The Growth of a Disciple

2 Timothy 4:12-16

Could I mention too that tonight at 6 o’clock we will have Stewart and Monique Shore with us? They are actually here in this service this morning somewhere. But Stewart and Monique are missionaries from The Peoples Church to Calcutta in India. They have a very remarkable work there with street kids on the one hand, and amongst the prostitute community on the other. And they have seen God work in some very wonderful ways in people coming to Christ.

And one of the most exciting developments is just in the last couple of weeks they have signed for the purchase of a building which will serve as a home to a number of these street children and be the means to provide them with not just with a home but with education and prepare them for the future in a Christian environment where, of course, one of the greatest contributions we can make to anybody is to lead them to Christ. And that is of course what they are seeking to do.

And so, this evening in our 6 o’clock service the entire service will be given over to them apart from a time of worship and song, that we will have a short DVD, we’ll have a few still pictures of the new building they have just purchased. And we are going to interview both of them together.

And if you don’t know their story, it’s a remarkable story and if you do, come and get the updates on it because they are our missionaries. Stewart grew up in this church and so it’s very important that they are not just out there doing their own thing. They are an extension of this congregation. And we want to support them and encourage them.

And after the service tonight there will be a little reception in the gymnasium with some Indian little sweets and probably hots (is that what you would call Indian little finger food that blows your head off?) But whatever it is, we’ll have some of that with tea and coffee, so you can stay and greet them and meet them and taste a few Indian delicacies as well.


If you have got your Bible with you, I am going to read from 1 Timothy 4. Paul wrote two letters to Timothy. During both of the occasions he wrote these letters Timothy was in Ephesus where he had been sent by Paul to lead the church there, or to at least be involved in the leadership of the church there. And this is the last of a series of 4 messages – just a short series – that I have been giving, which we have called The Growth of a Disciple.

And I selected a case history of what a disciple is and what a disciple does. And Timothy is that case history. And he was almost certainly converted on Paul’s first missionary journey when he came to the town of Lystra (in present day Turkey) where Timothy lived with a Jewish mother who was a believer, a godly mother, and a Gentile seemingly non-believing father. He came from a mixed background spiritually, a mixed background ethnically because his father was a Greek, his mother was a Jew.

And then when Paul came back on his second journey and came back into Lystra, he picked Timothy up, took him with him and he went on that second journey. And then eventually Paul began to throw him into the deep end and sent him off to Ephesus and he wrote these two letters to him.

I want to talk about one aspect this morning that we find in 1 Timothy 4:12-16 down to the end of the chapter, I am going to read. 1 Timothy 4:12 he says to him,

“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.

“Do not neglect the gift, which was give you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you.

“Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress.

“Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them” (in both, that is), “because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

The text from which I want to talk to you this morning is in 1 Timothy 4:12 and then we will look at the rest of the verses as the amplification of this, where he says,

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young.”

I want to talk about young people in the church of Jesus Christ. Now of course what is seen as young is quite relative. When you are a teen, 30 is old. When you are 70, 40 is young, even 50 is young. For some of you, anybody who is not yet retired is young. So, it’s a relative thing.

And we’re not sure exactly how old Timothy was but in an attempt to try and reconstruct what we know of his life, he was probably in his thirties but that is beside the point; he was young enough to be looked down on because of his youth.

And Paul says to Timothy, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young.”

When I was a kid, I used to hear this little ditty: “Children should be seen but not heard.” Did you ever hear that one? Only adults say that of course. And most of us will say that’s not true. Of course, children should be heard.

But you know sometimes in the church there is the attitude youth should be seen and not heard. The temptation is to move them out, stick them on their own somewhere – they do their thing; we’ll do ours; and everybody is happy.

But that is not true to Scripture, nor should it be true to life. In fact, elsewhere – and we won’t look at this, but elsewhere – in Paul’s letters, especially to Timothy, he talks about the relative relationship of older men to younger men, older women to young women, young women to elders. He says that the older should teach the younger and train the younger. The younger should respect the older.

But sometimes we are so concerned to divide everybody up that we don’t enjoy the enrichment of that. And the church of Jesus Christ, if nowhere else, should be the model of intergenerational relationship and respect and love and affirmation and caring.

In fact what Paul says here is “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set the believers an example.” Now that’s incredible, isn’t it?

We would have thought he would say, “Now you older ones, you set the example because there are young people coming behind you and they are watching.”

