Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.
2 Thessalonians 1:4 NIV
Perseverance
Three Canadian scientists from the University of Alberta, University of Winnipeg and Brock University contributed to exciting new findings yielded from the study of samples collected by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover. Perseverance examined rocks from a formation named Bright Angel, found in a location believed to be an ancient river channel that fed the red planet’s Jezero Crater with freshwater in the distant past. Through their analyses, researchers believe that they have discovered a potential “biosignature”: a substance, feature or pattern that may suggest the presence of past or present life.
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If you’ve never taken time to review the World Watch List, take some time this weekend to do so. Prepared annually by our friends at Open Hands International, it provides information on the countries around the world where the persecution of Christians occurs. The global Church is growing faster than at any other time in history, but at the same time, it faces more opposition and persecution. While the extent of persecution is greater than at any other time in history, paying a price for being a follower of Jesus has always been a reality since the Church was birthed on the Day of Pentecost. The believers in Thessalonica were dealing with this, and so Paul writes this to them in 2 Thessalonians 1:4: “Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.” How odd of Paul to say that they were boasting about the persecution. This was so because it meant they were being bold for Jesus. In a country where we don’t face the persecution that many Christians in our world do, let’s be bold as we tell others about Jesus.
These have been words from the heart.
Bob Beasley