation to be like, “Why is she always talking about the return of Jesus?” or, that can feel extreme.

And yet, it should be a byproduct of realizing, “No, we don’t live to please man—even each other within the body.” We love each other, we bless each other, we bear one another’s burdens, but we’re not living for each other’s approval. . .

So if we could really become each others’ champions in this way of living: “Wow, my sister is really living her life with undivided focus on God!” I think that’s one way we wake each other up!

Shannan: Yes. I struggle a little bit with the word “exhort,” which ties back to living for man’s approval. It can be hard to challenge each other sometimes, or to call each other out, because we want people to like us.

It can feel like if we exhort or call someone to holiness, that might cause some tension in our relationship, or it might be hard. It can be easy for us as women to give a stamp of approval over something that isn’t right, just for the sake of wanting to be liked.

I appreciate that you mentioned that, too. Charging, encouraging, comes a little easier to me, but the exhortation piece can be a struggle at times.

Erin: Yes, I can think of an example. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, who is the founder of Revive Our Hearts, was listening to me teach here and on Grounded and on other places where I teach. Apparently, I said, “Holy cow!” a lot. I didn’t even know that was a phrase in my vocabulary.

But she sent me a very kind and generous email and just said, “You use that phrase “Holy cow!” often, and “holy” is a special word. It’s “set apart,” it means “unique.” And the way you’re using it is kind of flippant.” I’m not quoting her word for word, but it was an exhortation. It was calling me higher. 

It was saying, “You probably haven’t thought of it this way,” and there was no condemnation or shame. She wasn’t trying to embarrass me, but she was right! And now pretty often I catch myself saying, “Holy Cow!” and I think, Wow, I do say that phrase a lot and it does minimize the word because cows are not holy. I’m usually using it in kind of a silly way. 

That might feel like a silly example, but it’s that. Do we call each other higher? Do we say, maybe as we were talking about in the first episode, “Hey, how is your appetite for Scripture? When was the last time you read the Word?” 

It’s not because I’m keeping track. It’s not because I want to compare notes with you about how I’m better than you at this, but I want to call you higher. It’s that it seems like you’re carrying a lot of anxiety about “x” and the Lord would want you to surrender that to Him. You can trust that to Him. You don’t need to carry that around for yourself. That’s calling each other higher.

I don’t think we’re always comfortable with that, but it’s a biblical practice that God gives us for each other for our good, and so maybe we need to get comfortable with it!

Shannan: “For our good.” I think that is key, to remember that. You know that Nancy loves you and cares about you and wants what’s best for you. When we can recall that and understand this makes us better, it fuels the fire. It sharpens our affections for the Lord when we do this. There’s value and benefit in it, then we can respond a little bit differently. 

Erin: So true. One of the things 1 Thessalonians has done has been to give me the perspective that, “What are we doing here while we wait?” We know what Jesus is doing. We know He’s seeking the lost. We know He’s redeeming. But what are we doing?

Big picture: we are getting the Bride ready for the Groom’s return. We, the Bride, are getting ready for Him to come back. We’re helping each other get ready for Him to come back. That’s part of our mission here, to help each other be prepared.

We do that through encouragement, yes, but also through the sometimes more difficult things of exhortation and charging each other with the truth. 

Esther: One thing that Shannan said earlier about trying to get away from the sin of people’s approval, I think one thing the Lord has done in my life is that He’s allowed me to go through suffering and be hurt by people.

Kind of like Mary, a couple of years ago, we went through a very difficult time with some family members, and that suffering taught me about not needing the approval of my family members and living just for God. 

So, thinking of Mary, that may be something God is doing in her life to help her with that. It’s really hard because it means dying to self and it means learning to forgive for the sake of Christ.

Erin: Thanks for sharing that. You’re right! Suffering is part of what He uses to untether us from all that would have us put our hope in something other than Him. Suffering is the thing that God has used most profoundly in my life in the past five years to make me long for His return.

I didn’t. I did not long for Jesus’s return before my mom got sick. I do now. I want Him to come back and make her whole and make me whole and make us whole together! And in your case, it was a family fracture, which is so painful! But the Bible speaks to that.

There’s a verse that talks about, “Though my father and mother forsake me, You will never forsake me” (see Psalm 27:10 KJV). We can read that, that’s one thing. But when we live it, when it is our father or mother or our siblings or those who are dear to us that reject us or misunderstand us, then the acceptance of Jesus becomes so much more precious! Thank you for sharing that with us.

Shannan: On the next episode of The Deep Well, Erin will continue this teaching series “Stay Awake.” She’ll show you why staying awake is so important to growing as a believer in Jesus. 

The Deep Well with Erin Davis is part of the Revive Our Hearts podcast family, calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

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