Welcome

“…make it your ambition to lead a quiet life” (1 Thessalonians 4:11, NIV). Ambition…quiet life—those don’t seem to go together, do they? What does it mean to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life”? We can safely say that it does NOT mean any of the following.

What God Did Not Say

“Make it your ambition to be ‘seen by men’; do whatever it takes to get noticed.” The Pharisees were noisy that way, and Jesus didn’t like it one bit (Matthew 6:1, 5; 23:5).

“Make it your ambition to be obnoxious, to always be heard, to always get the last word.” That doesn’t exactly conform to the quiet life, nor does it conform to the way of love, which “does not seek its own” (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). Fools talk more than the wise, because they don’t stop to think before they speak. “Wisdom rests in the heart of him who has understanding, but what is in the heart of fools is made known” (Proverbs 14:33).

Your doctor has just delivered the grim news. You’ve got six months to live. How do you deal with news like that? How are you supposed to feel? Well, it’s time you learn how to die—not just how to die, but to how to die gracefully. And you can, provided you’re prepared to meet the Lord.

Dying gracefully begins with having the right attitude toward your impending death.

Understand, first, that you’re not really dying. Your body is dying; it will go to the grave, but your spirit will return to God (Ecclesiastes 12:7). Here’s the promise of Jesus: “If anyone keeps My word he shall never see death” (John 8:51). “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11:25-26). Take the time to thank Jesus, because He “has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10).

“Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father” (1 John 2:24). Back to the beginning—wouldn’t it be great if we did that to settle religious questions today? Let’s go back to the beginning to see what was true of local churches in the New Testament, and what should therefore be true of churches today. Study carefully, and then compare your church to what was taught “from the beginning.”

New Testament churches were taught the same doctrine—the apostles’ doctrine, or the doctrine of Christ. So whatever they did in terms of organization, work, and worship, they were taught to do so, and their instruction came from the Lord (1 Corinthians 4:17; 7:17; 14:34-35; 16:1-2; Colossians 4:16; Acts 2:42; 20:26-27; 1 Corinthians 14:37; Galatians 1:11-12; 1 Thessalonians 4:2; 2 Thessalonians 3:6). Want to know how your church should be organized, what it should do in worship, and what its work should be? Go back to the beginning, to the pattern left by these New Testament churches.