1 Thessalonians 2:1-4
"We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts."
1 Thessalonians 2:4
Whose approval do we seek? For Paul, there was but one answer. He wrote, "We speak as those approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please people but God, who tests our hearts. "
What does it mean to seek God's approval? At the very least, it involves two things, turning from the desire for the approval of others and allowing His Spirit to make us more like Christ, the One who loved us and gave Himself for us. As we yield to His perfect purposes in us and through us, we can anticipate a day when we will experience the smile of His approval, the approval of the One who matters most.
Globalization and the attendant concerns about poverty and inequality have become a focus of discussion in a way that few other topics, except for international terrorism or global warming, have. Most people have a strong opinion on globalization, and all of them express an interest in the well-being of the world's poor. The financial press and influential international officials confidently assert that global free markets expand the horizons for the poor, whereas activist-protesters hold the opposite belief with equal intensity. Yet the strength of people's conviction is often in inverse proportion to the amount of robust factual evidence they have.As is common in contentious public debates, different people mean different things by the same word. Some interpret "globalization" to mean the global reach of communications technology and capital movements, some think of the outsourcing by domestic companies in rich countries, and others see globalization as a byword for...
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