He doesn’t say that. He says, “Young people, you set the example.”

And I’ll show you why in a moment.

Of course, one of the issues that we face with today is that young people think very differently to older folks. In fact, never has there been a day when young people live to a large extent in a very different world to the world of their parents.

Technology has moved at an incredible rate in the last couple of decades and all young people today are familiar with Facebook, I-pods, MP3’s, texting, MySpace, YouTube, I-phone. Anyone have an idea what I am talking about? I mean most of us know what these – some of us are just working out what CD’s are. We know what videos are and we know what cassette tapes are, but what are DVD’s, what are CD’s, you know? It has moved so fast.

We used to talk about culture as being geographical - there’s a Canadian culture; there’s a German culture; there’s a Japanese culture, etc. But you know it’s much more true today that culture has become generational.

I’ll tell you why. An 18-year-old in Tokyo, an 18-year old in New Delhi, an 18-year old in Frankfurt, an 18-year old in Toronto are likely listening to the same music, playing the same games on the Internet, watching the same movies, looking at the same YouTube clips, dressing in the same way. So, kids in Tokyo, boys in Tokyo, teenage boys in Tokyo wear their jeans halfway down their backside and you thought it was just your kids that did that.

And culture has become a generational thing much more than it ever could have been before because of the fact that the world has become such a neighbourhood in terms of communication and access to what is going on elsewhere, and influences that come to us all across the world.

And Paul points out to Timothy that youth is both of time of danger and a time of opportunity. The time of danger he talks about in 2 Timothy 2:22 when he says there,

“Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.”

He says, “There are temptations that are not necessarily unique to youth but certainly strong and fresh and you face them for the first time in your youth.

And he says there are dangers to which you are exposed as a young person. Flee the desires of youth (and I will come back to this verse a little bit later on).

But there is also the positive – the danger and the opportunities. The opportunity is:

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set the believers an example.”

There are opportunities when you are young to have an impact.

And there are three things that fall very naturally out of these verses that Paul tells Timothy as a young man he needs to do.

Number one, he needs to set the standard, set the believers an example.

Number two; he needs to study the Scriptures. “Attend,” he says, “to the public reading of Scripture.” Study the Scriptures.

Thirdly, stir up your gift. He says,

“Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you.” (1 Timothy 4:14)

We’ll talk about those three things.

Let me talk first of all about the fact he says to Timothy, “You need to set the standard.”

“Set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12)

Five remarkable things that he says a young person should set the example in.

Now normally we don’t look to young people to set the example. As I said just now, we tend to think that’s the job of older people. But here’s a fact: young people are much more likely to change things than older people – much more likely. Because the older we get, the easier we settle for the status quo, the easier we get stuck into a rut, the easier we want to settle for the quiet life. And we even start to get nostalgia and the way it was is the way we want it to continue.

Young people don’t like any of those things. They need to find things and own them for themselves. And Paul says, “Timothy, they are looking down on you because you are young. Don’t be intimidated by that. You set the example, set the standard.”

You know, change is hard the older we get. We like things the way they are. But you know, many of the great movements of God start through young people.

Have you ever noticed in Scripture how many times God looks for a young person? And although they become older and some of the great events of their lives, like David and Moses and so on, all took place when they were older. What happened when they were older happened when they were older because of what happened when they were younger when they began to set a standard.

It’s true in history. You know in the last 50 years or so, some of the most effective missionary movements were about young people and begun by young people.

Youth With a Mission is a mission many of you are familiar with. Loren Cunningham, at the age of 20 was in the Bahamas and he was spending time in the Scriptures and praying, and he said, “I had the idea, and I believe God put into my heart that young people can be missionaries.” And he began Youth With a Mission – YWAM. Today YWAM has 15,000 missionaries across the world. It is the biggest mission in the western world. It began with a young man of 20.

Operation Mobilization was begun by George Verwer when he was 18 years of age. He took a small team - and none of them were yet 20 – down to Mexico and began to distribute Scripture. And it grew from there. And in the last 50 years Operation Mobilization has seen 120,000 people go as missionaries, many of them of course, short term. That was how they began, as a short-term evangelistic mission. Currently over five and half thousand full-time people are working with Operation Mobilization.

