Our church has been great lately as we have been going through the theme of Enduring in 2 Timothy. It has been really good discussions. This past week’s session was all about making sure to create in us honorable and noble and pure Christians. It is important to see how you can be the best Christian you can possibly be. This is making sure you as a Christian are taking the oath and the pride of being a believer as sacredly as one should.
The whole church sermon was making sure to fight against those who are not in the Christian faith and are either acting like they are ones or truly believing they are with false beliefs and bringing others away from their relationships. They are hindrances to the faith, even if they had originally started strong in the faith. These can be people who have started working and learning about Christ, but then get a false prophecy in their head and turn people towards the ugly truth. We always need to be diligently aware of these people and to make sure we don’t fall under their false pretenses.
In this 2 Timothy 1 passage, there is an example of some Christians who weren’t very good about following the correct Christian path and were in some ways a deserter of the faith. Their names are Phygelus and Hermogenes. They deserted Paul, even though he had helped them be good Christians and members of the faith. Another example of a Christian who deserted was Judas. He was a disciple and a personal friend of Jesus Christ, but by the end of Jesus’ life, Judas was the one who went against Christ and went and paid for him to be brought to the cross. He was the instrument for Jesus to be arrested and put on the cross. Granted, this was foundational for the Christian faith, since we did need Jesus to die on the cross for us. However, he still was a backstabbing friend to Jesus.
One verse we really talked about a lot was 2 Timothy 2:21 which says, “Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.”It is important that we also don’t become one of those false preachers or believers. Through this, we need to make sure we are spending time purifying our hearts and our minds to the Christian faith. We don’t ever want to be the person who brings others away from the faith. Rather we want to be the ones who are always uplifting and bringing people closer to God.
The ways to best purify oneself are to spend time in reflection. Sometimes we as people can get so busy in our day to day life, we forget to really take the time to reflect on our Christian life and how we are personally doing in our heart and our walk with Jesus. I have definitely done this before. There have been a few times in my life, where I have been really drifting away from Christ. I have had bouts of really bad anxiety and I have had bouts of really bad anger, and I was not showing Christ-like behavior.
One of those times in my life is when I knew I needed to go to therapy. I was really angry with some people in my life, and I was even very discouraged by the idea of dating. I was so distraught over someone who wasn’t asking me out and I was frustrated with the dates I had gone on and had not been well. I even told people, “I don’t know. I just don’t like guys.” Here I was just so discouraged I didn’t even want to consider ever going on more dates. I had just pigeonholed myself into thinking I never wanted to date a guy ever again. I mentioned this deep-seated bitterness to my therapist, and she made sure to call it out in a kind and Godly way. She simply said I don’t want that deep bitterness to take root in my heart. She was right. I didn’t want to have that deep bitterness in my heart. I had just been so hurt and frustrated by the men in the past.
The challenge for you this week is to spend time with your heart. Is there a place where you feel bitterness or anger? Is there a particular sin you seem to struggle with? Is there a position you find yourself in that often takes you away from Christ? You don’t want to find yourself in a position where you are the one who is both falling away from Christ and who is possibly taking others away from Christ.
Colossians 3:23 Blog 