PT-2 "The Command to be Strong

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 1/3/2025 8:53 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus:  PT-2 “The Command to be Strong”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                     Reference:  2 Timothy 2:1

 

            Message of the verse:  “1 You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”

 

            I want to pick up the thoughts that MacArthur was writing as I ended my last SD, and so it is important to read that SD in order to pick up those thoughts from MacArthur’s quote.  “He admonishes His children firmly but lovingly, and that is the way Paul admonished his spiritual son Timothy.  Because Timothy had ‘sincere faith’ and was nourished in that faith by his godly mother and grandmother (1:5), because he was specially gifted by God and ordained by the laying on of Paul’s hands (v. 6) and the hands of the Ephesian elders (1 Tim. 4:14), and because of the abundant resources mentioned in the remainder of chapter 1, Timothy had no reason for not being strong.  Paul was saying to Timothy, ‘My son, the Lord’s work in Ephesus depends on you, its divinely appointed and divinely endowed minister.’  The effectiveness of his ministry depended not simply in his having that call and those resources but in his faithfully using them in God’s power and to God’s glory.”

 

            One of the things that the Bible teaches is what MacArthur describes as “an amazing paradox.”  “God’s sovereign and all-powerful, He nevertheless entrusts His adopted children with propagating the saving gospel of His true Son, Jesus Christ.”  You may have to think about that statement for a moment of two, nonetheless it is true.  God is in total control and in looking at my Spiritual Diary from the book of Ester that I just posted on my other blog this truth can be seen.  God is in control and it is my desire to do the things that God has called me to do, and I believe that writing my Spiritual Diaries and putting them onto my blogs is a part of what I am to do for the cause of Christ, something that I truly love doing and it is my prayer that when I get to heaven that I will run into people who have come to the Savior after reading one of more of my Spiritual Diaries.

 

            MacArthur writes “The verb be strong is also passive, however, indicating that the source of Timothy’s strength was not in himself but in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.  A somewhat better rendering would be, ‘by means of the grace that is in Christ Jesus.  Just as we are saved solely ‘by grace…through faith; and that not of [ourselves, by] the gift of God’ (Eph. 2:8), we also are kept saved by the grace of God, who ‘is faithful and righteous [to continue] to forgive us our sins and [to continue] to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9).  Our only effective spiritual strength is ‘in the Lord, and in the strength of His might’ (Eph. 6:10).  We build ourselves up in the ‘most holy faith’ by ‘praying in the Holy Spirit’ and keep ourselves ‘in the love of God’ (Jude20-21).

 

            “God’s continuing grace in the lives of believers operates in justification and sanctification, in forgiveness and in holiness, and in His grace applied to our service.  The same grace that forgives us and makes us holy is the grace that empowers us.  Because we belong to Christ, we are continually in the sphere of grace.  But to enjoy the sphere of blessing, we must live in the sphere of obedience.”

 

            “In 2 Timothy 2:2-6, Paul presents four key elements of a strong obedient, spiritual life, using the vivid analogies of teacher (v-2), soldier (vv. 3-4), athlete (v. 5) and farmer (v. 6).”

 

            Lord willing that is what we will be working on as we continue looking at these very informative verses in 2 Timothy chapter 2.

 

1/3/2025 9:23 AM