K.P. Yohanan was a young man in India and he had a vision for Indians reaching India with the Gospel and he began a mission called Gospel for Asia (GFA). And today Gospel for Asia has 16,500 missionaries, mainly from India, mainly reaching into India, most from the south reaching into the spiritually barren north of India. And K.P. Yohanan will be with us for our Global Outreach Conference this year in May and we’re looking forward very much to that.

Before that people like Amy Carmichael, who went as a missionary from Ireland – Northern Ireland – to India. And she began to rescue girls first of all, then children generally and began in a place called Dohnavur, near Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu and I had the privilege of visiting Dohnavur a few months ago. And the work is still going on though she went to heaven years ago.

And Amy Carmichael, as a teenager, began to work amongst children and young people in Belfast and God gave her a vision. You know she never came home on furlough in 54 years because she felt it was more important, she was doing the work than coming home and talking about it.

And people said, “But you need to raise support.”

She said, “I don’t raise support; God is my supplier.” She was a young person.

Established missions from a century or more ago like SIM were began by people like Ronald Bingham, who, in his twenties had a burden for the 60 million people in sub-Sahara North Africa at that time and went there to reach them with the Gospel, took young people with him, some of whom died very quickly because of the diseases they encountered there. But still today, as a result of those young people, SIM is still a mission all across the world now.

And I could give you many other stories like that. And the point of Paul’s statement here to Timothy is to not let anyone look down on you because you are young. But instead, he says,

“You set an example to the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.”

Now I am going to comment just very briefly on those five things. And my comments are frustrating to me because we could probably take a whole message on each of those things.

He says, “You be an example as a young person. Be an example in speech” is the first thing he says. He said it elsewhere to Timothy,

“Do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord.” (2 Timothy 1:8)

“Timothy, set an example in talking about Christ and in sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Don’t be ashamed to testify about our Lord.”

I am so glad that when I was young, not long a Christian, about 16 years of age, I got thrown into the deep end by somebody who said to me, “Hey, go and talk to that person and ask them if they know Jesus.”

I didn’t know what to say, and I got thrown into the deep end. And then it went on from there to other things. I am so grateful for that.

You see sometimes we wait until we think we know what to do and then we’ll do it. No, the best way to know what to do is to do it even though you fumble and fail. You’ll learn and you will grow. And he says, “You set an example in speech Timothy. You make sure the things you talk about are about our Lord. Don’t be ashamed to testify about our Lord.”

You know sometimes, even in church life, we can talk about anything except Christ.

Young people, set the example in speech, learn to talk about Jesus.

Second thing he says, in speech, in life. Now what we say and how we live are obviously related and they ought to be the same. They should be synchronized.

I think I have used this example before but if you watch a movie and the speech is not synchronized with the visuals, what do you normally say? I’ll tell you what you normally say: “The speech is slow.”

You don’t say, “The visuals are too fast” because the visuals are the reality to us. The speech should synchronize with it, so it’s too slow.

So it is in life. And he said, “Timothy don’t just talk; live. Don’t just talk but walk.” As you have heard the saying many times “walk the talk”, but he is saying “don’t just talk; do set an example in speech.” But young people, set the example in life.

I’ll come back to what kind of example this is in just a moment.

In speech and life – third thing: set the example in love. Now he doesn’t mean set the example in romance. Young people often think they invented that, you know, and it’s a great time for romance when you are young.

(Actually, I said that in the last service and people smiled; my wife didn’t; and I said, “Oh, and – and it still is.” I had to correct it very quickly!)

But that isn’t what he is talking about. He uses the word agape here. Set the example in love. Agape is that love which seeks other people’s good. Be concerned for other people’s good.

I think one of the best descriptions is in Philippians 2:2-4 where Paul talks about maintaining the same love and then he explains it,

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit.”

“You know, love is not about you, so,

“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourself.”

What is love? Other people are more important than I am.

“Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”

That is, you get concerned about others. And I tell you; one of the things I am very impressed with, with this generation of young people is that they are very committed to righting the wrongs of this world – more perhaps than my generation were at the time.

This generation are much more ready to get their hands dirty, to get involved with street kids, with issues of poverty, whether it’s across the world or down in the city of Toronto. Of responding practically to issues like HIV/AIDS – many young people are saying, “We need to do something. We need to get involved.”

Set the example in love, looking after the needs of others.

Fourth thing: set the example in faith, he says. Young people are often more willing to trust and certainly more willing to take risks than when we get older, to step into the unknown.

