2 Timothy 1:1 – Focused Expectation
A former pastor of mine challenged toward looking at life and ministry with both eyes, or firing at its challenges with both barrels. "Broadcast Truth," he would say, "but focus expectation."
The Holy Spirit's writing style through Paul in the opening of 2 Timothy shows just this holistic approach. Paul's introduction of himself and his mission in 2 Timothy 1:1 has been an invitation to and admonition toward his big picture thinking. Witness his calling again, and we hear the trumpets that marshal the Lord's galactic forces. Paul is evidence in one human microcosm's of what Martin Luther King Jr. will call the long moral arc of the universe which bends toward justice.
The opening of what comes to us as 2 Timothy 1:2 is a kind of a comedown, but a holy and healthy one. That moral arc, King will say, is a long one. His rhetoric, like Paul's, stirs mass movements, but both of them know the impact of a personal touch over time on specific individuals.
King shaped, one might say discipled, individuals to follow after him who might reach the mountain he would not. At times this involved checking one tendency or encouraging another. The same is Paul's inspired pattern. At the Lord's direction, he can come down off the platform of speaking to a movement, or to the ages, and speak to a man at a point in time.
Are we ready to work on an individual scale with gratitude and enthusiastic submission to the sovereign purposes of God? For someone who has seen God's confirmation of a Daniel-like ability to read the signs of the times and to alert whole groups to the unfolding pattern, can he or she maintain eye contact, genuine attention, and gentle awareness of the limitations and interests of a particular human? In this, we follow Paul as he follows Christ.
This can be a particular challenge in the social media era. We fashion our ready rhetoric and our polished presentation with a mass but shallow and ephemeral appeal in mind. Used to share Bible verses and testimony to God's work in our lives in setbacks and triumphs, the Internet infrastructure is as good as anything He proclaimed good in Genesis. The way of our flesh, though, is to proclaim our duty done because we have planted a seed of Word and Truth in the lives of 5000 people as they scroll past.
But in this, the artillery has simply presaged the assault on the strongholds of the devil. Who is the Timothy the Lord brings to mind as we publicly revel in different aspects of God's character, or warn against especially common distractions? If we're not used to hearing Him whisper particular names who need to hear in individual tones what we are proclaiming from the house tops, have we asked?
I'll confess to at least the normal amount of writer's vanity and asking for a bigger audience, but I haven't often coupled that with the discernment in humility to ask for the right audience. With His Word as one of the Trinity's exalted gifts, does God not desire at least as much as we do that our words wrapped in an inspired by His would have the most profound impact? That might be on a Timothy He calls to mind as we share what He has been teaching us.
Or, as one writer friend of mine suggested, our communication might improve if we ask and He grant us a particular Timothy to hold in mind AS we prepare what we write or what we speak. Sometimes, I confess, I'm too preoccupied with the front I will present for a moment to a wider audience to pause to consider what impact He would prepare me for on one or two lives. At my best, unto genuinely enthused with the wonder that He would freshly share with me in concert with His revealed Word to consider in advance gaping wound. I might be called to suture, or whose drift in the wrong direction he just might use me to preempt.
As with our calling as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve in general as CS Lewis points to in the Chronicles of Narnia's Prince Caspian, there is honoring enough, and shame enough in the responsibilities and opportunities of our individual relationships. Often in the sovereign reversal Paul's general to particular progression in the first two verses of 2 Timothy 1, if we provide the quality in our relationships with Timothy's, Chuck Smith used to say with assurance, God will then decide to provide the quantity.
The Holy Spirit's writing style through Paul in the opening of 2 Timothy shows just this holistic approach. Paul's introduction of himself and his mission in 2 Timothy 1:1 has been an invitation to and admonition toward his big picture thinking. Witness his calling again, and we hear the trumpets that marshal the Lord's galactic forces. Paul is evidence in one human microcosm's of what Martin Luther King Jr. will call the long moral arc of the universe which bends toward justice.
The opening of what comes to us as 2 Timothy 1:2 is a kind of a comedown, but a holy and healthy one. That moral arc, King will say, is a long one. His rhetoric, like Paul's, stirs mass movements, but both of them know the impact of a personal touch over time on specific individuals.
King shaped, one might say discipled, individuals to follow after him who might reach the mountain he would not. At times this involved checking one tendency or encouraging another. The same is Paul's inspired pattern. At the Lord's direction, he can come down off the platform of speaking to a movement, or to the ages, and speak to a man at a point in time.
Are we ready to work on an individual scale with gratitude and enthusiastic submission to the sovereign purposes of God? For someone who has seen God's confirmation of a Daniel-like ability to read the signs of the times and to alert whole groups to the unfolding pattern, can he or she maintain eye contact, genuine attention, and gentle awareness of the limitations and interests of a particular human? In this, we follow Paul as he follows Christ.
This can be a particular challenge in the social media era. We fashion our ready rhetoric and our polished presentation with a mass but shallow and ephemeral appeal in mind. Used to share Bible verses and testimony to God's work in our lives in setbacks and triumphs, the Internet infrastructure is as good as anything He proclaimed good in Genesis. The way of our flesh, though, is to proclaim our duty done because we have planted a seed of Word and Truth in the lives of 5000 people as they scroll past.
But in this, the artillery has simply presaged the assault on the strongholds of the devil. Who is the Timothy the Lord brings to mind as we publicly revel in different aspects of God's character, or warn against especially common distractions? If we're not used to hearing Him whisper particular names who need to hear in individual tones what we are proclaiming from the house tops, have we asked?
I'll confess to at least the normal amount of writer's vanity and asking for a bigger audience, but I haven't often coupled that with the discernment in humility to ask for the right audience. With His Word as one of the Trinity's exalted gifts, does God not desire at least as much as we do that our words wrapped in an inspired by His would have the most profound impact? That might be on a Timothy He calls to mind as we share what He has been teaching us.
Or, as one writer friend of mine suggested, our communication might improve if we ask and He grant us a particular Timothy to hold in mind AS we prepare what we write or what we speak. Sometimes, I confess, I'm too preoccupied with the front I will present for a moment to a wider audience to pause to consider what impact He would prepare me for on one or two lives. At my best, unto genuinely enthused with the wonder that He would freshly share with me in concert with His revealed Word to consider in advance gaping wound. I might be called to suture, or whose drift in the wrong direction he just might use me to preempt.
As with our calling as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve in general as CS Lewis points to in the Chronicles of Narnia's Prince Caspian, there is honoring enough, and shame enough in the responsibilities and opportunities of our individual relationships. Often in the sovereign reversal Paul's general to particular progression in the first two verses of 2 Timothy 1, if we provide the quality in our relationships with Timothy's, Chuck Smith used to say with assurance, God will then decide to provide the quantity.
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