1 Thess 4:1    we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more.

    

There are right ways to live and wrong ways to live. The right way to live is in accordance with the guidance God gives us in the Bible. There He has given us ‘design-rules', rules for living whereby we conform with the way He has designed us, the best way, the way that we call righteous. Righteous living is simply right living according to God's design. Righteousness also involves in believing God and responding to His Holy Spirit. Righteousness comes to our lives when we surrender them to God and receive Jesus Christ as our Saviour from Sin and to be Lord over the rest of our lives. This pleases God. This is what Paul had taught the Thessalonians when he had been with them (Acts 17).

 

But it didn't stop there. When we first came to Christ, we came with very little understanding. We needed to learn what God's will was, the ways God works, and what He wants for our lives. We needed teaching, by leaders in the church and by the Holy Spirit, but that teaching goes on for the rest of our life.

 

Do we each have an open teachable heart, a heart that recognises that we have so much to learn and therefore wants to learn? Do we approach Sunday's with an eagerness to learn? In our lives are we accepting Paul's encouragement to, in the way we live out our lives, “to do this more and more.”