“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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