Good morning. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy
and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the
Holy Spirit. It is one of those two way things. If you don’t have joy and peace,
it’s extremely hard to have any hope. If you don’t have any hope, you
definitely will not have any joy or peace. This hope is not just wishful
thinking. People will say, I hope that this or that will happen; but there is
no real conviction that it will occur. This hope comes by the power of the Holy
Spirit, and it is as real as it gets! I am convinced that you are full of
goodness, filled with all knowledge and able also to admonish one another. Paul
likes to give the people he’s writing to the carrot before the stick. He
butters them up first, and then smacks them upside the head. But I have written
very boldly to you on some points so as to remind you (as he has been doing in
the previous verses). We all need to be reminded now and again about things we
are supposed to be doing. Father go with the reader and his/her family. Help
them to make great progress on renewing their house.
Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me
Good morning. Paul then gives a list of a lot of things that he has gone through as an apostle. I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. There could be many people that you listen to either in church or through the Internet or other means; but there was only one person (as a general rule it was a person) that lead you to Christ. Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. He was saying that just like a child imitates his or her father, they were to imitate him. He says that again seven chapters later. Since it is easy to forget some things about people we have not seen in a while, Paul says that he sent Timothy to them to remind them of his ways which are in Christ, just as he taught everywhere in every church. Some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. I shall find ou...
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