I mean, who is it that lines up to do a bungee jump? It’s young people. We don’t organize a bus trip for seniors to go for a bungee jump. Now there are good physical reasons for that as well, but there are also other reasons. You see when people are young, let’s take risk.

Now risk and faith are not the same thing, but faith will often involve risk, a willingness to trust God and step out in obedience to God.

And I recommend you read Hebrews 11 sometime, which is the whole chapter that describes men and women who lived by faith and see what living by faith involves. He lists 16 names in that chapter of people who lived by faith, plus a few others – he doesn’t name them, but he talks about their experiences. And you see that all these folks who lived by faith, all stepped out into the unknown in obedience to God and dependence on God.

And he says, “Timothy, while you are young learn to live that way, learn to set the example of faith.

And here’s the most remarkable, believe it or not, the last one says, “Set the example in purity.”

Would you think that’s a young person’s job? Or is that the time to sow some wild oats and have fun? No, says Paul, you set the standard in purity. Now there’s a real battleground here. Never has western culture been less Christian than it is today. And perhaps it would be true to say nowhere is this more evident than in the sexual culture of young people today.

We have moved from an objective criteria for behaviour. In the age of modernism as opposed to post-modernism, which is a sort of chronological term that we’re not quite sure altogether what it means – it means anything beyond the modern era. The modern era trusted in external facts – science – there’s a big picture to which everything fits in. And there were criteria that determined your behaviour. And of course, people might violate that but there were generally accepted ways to behave and ways not to behave. And lives were governed by that.

But now, the objective criteria has moved to a subjective criteria where what I do has no bearing on what is expected or demanded or required or what is true or what is not. But it is what I want, what suits me.

And sexual relationships have become recreational for many people, many young people.

I was in the dentist chair this last week and of course you have to be entertained everywhere now so there is a TV screen above your head to watch while the dentist is doing her work.

And being the boring person I am, I asked if they would put on the news channel. And one piece of news that came on was a report published this past week that 80% of teenagers who take a pledge of virginity (and that, by the way – this is the United States – has primarily been a Christian thing to take a pledge of virginity until marriage) – 80% of teenagers, said this report, who take a pledge of virginity have sex outside of marriage within five years of making that pledge.

And then, they said on this program, that rate is exactly the same as those who don’t make a pledge – 80% have sex outside of marriage.

Now says Paul to Timothy, “Timothy, wherever the crowd is running, you make sure you run the other way. Set an example in purity.”

And let me tell you this, young people, you need God for this. You need God, firstly, to give you an appetite for what is right. That is God’s business in your heart, when you allow him to live in your heart and you submit yourself to Him and surrender to Him, He creates a hunger and a thirst for that which is right, a hunger and a thirst for righteousness. But not just that; with all the temptations that bombard you all the time, all the trends and all the battle that we have with peer pressure and the like, you need strength outside of yourself.

And this is available to you in Christ, and that is why this is not idealism that Paul is presenting to Timothy, some kind of notion, wouldn’t it be nice if this was possible, but this is realism, says Paul. Why? Because you have Christ living in you.

Now let me take you back to the earlier verse that I mentioned, 2 Timothy 2:22, he says,

“Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace and purity.”

Now here is something very important: the antidote to fleeing the evil desires of youth is replacing those desires with something positive and good. He doesn’t just say, “Flee the evil desires of youth, period. Okay? Just don’t do it. Just say no.”

It doesn’t work. Rather, he says, “Pursue, replace them, with some of the very things he tells Timothy here to be an example in – faith, love, peace and a pure heart.

He doesn’t mention peace in 1 Timothy 4, but he does mention that in this other statement. But the principle is this: don’t just say, “Okay, I’ll stop.” That’s really hard. Replace it with something that is good and wholesome.

You know when Paul wrote to the Ephesians he said, “Those of you who steal should steal no longer.” And then he told them what to do. He said, “Earn some money and give some of it away to people in need.” In other words, if you have a problem with stealing, he said to the Ephesians, replace it with generosity – not just stop stealing. Instead, get involved with earning some money and giving and giving instead of taking – the antidote.

It’s similar here. Don’t just stop but replace it with these things that are good.

When I was in my late teens, I heard somebody say one day, he said, “What you are at 20 you will probably be for the rest of your life.” And I have to be honest and say that scared me and I hope it wasn’t true. But I think it is true.

