Friday, June 29, 2012

Be ready in season and out of season…….


Preach the word of God. Be prepared, whether the time is favorable or not. Patiently correct, rebuke, and encourage your people with good teaching.

For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.  They will reject the truth and chase after myths.

But you should keep a clear mind in every situation.  Don’t be afraid of suffering for the Lord.  Work at telling others the Good News, and fully carry out the ministry God has given you.”  II Timothy 4:2-5  NLT

We have to be ready to battle false doctrine all the time.  In 2 Timothy 4:2-4 Paul told Timothy to “be ready in season and out of season.” That is like Paul saying, “Timothy, preach the Word of God when people want to hear it, and when they do not want to hear it.”

In fact, when people don’t want to hear the Word that is when they need to hear it the most. That is when we really need to be ready.

 In 1 Peter 3:15 we are told that we need to always be ready to have an answer. Peter said, “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.”  We are to always be ready to give a defense for the truth.

Does that mean that we have to know every detail about every verse?  Absolutely not.

 But we do need to be able to offer a defense for the fundamentals of our faith. We also need to be on guard and be ready. We should be growing in Christ every day. Some peo­ple will say, “I’m not very good at knowing Scripture.  I’m not good at memorizing or study­ing.”  Yet those same people can tell you their favorite sports team, favorite player, the fi­nal score of a game, or the statistics concerning the game.  They can even remember personal information, phone numbers and the size of clothing for each family member.

 Why?  Because it is important to them and the love they have in their hearts for the sport, TV, movies or family motivates them to remember what they want to.  In their favorite television show, they can tell you all the char­acters or what happened in the last episode.  But when it comes to the Bible, they say, “I’m just no good at remembering things.”  That is not always the truth. The truth is that sometimes we are not desiring the things of the Lord in our hearts, it is not equally as important as the things that we are passionate about.  

We are not really putting Him first in everything we do. If we were, then there would be a place in our hearts for God.  His Word would be engrained in our hearts.

Why?  Because He would be first in our life if loved and desired Him enough to study His Word, meditate on it and share Him. It is all about having a relationship with Him.  That is what we would talk about instead of spending our time on entertainment or sports. It’s not that such things are bad in and of themselves.  But when we spend more time on those things than we do on the Word of God, something needs to change.

In John 17:17 we are told that we are to be sanctified by truth because God’s Word is truth.  Just as we are set apart by truth, we al­so need to set aside truth in our hearts.  We always need to be ready to give an answer.






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