Summer Scripture - 2 Timothy 2:15

2 Timothy 2:15 “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”
· When I first read this passage, I thought it seemed pretty straight forward, but the more I tried to memorize it, the more confusing it became to me. Like, how are you supposed to “present yourself to God", and what exactly does “approved”? I asked those same questions to a lot of the volunteers this weekend, and the general consensus was that you present yourself to God with how you choose to live your life. I think that's exactly what Paul was trying to tell us, for sure, but I found that there was another way to present yourself to God that most people overlooked - Prayer. When you pray to God, you're presenting yourself before Him and trying to grow closer to your creator and your savior. I think that's important to mention because the ones that are "approved" are the ones who are tryign to do exactly that - grow closer to God and in hopes of pleasing him. A famous bible scholar named Adam Clark suggested that this meant to study the bible to cultivate and improve your heart and mind so you can be above reproach.

· The other question I asked was how should we “correctly handle the word of truth”? The Greek word “orthotomounta” is what is translated as “correctly handles”. It literally means to “cut straight”, like if you were to cut a board or a piece of paper into equal parts. Other translations rendered this word “rightly divided”. It's also important to notice that the "Word of Truth" is one used several times in Paul's letters to refer to the scriptures, what we would call the Holy Bible, and not just the gospel of Jesus. Wait - that made it more confusing didn't it?

Paul isn't telling you to cut your Bible in half. Just before this verse, Paul talks about sin as though it were a sickness or defect that would result in amputation. Some books render these words as cancer or gangrene, a sickness that often results in hands and feet having to be cut off to save someone's life. When you tie all this together, Paul is simply telling Tim to use the Bible as his measuring stick to determine what is right, what is good, and what God wants to see in him and live that out! As he compares himself to this example, however, Paul is encouraging Tim to cut the sin and temptations out of his life so that he can be an effective tool used to further God's kingdom.

All of the volunteers agreed that's some advice that we need to practice. The ways to practice it are straight forward, too! Read the Bible! How can you handle the word of truth if you're not learning it? Present yourself to God, both in the way that you're living and by praying, and lastly, set an example that would make you proud to be called one of God's

1Tim 6:20&21

“Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to your care. Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith. Grace be with you.”

What are the things that have been entrusted to your care? There are a lot of things you’ve been entrusted with. Your school work, your family, and your friends were all examples that I heard last weekend. In this chapter, though, I think Paul was talking about two things specifically. First, he was talking about the first church at Ephesus. Several times in the 1 Timothy, Paul tells Timothy how important it is that he stay there and keep spreading the gospel. So, one of the things he’s been entrusted with are the people of the city who may not know about Jesus yet. The second thing would be the message of the gospel.

That second part about Godless chatter and “opposing ideas” were people saying that Jesus isn’t the way to salvation. Paul was talking about Tim being entrusted with the gospel and keeping the message of Jesus pure from corruption. At that time in history, only about 50 years after Jesus had been resurrected a religion called Gnosticism was starting to surface in Ephesus. Gnosticism was an early heresy (that’s a religion that takes a little bit of one religion, but completely changes it) that taught people we’re saved by knowledge, not the grace of God. The word Gnosticism comes from the Greek work “knowledge”. You see what he means when he says “ideas of what is falsely called knowledge”?

Do you think this is something we still need to resist today? You betcha! There are a lot of ideas and ways of thinking that try to take God and Jesus out of the way you view the world or how things work. Turn away from that nonsense, and guard the thoughts and people that are most precious to you.

Summer Scripture - 1 Tim 5:24&25

Hey, guys!

The scripture we read during 1st hour service was 1 Timothy 5:24 & 25.

"The sins of some men are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not cannot be hidden."

It can be pretty obvious when someone is doing something wrong, can't it? In the movies you see a bank being held up by men in ski masks, and there's no question who the bad guys are. As you go through life at work and at school, there are people who are doing things that you will immediately recognize as sin. Sometimes that sin isn't so obvious though. Sometimes the things that hurt you or are hurting others are things you can't prove. Maybe it's bad gossip that is going to make someone really embarassed. Maybe it's making money in a way that isn't honest or is going to hurt someone else. You don't often see that sin happening, and often times the person sinning will never see the final result of their actions, but that doesn't mean someone didn't get hurt.