Now of course there is always hope but by and large, what you are at 20 in terms of your character, you are likely to be for the rest of your life. So it’s while you are young - while you are young, you need to settle these things and not say, “well, you know, I’ll just enjoy myself for a little while and then I’ll come and sort these things out.”

But when he says, “Set the example for the believers”, it sounds a bit intimidating doesn’t it? Set the example – oh, man, they are going to be watching me. How do I set the example? What kind of example is Paul talking about?

I read something very helpful this week by Jill Briscoe and she was talking to another woman in ministry about people’s expectations and they were discussing the pressure of trying to be role models knowing their own weaknesses, their own frailties, their own failures, and yet people are looking to them.

And the other lady said to Jill, “We are called to be models but we are not called to be models of perfection; we are called to be models of growth.”

I like that very much because you know and I know there is no perfection in our own lives. You know that. You know if people try to model themselves on us, you would be afraid for them because of the frailties you know in your own life. But here’s the model – and I love that expression that she gave to Jill – we are called to be models of growth.

Let me ask you – are you a better person this year than you were last year? If you are not sure it might be nice to ask your wife or your husband or your friends or your parents. Am I growing? That’s the key.

That was the first thing: set the standard.

Now I will have to be quick with the other two, but they are very important.

Study the Scriptures is the second thing he said to Timothy as a young man, because in 1 Timothy 4:13,

“Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.”

Now of course he is talking about Timothy’s particular role there and Timothy had a particular role, having been sent to Ephesus to minister to the church there. But there are general issues and general truths here as well.

Devote yourself to the reading of Scripture, because in 1 Timothy 4:16 he says,

“Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

Now, two things to observe there; he says, “Watch your doctrine.” Where did you get your doctrine from? You get your doctrine from the Scriptures. Doctrine is simply putting together the truths of the Word of God about a particular issue, a particular area in a coherent way. And so you say there is a doctrine.

Who is God? Well. you go from Genesis to Revelation to answer that question. What kind of God is He? Who is Christ? Who is the Holy Spirit? What is salvation, it’s fullness? What is the church, all these things? You go to the Scripture and you read it and you understand doctrine.

But he doesn’t just say, “Watch your doctrine”; he says, “Watch your life and doctrine.” These two things must go together. In fact, these two things, I suggest to you, are completely interdependent because both flow out of each other.

Our doctrine flows out of the life that we have in Christ, because when you come to know Christ, you discover this book becomes a new book.

You see if you are not a Christian, this book is one of the most boring books in the world. It’s not even as interesting as Shakespeare. I mean parts of it are utterly boring if you don’t know Christ.

And one of the evidences that Christ has come into a person’s life is this book comes alive. There are things in it that, “Wow, this is life, this is life giving!” So the life you have feeds the appetite for doctrine and the understanding of the Scriptures. And the Scriptures feed the life that you have, so these two are interdependent on one another. And doctrine feeds that life.

You see it’s no good saying, “Well, I have spiritual life; I have Christ within me; that’s all I need.” You need to have understanding of who He is and what He is doing and what His purposes are and how He wants to work in you and through you. That’s why they must go together. The doctrine flows out of the life we have received and the life grows through the doctrines of the Word of God.

And if you are a Christian, you need to be reading the Scriptures. There is no shortcut. You cannot pick these things up by osmosis. You can’t just hang around Christians and somehow you get it, hang around church and somehow you get it. Hopefully these things help, but you won’t get it until you are alone with this book.

During the month of December, we mentioned each week about a daily Bible reading log that we were recommending to you, published by the Navigators. It has four columns; if you want to read the whole Bible in one year, you read all four columns, just four or three and a half chapters. If you can’t manage that and want to read it in four years, you can just read one column and next year the next column, etc. If you want to read it in two years, you can read two of those columns, one chapter in the Old Testament, one chapter in the New Testament, whatever.

And we brought in 1000 copies of this and I was delighted to discover at the beginning of the service this morning there are only 50 left. We thought maybe there were 800 hidden away somewhere that we had forgotten about but we have searched and we haven’t. And those 50 went with about the first 60 people who left after the first service this morning so I can’t offer them to you today, but we are going to get some more because there isn’t a more healthy habit that you can have as a believer than reading the Word of God.

Study the Scriptures. Attend to the public reading of Scripture, says Paul.

And the third thing he says is “Stir up your gift” – that’s the third heading I am giving, because in 1 Timothy 4:14,

“Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you.”

