Passage Read: 1 Thessalonians 3-4
Meditation Verses: 4:3-8
Thought
Sexual immorality is one of the biggest temptations and problems facing believers. There are others, but this one perhaps more than any other gets spoken against the most. It was common then, it is common now. God saved us to live holy lives, meaning especially lives free from sexual immorality in any and all of its forms, but somehow believers today don't consider many of their immoral ways to be wrong! How do we excuse fornication and adultery so easily? How do we justify teasing and defrauding each other so freely? How can we not be so much more careful in the area of sexual temptation? God will punish all men for these things, yet we don't fear God! We reject this, His command; we don't think anything of it! God help us truly care for one another more than we care for our own lustful feelings!
Application
I pray that God would bring discipline now into the lives of those who claim to belong to Christ yet do not fear these things. I pray for gentleness, but clear rebuke. Who of us hasn't been tainted by sexual sin, yet that should make us all the more sensitive to it, to oppose and resist and speak out against it! If we are not disciplined, it doesn't mean You now approve of these behaviors or don't care if we practice them, it more likely means we don't belong to You and You're giving us over to be condemned by our sin. That is more terrifying than being punished for our sin! Better to strike some of Your children dead to wake and warn the rest of us, rather than let us all go blindly to eternal destruction.