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A nine-week walk through Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians, and how to live ready in light of Christ's return.
“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.”
1 Thessalonians 4:16
Paul wrote to a young church under real pressure, and his words still steady us. First Thessalonians is a letter about hope, holiness, and the certain return of Jesus. At New Hope we read it together across nine Sundays in early 2022.
The series moves verse by verse through all five chapters, from Paul's thanksgiving for the church to his teaching on how to wait well. Ready or not, Christ is coming again. Paul shows us how to live awake, encouraged, and prepared.
February 6 to April 3, 2022 · 9 Messages
Ready or not, here I come. Everyone who ever played hide and seek knows the sentence and what it meant. Pastor Tim Rolen opens a series on 1 Thessalonians by pointing out that life, death and the return of Christ all announce themselves the same way.
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Tiger Woods set out to teach his son golf. What the cameras caught at the PNC Championship was something else: a twelve year old who had picked up his father's walk, his swing, the way he lifts his cap. Nobody taught him that. Pastor Andrew Lynch says imitation is central to the Christian life.
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Two hunters. One collapses. His friend calls 911 and says my friend is dead, what do I do. The operator says first let's make sure he's actually dead. There is a pause, then a gunshot, then: okay, now what? Pastor Mark Addis says that question is the whole of 1 Thessalonians 2.
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A pretest at a New England high school asked students what an epistle was. One answered: the wives of the apostles. Pastor Tim Rolen uses that to ask a harder question. If Paul wrote back to this church, would he compliment us on what we do with his letter?
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A little girl asks her mother why some of her hair has gone white. Every time you misbehave, says the mother, I get one. The girl thinks about this, then asks why all of Grandma's hair is white. Pastor Andrew Lynch opens 1 Thessalonians 3 on the subject of families.
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A hospital director explains the admissions test. Fill a bathtub, hand the person a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket, and ask them to empty it. A normal person picks the bucket, says the visitor. No, says the director. A normal person pulls the plug.
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What actually happens to believers who die before Christ returns? In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Pastor Tim Rolen works through the passage Paul wrote to a church anxious about exactly that question, and finds three reasons for hope and three sounds to listen for.
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Every kid who was ever left home alone knows the drill. Freedom, junk food, whatever is on television, and then a glance at the clock and a frantic sprint to put everything back before Mum walks in. Pastor Andrew Lynch says we do the same thing with Jesus.
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A man on a 747 over Brazil is told three engines have failed and the fourth is going. He braces, prays, and survives. Afterwards, dazed in the airport, he asks himself what his last thoughts had been. Relationships. Pastor Mark Addis closes 1 Thessalonians there.
Watch the messageReady or Not was our late-winter study in 2022. Browse the rest of the year, or join us on a Sunday.
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