Once again, there is a particular application there to Timothy’s own circumstances when the elders had set him apart and laid hands upon him as well. But there is a general truth here that is very important. Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, because you need to set the standard, study the Scriptures and you need to stir up your gift. You need to get busy in the service of God.

You see every Christian who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit becomes spiritually gifted. You don’t have to be old to have a spiritual gift. You don’t have to have gone to a Bible College to have a spiritual gift and exercise it. You don’t have to have some kind of degree to exercise a spiritual gift.

Spiritual gifts are not just natural abilities and strengths, though they may be related to those natural abilities, but spiritual gifts are the means whereby God brings life to other people through you. It may be in serving; it may be in administration; it may be in talking; it may be in all kinds of things.

But the fact it’s a spiritual gift means this is an avenue where uniquely in you there is a way in which the Spirit of God is working to encourage others. And there are people who will never stand on a platform because that is not their gift who breathe life to other people in their encouragement of them, in their interest in them, in their care for them.

“And Timothy, you stir up this gift.” He said that to Timothy later. He had to say it in 2 Timothy again, “Stir up the gift of God that is in you,” because it is easy to go stale.

You know something, you can sit in the pew passively for five years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years - tragically, for fifty years, and never stir up your spiritual gift.

I talked several weeks ago about being a missional church. It’s not a word that’s in the Bible any more than missionary is not a word in the Bible as such, but this word missional is a good word; it’s a fairly new word. It’s an adjective.

The church that is missional is looking out from itself to engage in the service of Jesus Christ in its location and city and across the world, locally and globally.

But a missional church is an army of people – young people and old people – an army of people who do not neglect their spiritual gift, an army of people who are concerned enough to say, “Lord, what is it that You are giving me to do?” and stirring it up and becoming active.

And I don’t think you discover your spiritual gift best by becoming introspective and going through checklists. I think you discover it best by jumping in the deep end and discovering either, no, I can’t do this or amazingly, remarkably, God used me in this situation.

I never try to analyze what spiritual gifts I might have; I just know that when I got thrown into situations, I thought, “Well Lord, I am going to trust You in this” and you discover there are places where God breathes life to other people, and there are places where you don’t have those gifts.

And being a missional church is not just having a new name or a new definition of what we are trying to do; it’s having a new attitude of heart that says, “Lord, I am available to You, that whatever it is You have equipped me with, I want to get involved in this and I am going to get involved and I am going to serve You wherever it is that You have placed me.

And one thing about spiritual gifts is that other people recognize them too. That’s why he talks about the “elders who laid their hands upon you”, because they recognized it, they recognized it.

And other people will recognize. That’s why we need the affirmation of others (“Yes, I am in the right place”) because sometimes we’d like to think we might have a gift that perhaps other people don’t recognize. And well, we need to think again about that.

But you know you can discover your spiritual gift and it can go stale. That’s why Paul has to write the second letter to Timothy and one of the things he says is, “Stir up the gift that is in you” because it can go stale and you can lose it.

And these aren’t things that are extra to the Christian life; this is the Christian life; this is what the Christian life is about.

“And Timothy, whatever struggles you are having in Ephesus” and we can deduce by reading through those letters he was having all kinds of struggles in Ephesus.

One of the struggles he was is that people were looking down on him because he was young. “Don’t let them look down on you because you are young Timothy, and I’ll tell you what to do: you give them no reason to look down on you; you set the standard, you set the example in speech, in life, in faith, in love, in purity. You study the Scriptures. You know the Word of God for yourself.”

And of course, it’s a process. You go on reading and you go on learning. You stir up that gift and you get busy and you get active and you get involved. And do it while you are young because there are too many Christians, too many Christians who have sat on the pews for thirty, forty, fifty years and are doing nothing.

Some of you are like that and you know it, and you are not being what the New Testament tells you to be. It is rank disobedience.

And so Timothy, while you are young, obedience is going to be the hallmark of your life and you are going to live this way and set the standard and study the Scriptures and stir up your gift. And don’t let people say that’s what pastors do and the rest of us can just free wheel. That’s what Christians do if you are going to be God’s man, God’s woman.

And listen; if you are young, my message is to you tonight. Get caught up in the adventure of the Christian life. And if you are older, it’s never too late. You say, “I may have wasted, ten, twenty years but Lord, give me back the years that the locusts have eaten (to quote an Old Testament phrase); give me back those wasted years as years of service and blessing and benefit.

Will you do that? Let’s pray together.