In My Endurance

What keeps us going in the face of challenges, setbacks, and defeats? Where do we find the strength and resolve to push through difficulties? Beyond that, even when life is going well, achieving great things takes effort, endurance, and determination. How do we make it happen?

While many would want to take personal credit for their perseverance and achievements in life, the followers of Jesus Christ know that every good thing we do and every trial we survive are gifts from God and evidence of his grace. We understand that grace is the unearned and undeserved favour of God poured out for no other reason but that he loves us and wants to bless us. With that being true, it is hard to take credit for anything.

In his second letter to the Thessalonians, the apostle Paul sought to encourage the believers in that church by pointing them to the pervasive grace of God in their lives. The challenges they were facing were survivable and surmountable because of God’s favour on them. And what Paul wrote to that ancient church holds true for us today. We too are recipients of divine grace, and starting this Sunday at Harvest, we will begin a seven-message series, Divine Grace: Finding God’s favour in all we do, to see how that grace permeates our lives and how we ought to respond to God as a result.

Sermon Notes

DIVINE GRACE
In My Endurance

Pastor Todd Dugard
2 Thessalonians 1:1–4
May 26, 2019

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"Jesus never used the word itself. He just taught it and, equally important, he lived it."
Charles Swindoll

"Grace is free sovereign favour to the ill-deserving."
B.B. Warfield

"Grace is the free, undeserved goodness and favour of God to mankind."
Matthew Henry

"Love that goes upward is worship; love that goes outward is affection; love that stoops is grace."
Donald Barnhouse

———

My life must show evidence of God’s grace... (v. 1–2)

...as I endure hardship and challenges (v. 4)

2 Corinthians 8:1-8

...with a growing faith in Christ (v. 3a)

...and an increasing love for others (v. 3b)

1 Thessalonians 3:12
John 1:34-35

"Grace is not a 'thing'. It is not a substance that can be measured or a commodity to be distributed. It is the 'grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.' In essence, it is Jesus himself."
Sinclair B. Ferguson