If you read the context of I Thessalonians, you realize that a great danger was false teaching.

Let’s go back to that patchwork quilt. Is your belief system a bit of this and a bit of that? Can you defend what you claim to believe from Scripture? Are you learning to discern what is true and what is false, what’s right and what’s wrong? I want to apply this in a very specific way and then I will be finished with I Thessalonians.

All around us evangelical churches are on the slippery slope of dumbing down the gospel and making church more about the emotions than the mind. Now we need our emotions. We respond to God with our emotions. But that response is made from understanding truth in our minds. The problem is, the church is changing and most Christians don’t even know the difference.

In many churches, the idea is to use secular music, drama, entertainment and psychological, counseling-oriented teaching in order to make worldly people feel comfortable in the church. The problem is instead of the world becoming more like the church, the church is becoming more like the world. And the goal is if we can just get these people to pray a little prayer and invite Jesus into their hearts, the end will justify the means. However, we are told to “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

We don’t want to dumb down the gospel; we want to elevate it and proclaim it accurately and powerfully. We don’t just tell people to pray a little prayer and all their problems will be solved. Church we must discern carefully the state of the world and “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 3).