Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need. (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12)Though there is a great urgency in the imminent coming of the Lord, which prompts earnestness about proclaiming the gospel while there is yet time, the apostle Paul did not command the Thessalonians to live lives of noisy, frenetic evangelistic agitation. Instead, and as a result of their excelling still more in brotherly love, they were to make it their ambition to lead a quiet life. . . .
