Timothy's Thoughts

P aul begins his first letter to Timothy ( I Timothy 1:1-11 ) with a reminder of why he left Timothy at Ephesus. Paul had gone off to do other things, but he wanted someone to stay behind to teach the Christians at Ephesus sound doctrine. Paul is asking Timothy to continue to do what Paul had asked him to do. In much of the rest of the letter, we learn what Paul believes is sound doctrine. Paul encourages Timothy to avoid fables and endless genealogies that promote questions. So often, people come up with some of the strangest things. They’ll tell stories about something they saw or something they heard and then try to make some kind of doctrinal sense out of it. Someone will think they’ve seen an angel or they’ll have heard someone talking about the end of the world on television or who knows what and then they have to bring it up and ask questions about. It is easy to get drawn into trying understand whatever it is and then trying to answer the questions, but in the end it does lit...

T he Bible talks about working for rewards. This has nothing to do with salvation, other than only those who have been saved will be rewarded for their good works. We sometimes think that God shouldn’t be paying us for our good works, since Jesus has already done more for us than we can even imagine. Perhaps we think it is more spiritual of us if we serve God without thought of reward. But the Bible tells us to lay up treasure in heaven. Whatever we think of the concept of working for rewards, God thinks it is a good idea. Perhaps it would be helpful if we would look at it a different way. Forget about the reward God will give you, for a moment, and think about some of those great godly servants you have encountered. Perhaps some of them have already gone on to be with the Lord. You saw how they served the Lord greatly. Now think about some of these people who have been saved, but they hardly ever come to church. They might do something for the Lord occasionally, but not very often. ...

O n the way home the other day I heard a preacher on the radio talking about what heaven would be like. He said something along the lines of “in heaven it will be like one big worship service.” Then he said, “You may think that sounds boring, but it won’t be. Some people think worship services are boring, but I’ve never seen a worship service that was boring when Jesus was in the center of it.” He then went on to talk about heaven being a continual state of worship. Is that what heaven will be like? I realize that we’ll see things differently than we do now, so some of the things we think will be boring may be things we will enjoy there, much like many of the things adults enjoy children find boring. Even if that is true, I find it hard to believe that heaven if going to be one continual worship service. If we carry the child example a little farther, don’t we adults still enjoy some of the same things that children do? I enjoy a good worship service as much as anybody, but an eterna...

A ngels fascinate people. People have written hundreds of stories about angels. Most of these stories have very little basis in reality. If the stories are to be believed, angels have big white wings made of feathers, they only wear white, and they spend a lot of their time sitting on clouds playing the harp. Occasionally, they come to earth to help someone out, fall in love, and decide to give up being an angel and be mortal instead. Some of these stories are entertaining, but the characters they portray have no more basis in reality than Santa Claus. What is real? The Bible has a lot to say about angels and yet it leaves much left unsaid. In appearance, we know that at least some of them look like men, at least part of the time. Some appear to have wings—that is if we classify cherubim as angels. David sung of the Lord mounting the cherubim and flying. That brings to mind a different picture than we normally have. The seraphim have six wings—two to cover their face, two to cover th...

O ne of the most powerful ways you can show someone that you care is actually one of the most simple. Sit beside them. I sing in the choir at church, so I have a good view of the whole auditorium as people make their way to their seats before the worship service. There’s always a few people who come in a little late—usually visitors or people who don’t attend very often. They walk in the door and look around. There’s usually at least a couple of seats available close to the aisle, but they don’t sit there. They bypass that and chose another pew—a pew with several people sitting there. The whole family climbs over the legs of two or three other people and they pack the pew as full as it can be. This might seem strange until you realize that the family matriarch was already seated on that pew. I’ve seen some of the teachers in our church work in, see some class member who is sitting off by herself and purposefully choose to sit next to that person. Even if they don’t say a word, I’m ...

I ’ve been something of a student of speeches and presentations lately. One of the things that really stands out it that if you want to hold an audience, you have to make it clear to the audience that what you have to say is going to help them in some way and you have to do it quickly. At the very least, the audience how to understand that you are giving talking about something that they will be called to use. The same thing can be said of blog posts or pretty much any other form of communication. Take a presentation by Nancy Duarte at TEDx East for example. She walks out on stage and says, “You have the power to change the world.” Now, contrast that with a TED presentation by Deb Roy. He walks out on stage and says, “Imagine if you could record your life.” He then shows a family picture of him and his wife bringing their son home from the hospital and how they recorded their lives and then used those recordings to trace the origins of language, words like water, etc. He even plays ...

L ife beats down on us like a hailstorm. I can’t count the times I’ve sat through a lecture, read an article, or watched a program in which someone enumerated all the things that are wrong with something. Christianity is declining in America. Terrorists are taking control of some foreign government. Drug lords are killing people in Mexico. The price of fuel is going up. Like one hailstone after another, it beats us down until we have no hope left. But it doesn’t have to be this way. And I don’t mean we just have to reverse the video as has been popular and have Mexico people killing drug lords and foreign governments controlling terrorists. I also don’t mean we simply pretend this stuff isn’t happening. For as long as we walk this green earth, we have the power to change the world. We don’t have to beat people down to do it. I believe that one of the biggest mistakes communicators can make is to believe that people will take action if they see the problem. People won’t take the actio...

