When is the last time someone should have looked you in the eye and said, “Mind your own business?” If you spend your time worrying about how others live, you’re idle. You have too much time on your hands.
How do we go about respecting and rebuking the saints? What is appropriate and what isn’t? Thank God He gave us 1 Timothy to answer these questions and serve as our guide.
Just when we think Paul has exhausted all important topics, he comes up with one more—how the church ought to treat widows (1 Timothy 5:3-16). What he said might surprise us.
Teaching from 1 Timothy 5 and Titus 3, Pastor Chuck Swindoll delineates how serving God requires our best effort, right motives, and devoted work. Choosing to sidestep God’s directives, on the other hand, can result in disaster.
It’s true that the Bible is filled with thou shalts and thou shalt nots, which serve as a sort of preventative checkup. But it’s also a book of “hints” rather than commands, kind of like when our mothers tell us when us when we have a cold to get plenty of rest and to eat your chicken noodle soup.
It can be difficult to follow God’s clear commands. However, obedience doesn’t have to involve a grin-and-bear-it kind of attitude, not if we keep in mind that obedience is always for our good and God’s glory.
Everyone who ministers, whether as a vocation or as a volunteer, is commanded to “guard what has been entrusted” (1 Timothy 6:20); it’s an essential part of ministry.
Our culture doesn’t exactly inspire contentment—everything around us is designed to promote dissatisfaction, comparison, envy, and competition. But you can stop this disappointment cycle by being thankful. When you count your blessings your worry shifts to gratitude, and you begin enjoying all God has given you.
While money and wealth are not evil, the love of money leads to emptiness and disaster because you’ll always strive for more.
As leaders we are tempted to see the objective in front of us—of all we must get done. Wise leaders remember objectives can’t be the single drive of our lives; we must build into those who will someday be in leadership.
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