Frittering away the time that's left
This week is on 1 Timothy 1:3-7:
We only have a certain amount of time on Earth. We're God's ambassadors. We can forget that so easily, when we get distracted by things that don't matter in the moment. Would an ambassador spend all of his time inside, arguing about trivia, while the people outside have no idea about his country? We get distracted by gibberish, and nonsense, and forget what it is we're supposed to be doing.
Some people even take it further, because they want to be important. It is more important to them to be important and respected than it is to be an ambassador. They just say whatever comes to mind, in the hopes that if they say enough, something will get them the respect and worship they feel they deserve. They set themselves up as experts, but they really have no idea what they're talking about.
God's kingdom is all about love. Nobody wants to join a kingdom that requires you to get a doctorate just to figure out what it's all about. God didn't call us to memorize stuff, and learn rhetoric, and figure out how to logically talk people into a corner about whether the bread and wine are actually magically transformed into Jesus' blood or whether they're just kind of symbol thingie. We're here to demonstrate his love in the moment. We're aid workers, not judges and lawyers.
The days are evil slippery things, trying to get away from us before we can use them for God's purpose. We only get so many shots at it before we have to move along. Don't waste your life niggling over details.
As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. These promote controversies rather than God's work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirmPeople will waste time arguing about just about anything. My favorite is when people argue and invest years of study into figuring out when the end times are going to be. You know, those events that Jesus said that no man would ever be able to predict the time of? Yeah, those events. People waste hours, or years, of their life on stupid stuff like that.
We only have a certain amount of time on Earth. We're God's ambassadors. We can forget that so easily, when we get distracted by things that don't matter in the moment. Would an ambassador spend all of his time inside, arguing about trivia, while the people outside have no idea about his country? We get distracted by gibberish, and nonsense, and forget what it is we're supposed to be doing.
Some people even take it further, because they want to be important. It is more important to them to be important and respected than it is to be an ambassador. They just say whatever comes to mind, in the hopes that if they say enough, something will get them the respect and worship they feel they deserve. They set themselves up as experts, but they really have no idea what they're talking about.
God's kingdom is all about love. Nobody wants to join a kingdom that requires you to get a doctorate just to figure out what it's all about. God didn't call us to memorize stuff, and learn rhetoric, and figure out how to logically talk people into a corner about whether the bread and wine are actually magically transformed into Jesus' blood or whether they're just kind of symbol thingie. We're here to demonstrate his love in the moment. We're aid workers, not judges and lawyers.
The days are evil slippery things, trying to get away from us before we can use them for God's purpose. We only get so many shots at it before we have to move along. Don't waste your life niggling over details.
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