In the same way, doing the right thing is always obvious. I was in New York a couple of weeks ago, and I was having breakfast in a small cafe in Times Square at around 8am. There were hundreds of people bustling about the sidewalk trying to get to work. Most of them were listening to iPods, reading, or drinking coffee. One lady, who had a book in one hand and headphones in her ears, wasn't paying attention where she was going, and as she neared the curb to cross the street, she misjudged and fell flat on her face. She must have been completely embarassed, but as quickly as she fell, no less that 5 people stopped in the middle of the street to help her. These were complete strangers, one of them in a full suit probably headed to Wall Street, another was clearly a construction worker. As the two men helped her to her feet and then to the curb, another woman picked up all the things that had fallen out of her purse, including her wallet, and put them safely away so she wouldn't lose anything. There was no hiding that good deed, and I think that's what Paul was talking about in this passage.

When people sin, they bring pain into the world. Whether we see it, or we don't, it's going to cause harm to someone, even if it's ourselves by separating us from the God who loves us just a little bit more. When we do the right thing, though, whether people see it or they don't, you're going to make the world a better place one moment at a time. You're going to be the hands and feet of God and bring a little bit more joy in the world, and I think that makes our Father proud of us.

Be Good!

Summer Scripture - 1Tim 4:12&13

I promised one of the teens I'd send out the passages I read in each of the Children's Ministry rooms every Sunday over the summer. I'm going to try to be faithful about doing that. Help keep me honest! I'm sending this to all the teens and all their parents so that there is no inpropriety, but if this feels like spam, just reply and I'll stop sending it to you and your child. No hard feelings.

Last week I read out of 1 Timothy 4:12 & 13

"Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching."

At first glance this looks like a passage that specifically targets teens, but it really isn't. I asked if anyone had experiences where they'd been told they were too young for something or they felt like they were looked down on because of their age. Some of the teens mentioned driving a car as an example or movies rated PG-13 or higher. Some of the adults remembered stories about entering the work force and not beeing allowed to progress too quickly in their careers because they weren't old enough to convince their superiors they had enough experience.

Both are great examples, but I feel that to understand this passage fully, you have to stop and think about why these age driven criteria are considered important. We want to make sure that anyone who gets behind the wheel of a car recognizes they're taking their lives, the lives of their passengers, and the lives of the passengers of every car they come near into their hands. That's a huge amount of responsibility. The age limit doesn't mean you're physically incapable of driving. It's a safe guard to make sure you've probably matured to the point that you will make responsible descisions when mom and dad aren't sitting right next to you, and what happens if you prove to them that you're not? License or not, you're probably not going to be driving anywhere.

Believe it or not, the example about the workplace is the same kind of safeguard. Someone climbing into management, for example, isn't just taking on responsibility for the company they work for to ensure that they make money. They're also taking responsibility of coaching and mentoring the people who work for them to ensure those people have what they need and know how to do the job so that they can continue to make a paycheck that will support their families. It's a big responsibility on both sides, and you have to be responsible and mentally strong enough to handle it. Shouldn't you be sure that the advice you're getting about the Creator of the world knows what they're talking about? Who's going to commit their eternal soul and hope of salvation on someone they don't think could possibly know what they're talking about?!

Paul makes it clear to Tim that the best way to get past the "age" stigma is to set a good example in speech (what you say), in life (how you live and what you do), in love (how you treat people, even someone who can do you no good), in faith (how you trust God to lead and protect you), and purity (and he wasn't talking about bar soap). He told Tim to walk the talk because no one can argue with proof. I asked everyone to think about and share ways they could set those kinds of examples, which ones were the hardest, and as usual everyone had a different one they struggle with.

The last part of the passage about reading scripture, preaching and teaching I thought was Paul following up with a simple way for Tim to get opportunities to set an example in all of those ways he'd just listed by encouraging him to get out into the real world and in contact with other people in the name of God.

The last question I asked everyone was what they thought the difference was between "Preaching" and "Teaching"? That one stumped a lot of people, and others seemed to have it on the tip of their tounge. I'm no pastor, but the way I've come to understand it is that Preaching is sharing the ways someone can walk closer with God and Teaching is a back and forth dialogue to help someone better understand something that might be confusing, hard to accept, or hard to explain. To use an analogy - think of Preaching as singing a beautiful song that helps someone enjoy music and want to hear more. Think of Teaching as instructing someone in music theory so that they could take the sheet music and sing the song themselves for others.

It took a whole lot less time in the classrooms than it did to type it all up, but I'll try to keep this up like I promised!