For our appeal does not spring from error or impurity or any attempt to deceive, 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.
I Thessalonians 2:3-4

Be faithful to God’s Word. Don’t water it down or apologize for it.

Some people will be offended by it. There are a few who even become irrationally violent when they hear it.

Some react in anger to God’s Law, because they love their sin and hate to be told that they’ve made the wrong choice and that there are consequences to those choices.

Others oppose the proclamation of God’s love and forgiveness for Jesus’ sake. Somehow even that offends some people and makes them angry. (This seems more difficult to understand; who could possibly object to such a thing?)

Whatever the motive, the temptation to change the message to please people is always there. But we have been entrusted by God with a message that saves, delivers, and heals broken people. Don’t water it down; lives and eternal souls depend on it.

But do your best to ensure that when they object, it’s to the message, not to the way you present it. The truth presented kindly and with tender compassion for the hearer is easier to receive than the same truth presented with a self-righteous, prideful, or uncaring attitude.

So Paul could say, “We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us.” (I Thessalonians 2:7-8)


Lord, give me a kind heart of tender compassion for the people to whom You send me with Your message. Amen.

Pastor Dan Giles