I know that you sincerely trust the Lord, for you have the faith of your mother, Eunice, and your grandmother, Lois. This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift God gave you when I laid my hands on you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. So you must never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord. And don't be ashamed of me, either, even though I'm in prison for Christ. With the strength God gives you, be ready to suffer with me for the proclamation of the Good News.
It is God who saved us and chose us to live a holy life. He did this not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan long before the world began - to show his love and kindness to us through Christ Jesus. And now he has made all of this plain to us by the coming of christ Jesus, our Savior, who broke the power of death and showed the way to everlasting life through the Good News. And God chose me to be a preacher, and apostle, and a teacher of this Good News.
And that is why I am suffering here in prison. But I am not ashamed of it, for I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until the day of his return.
Hold on to the pattern of right teaching you learned from me. And remember to live in the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus. With the help of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, carefully guard what has been entrusted to you.
WOW! There are so many things to point out here! I used to be one who just 'read' through the text and didn't retain a single word, but then someone cited the verse that says a person who does that is like someone who looks in the mirror and forgets what he looks like! Now I 'study' the Word and it has opened a whole new world to me, one which I would never leave to go back to the way I was.
I love the first part I have highlighted. Far too many people forget about the self-discipline part of this. From this I am led to believe that someone who does not have a spirit of power, love, and self-discipline has not received the Spirit of God. That is a problem for those who believe that saying the 'sinner's prayer' at 5 saved them a spot in the Kingdom but that person grew up to be someone who showed none of these attributes that coincide with the Spirit of God.
And again, this part of Scipture poses a problem to those who adhere to "religion is a private thing". It says to never be ashamed to tell others about the Lord.... Oh, how I did not heed this in the earlier part of my life, but now it is my sincere passion to have my faith lived out in every part of my life and never hide it. That is one of the reasons I started this blog, there are a few I know of that say they are Christian but have seemingly went out of their way to make sure their blogs held nothing of their faith.
Hold on to the pattern of the right teaching you learned from me.... This negates the whole 'sincerity' factor. So many want to say that if is a person is genuine and sincere they will be okay when it comes to judgment day! Hitler was sincere, Bin Laden was sincere, many people are completely off track although very sincere! He says specifically to hold on to the pattern of the
right teaching, which means there must be
wrong teachings as well.
There are many more things that can be discussed on this, but I sadly do not have the time to expand on right now. Just some things to ponder in the light of God's authoritative word!
