I Thessalonians 3:12 “And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you:”
In I Thessalonians 4:1-12, we learn about living, loving, and laboring, and the motivation for all three is the fact that Christ is coming again (verses 13-18). We see the word abound in I Thessalonians 3:12 and 4:1. The word abound carries with it the idea of “excess.” We are to love people and walk in the Lord to the point of “excess”! That’s what the Bible says!
Have you been saved for at least five years? Ten years? Twenty years? Forty years? (I asked this question recently in staff devotions at the Ranch, and I was amazed at how long most of the staff have been saved!) Let me ask you, are you walking with the Lord more now than when you were first saved? While a child who trusts Christ is just as much saved as I am, there is a sense in which I ought walk with and love the Lord more. My love and my labor ought to “abound more and more.”
While it is true that I should abound in living for the Lord, in loving others, and in laboring, I cannot do it myself! Notice the verse again: “And the Lord make you to increase and abound. . . .” Abounding in our living, our love, and our labor is important, but God is the One who enables us to do so!
By God’s power and based on Christ’s soon return, we ought to abound in our living, our love, and our labor. The hope we have in this life is not in a retirement account, in possessions, or in any other temporal thing. Our hope is in the power of God and in His promise to come again!