{"id":8460,"date":"2022-02-18T00:00:05","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T14:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/?p=8460"},"modified":"2022-02-19T10:28:54","modified_gmt":"2022-02-19T00:28:54","slug":"work-for-your-bread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/2022\/02\/18\/work-for-your-bread\/","title":{"rendered":"Work for Your Bread"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">2 Thessalonians 3:12-13\u00a0<sup style=\"font-style: italic;\">12<\/sup><i>But to such people we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ in order that, with\u00a0quietness by working, they might eat their own bread. <\/i><sup style=\"font-style: italic;\">13<\/sup><i>But you, brothers [and sisters], do not be discouraged of doing good.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Paul is not all critical and negative about the undisciplined and lazy brothers and sisters in Thessalonica. He shows the whole church that the lazy people can redeem themselves by getting to work and supporting themselves. He writes with authority and gives these directions with some force with the words\u00a0<em>command and exhort<\/em>. His authority comes from\u00a0<em>the Lord Jesus Christ.<\/em>\u00a0This is a community responsibility. The church must function as a unit, which may require that those parts that are coasting along and not contributing must be rebuked and encouraged to do their part. They should do with\u00a0<em>with quietness<\/em>, not making a big scene out of their efforts but in humility. Every able person is responsible for doing his or her part in caring for his or her own needs. Christians should have a high work ethic, not to the point of burn out or to impress people, but to care for basic needs like food.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Those who were working hard in the church to care for themselves and their families might feel discouraged by the scrounging of the lazy and undisciplined people. Those who free load off of others can be a discouragement after a while. Hard feelings can develop. The love believers should have for one another can be replaced by a bad attitude that belittles those who do not work. The rest of the Thessalonians needed to stay positive because they were doing the right thing by\u00a0<em>doing good<\/em>. The &#8220;good&#8221; in this case would be doing the responsible thing and following through with God&#8217;s call on them. We must live with a balance: do good and work hard, not to earn our salvation but to express our faith and dependence on God.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">For older posts, click\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/blog\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=DavidAckermanDailyDevotions&amp;loc=en_US\">Subscribe to Daily Devotions by Email<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2 Thessalonians 3:12-13\u00a012But to such people we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ in order that, with\u00a0quietness by working, they might eat their own bread. 13But you, brothers [and sisters], do not be discouraged of doing good. Paul is not all critical and negative about the undisciplined and lazy brothers and sisters in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-devotions","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8460"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8481,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8460\/revisions\/8481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/acky4.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}