1.3-5 Paul felt a very strongly that God had put he and Timothy together in the work of growing the Church.
He thanked God that he had brought them together. He prayed for Timothy and thought about him and his work all the time. He remembered Timothy's tears at their last parting and longed to see him again. It was not just Timothy's pleasant personality or company that Paul longed for. Timothy's faith and the work it had produced stirred Paul's gratitude to God. Paul had introduced Timothy to Christ's work so that the faith that had been successfully passed on to Timothy by his mother and grandmother had matured into brave and effective service.
This excited Paul, because he was seeing the Church grow across generations. This wasn't a brave effort by Paul to get a few churches going in his lifetime. He was seeing those he had first known as children now being raised up by Christian family members and growing into the workers who would build the Church when he was gone. He saw Timothy as one of those to whom he was passing on the baton.
Paul honours the work of the women in Timothy's home who had made sure that the faith of Christ had been securely passed on to him.
The relationships we form with fellow Christian workers as we study the Bible, pray and serve him together, are very deep. For example, a Christian marriage has the spoken and unspoken agreement that we are in this life together so we can serve Christ better – so it will have a depth to it that romance on its own cannot reach. Young people, take great care that you invest your love in a partner with whom you can work freely with Christ. You need to be able to put Christ and his work first without your partner feeling jealous or aggrieved (because, she or he also has Christ as her highest treasure). Much potential Christian service has been lost – and some Christian lives shipwrecked – because a person gave away his or her romantic love to someone who did not love Christ with his or her whole mind, heart and strength.
Paul's concern for Timothy shows that one of the best things we can do for those we love is to pray for them – especially that their work for God will be successful. Because if they are successful in that – they will have the best life possible now and an eternal one to follow. Do you love your children? Then pray and work for them so that they are totally committed in every way to follow Christ. That is the way to give your loved ones the best possible future.
Paul was excited by Timothy's potential. Our aim must be to pass the baton on to the next runners. We must live lives that contain as much of God's wisdom and grace as possible, so we have plenty to pass on to those who must continue to serve Christ after we have finished our race. Get more hungry for righteousness yourself – then you will have something to pass on to others.
Much of this work must first happen in our homes. See how this worked for Timothy. Lois and Eunice came to faith in Christ – perhaps it was the daughter who led her mother to Christ. We know from elsewhere that Timothy's father was Greek and his mother Jewish. His father was probably not a believer. Yet when the gospel came to Lystra, his mother and grandmother came to faith and raised Timothy to trust in Christ. By the time Paul visited his town some years later when he was probably about 18, the Christians there spoke well of him and Paul asked him to join his team as he moved on to plant Churches. Timothy's outstanding career as a Christian worker could not have happened if his mother and grandmother had not done the work of living and sharing the gospel inside their home.
We also, learn from Paul's training of Timothy, about the need for a vision for the church well beyond our own time - because we are preparing young people for it. We who are mature have a responsibility to articulate and foreshadow what is to come, because those who are younger tend not to look far enough ahead. We must not be satisfied with 'hanging on' tenaciously to our beliefs in our life time. We must advance God's Kingdom by preparing people for the next stage of its expansion.
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