Faith, Even Within the Four Walls
From 1 Timothy 1 – 1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope,
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
"Love," equates Rev. John Wagner in "How to Pray for Your Church, "is indissolubly linked to faith."
Paul is no stranger to lengthy arguments connecting clause to cause and century to century in order to buttress his case, but he offers the same one-to-one correlation to Timothy in what comes to us as the fourth verse of the first epistle between them. He has all the studied caution of an ordinance expert in laying out for Timothy the potential dangers in Ephesus, but there are no qualifiers as to how the decision to build up disciples in such an unpromising environment is viewed from Eternity. Edification IS faith.
Why wait, then, to invest genuinely in others? We wait because we tell ourselves faith is proven, or not, by the results of decades. Offered entertainment and genealogies of our own not so different than those which distracted Ephesus, little wonder we grow weary before we really get started in empathetic, determined discipleship. If everything goes well, we whine in faith's very antithesis, if the culture and the enemy of our souls allows, if we can manage to keep self-seeking out of the way long enough in ourselves, if the relationship stays intact in a transitory culture, we might get to look back and see that we exhibited a countercultural, discipling faith. Paul is at least as wary of the world. He has the scars to prove depravity. Yet he says with certainty, plant edification, reap faith. The two are inexorably intertwined. Period.
How can this transform our jaded expectation of this day and its encounters, then? "To a great extent in spiritual things," says Charles Spurgeon in Morning and Evening as no stranger to opposition and disappointment, "we get what we expect of the Lord. Faith alone," he writes of the word that is today's shibboleth, "can bring us to see Jesus." The prince of preachers, then, echoes the charge of Paul to Timothy, engage the culture and the people enmeshed in it. Do so bravely, by faith, because by this at times messy and frustrating business, You will, by faith, find Jesus already there – and know Him more sweetly.
Should we feel constrained by the realities of our daily routine from undertaking by faith the narrow sliver of activities we consider spiritual, the Holy Spirit can empower us to be around the coffee pot or the water cooler and listen by faith. Have you heard things that are discouraging, embittering, enraging there? Job heard more, and yet in Job 33:32 he invites his friends who by then had disappointed him so many times, "But if you have anything to say, go ahead. Speak, for I am anxious to see you justified." Even where those words coming from our mouths might be ponderous in ordinary conversations, they can be true of the condition of our hearts. We can see people as God sees them, bind their often self-inflicted hurts because this is God's heart, and know that, whatever the results, He sees and is pleased by the faith He places and continues to stir in us.
2 Timothy, a true son in the faith: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.
3 As I urged you when I went into Macedonia – remain in Ephesus that you may charge some that they teach no other doctrine, 4 nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is faith.
"Love," equates Rev. John Wagner in "How to Pray for Your Church, "is indissolubly linked to faith."
Paul is no stranger to lengthy arguments connecting clause to cause and century to century in order to buttress his case, but he offers the same one-to-one correlation to Timothy in what comes to us as the fourth verse of the first epistle between them. He has all the studied caution of an ordinance expert in laying out for Timothy the potential dangers in Ephesus, but there are no qualifiers as to how the decision to build up disciples in such an unpromising environment is viewed from Eternity. Edification IS faith.
Why wait, then, to invest genuinely in others? We wait because we tell ourselves faith is proven, or not, by the results of decades. Offered entertainment and genealogies of our own not so different than those which distracted Ephesus, little wonder we grow weary before we really get started in empathetic, determined discipleship. If everything goes well, we whine in faith's very antithesis, if the culture and the enemy of our souls allows, if we can manage to keep self-seeking out of the way long enough in ourselves, if the relationship stays intact in a transitory culture, we might get to look back and see that we exhibited a countercultural, discipling faith. Paul is at least as wary of the world. He has the scars to prove depravity. Yet he says with certainty, plant edification, reap faith. The two are inexorably intertwined. Period.
How can this transform our jaded expectation of this day and its encounters, then? "To a great extent in spiritual things," says Charles Spurgeon in Morning and Evening as no stranger to opposition and disappointment, "we get what we expect of the Lord. Faith alone," he writes of the word that is today's shibboleth, "can bring us to see Jesus." The prince of preachers, then, echoes the charge of Paul to Timothy, engage the culture and the people enmeshed in it. Do so bravely, by faith, because by this at times messy and frustrating business, You will, by faith, find Jesus already there – and know Him more sweetly.
Should we feel constrained by the realities of our daily routine from undertaking by faith the narrow sliver of activities we consider spiritual, the Holy Spirit can empower us to be around the coffee pot or the water cooler and listen by faith. Have you heard things that are discouraging, embittering, enraging there? Job heard more, and yet in Job 33:32 he invites his friends who by then had disappointed him so many times, "But if you have anything to say, go ahead. Speak, for I am anxious to see you justified." Even where those words coming from our mouths might be ponderous in ordinary conversations, they can be true of the condition of our hearts. We can see people as God sees them, bind their often self-inflicted hurts because this is God's heart, and know that, whatever the results, He sees and is pleased by the faith He places and continues to stir in us.
Comments
Post a Comment