“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.”
-1 Thessalonians 2:4
Wow. What a verse. Just think about the first half of this verse. “Just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel.” What a statement, that God has seen fit for you and me, to be entrusted with the gospel. What a trust we have been given. Everyone who has the gospel, described as approved by God, to be entrusted with the gospel. God help us to be faithful with this gospel trust you have given to us. I mean that alone transforms the way I live today. We have the gospel entrusted to us, by the grace of God, that he has seen fit to give it to us. God, help us to be faithful with it.
And then after that, Paul writes, “So we speak not to please men, but to please God who tests our hearts.” Oh, what a picture. Because we have been entrusted with the gospel, we speak in a way that is pleasing to God, not in a way that is people pleasing. Although in a Romans 15 kind of way, we do want to make it our aim to please brothers and sisters in Christ, in a way that builds them up in Christ, but ultimately to please God. That our motive, in every word we say, would be to please God. So much to pray according to here in 1 Thessalonians 2:4.
1 Thessalonians 2:4 Praises God for Entrusting Us
God help us. Oh God, we praise you for entrusting us with the gospel. What a thought that you have seen fit by your grace. Certainly not by anything in us, by everything in you. By your grace, to entrust us with the good news of your love and Jesus of reconciliation to you and restoration, redemption in you. God, we praise you for entrusting us with the gospel. Help us to be faithful with this trust you’ve given to us. Help us to faithfully share the gospel today. Lord, help us to faithfully share the gospel with people right around us, with people groups far from us, as we pray all the time on this podcast.
God, we pray in a world where three plus billion people have little to no knowledge of the gospel. Help us to be faithful to share it with them, to send out people, to support workers, brothers and sisters on the front lines of unreached people groups, sharing, spreading the gospel. Lord, help us to be faithful with this trust you’ve given to us, in our lives and our families, in the church.
Help Us to Speak with Honor
And then God help us to speak in ways that are pleasing to you. As the one who tests our hearts. God, we pray that our motive. In every word we say. Would be to honor and glorify you. And to build up others and point people to you with gentleness like we see in 1 Thessalonians 2:7. “We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.” Help us to speak with gentleness and wisdom. With kindness and mercy, and compassion and truth.
God, we pray that our words would be pleasing to you. That you would be pleased, not only what we say. But with the heart from which our mouths speak. Oh God, we pray all of this according to your word to us, in 1 Thessalonians 2:4. What a great verse. Thank you for the instruction we find in it, God. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