I heard my father’s voice the other day, which is an amazing thing since he lives 600 miles away and I wasn’t on the phone. It happened in handbook time during Awana. One of the boys in my group had a lengthy section to pass. It was a review section in which he was so supposed to give four answers to the question “Why did God give us the Bible?” and recite a backup verse for each one. In the Awana book, the answers are listed and the first three words of each backup verse is given. Because it is review, it is conceivable that a clubber could spend a little bit of time looking at the order the answers and back up verses come in and simply recite what they’ve already learned in order. But it is rare that these kids will do that. It is more frequent that they do what caused me to hear my father’s voice the other night. This particular clubber looked at the section he had to pass and the first words out of his mouth were, “I can’t do this.” “Why not?” I asked. “It’s too long,” he sa...

C hurches are notorious for being behind the times when it comes to technology. My own church only recently purchased a large projection screen on which we display the announcements and the pastor’s sermon outline as his preaches. As for our classrooms, most of them don’t have a computer and a projector. After reading Nancy Duarte’s books resonate and slide:ology , I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t a good thing. I’ve spent enough time working in corporate America to have seen many presentations. For some reason, the moment you install Power Point on a worker’s machine, his ability to communicate flies out the window. I’ve sat through meetings in which a presenter sat at a computer at the back of the room and read from an acronym laden slide at the front of the room that looked more like an eye chart than a slide. I have sat through meetings and amused myself by trying to guess which co-worker would nod off first. As eager as people are for churches to embrace technology, my fe...

J esus was a friend to sinners. That was actually one of the biggest criticisms the religious leaders of his day had about him. Today, some take the fact that Jesus was a friend to sinners to mean that we should participate in the activities of sinners. After all, if we want to be friends with a man who drinks, shouldn’t we go out drinking with him? I would like to suggest that we need to look at this differently. The reason Jesus was a friend to sinners is because Jesus was a friend to people that the religious leaders recognized as sinners. For that matter, the people Jesus hung out with recognized themselves as sinners. I write books. That means that I want to sell books. That isn’t as easy as it seems like it should be. I have found, however, that it's possible to sell some books just by hanging out in various places on the internet, participating in the conversation and occasionally mentioning a book. But here’s the thing. When I hang out on sites that authors frequent my bo...

S ometimes I get e-mail because of something I wrote. One e-mail came because of an article I posted online titled, “Are We Obligated to Marry?” The article was in reaction to another writer saying that the churches’ responsibility to singles is to get them married. The person who e-mailed me found my article helpful because she was in a situation in which people were trying to set her up but she didn’t feel that she was ready to be in a relationship. She asked me some direct questions that I won’t repeat, but in answering her questions I began to think about how we handle these well-meaning people who try to set singles up. I’ve had so many people try to set me up with someone that I can’t remember how many times it has happened, but it always goes in pretty much the same way. Someone walks up to you and says, “Hey, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” At this point, you don’t know that they are trying to set you up. Many times, it is someone we know, but we do...

D o I want the hardback version of this book or the electronic version of this book? That’s the question I asked myself the other day as I was considering the purchase of a book that hadn’t been released yet. I think what surprised me the most was how tempting it was for me to purchase both versions. The electronic version has its advantages in that it will be delivered on the day of release and not two days later. It is also a couple of dollars cheaper, but that was hardly a concern, considering that I thought about buying both. The hardback version also has its advantages. With the hardback version, someone can walk into the house, see it lying on a table and ask if it is any good. Another advantage over the electronic version is that it will last a lot longer. Think about all of the software companies that have gone out of business or sold off a product that isn’t supported by the company that bought it. The eBook industry looks great right now, but one of these days there will be a...

A bigail Jones takes a summer job as a nanny only to discover that she is working for a man that the news media has been looking for. It’s the story that will save her job as a magazine journalist, if she can get the story without revealing who she is. A Cowboy’s Touch by Denise Hunter is a romance set on a ranch in Montana. It isn’t the kind of story I would typically buy, but Denise sent me a copy after I participated in a picture caption contest. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised. It was a very enjoyable read. I noticed several similarities in this story to the story in Searching For Mom and Mother Not Wanted , so you can imagine that it would be easy for me to slip into the environment of this story. In particular, this story involves a single parent with an eleven-year-old child. That is about the same age as the girls in those two stories. It is a Christian romance, so the book as all of the romance elements you would expect with hints of a growing relationship wit...

A few days ago I asked the question, Is Rob Bell Teaching that Hell is Empty? The question was triggered by comments from John Piper, Albert Mohler, and some of their Calvinist brethren. After having read Rob Bell’s latest book, Love Wins , I have say they jumped the gun—boy did they ever jump the gun. I don’t agree completely with Rob Bell’s book, but concerning hell it appears that he is saying that not only is there a hell, it is a literal place of torment, and if we go there it is our own fault and no fault of God’s. It isn’t always easy to follow Rob Bell’s thought pattern because he asks so many questions and it isn’t always clear whether he is asking to make a statement or simply asking because some people will ask those questions. He seems to flirt with the idea that people may be able to repent after they have reached hell, so hell may not be eternal and yet he also has much to say about the possibility that those who go to hell will continually reject Christ throughout et...

H appy ides of March. As you recall, Julius Caesar was slain on this date in 44 B.C. Because of that, it seems like a fitting day to talk about online forums. The conspirators who killed him stabbed Julius Caesar twenty-three times. If you’ve ever participated in some of these forums, you may have found yourself in a similar situation. If you’re a glutten for punishment, go over to the Christianity forum on Amazon.com and post something that sounds even remotely Christian. Before the day is out, all the atheists over there will swarm your post and tell you all the reasons why you are an idiot for believing what you do. If you want your punishment to be a little less severe, post something in support of a Christian book over on the Kindle forum instead. They won’t slam Christianity quite as hard, but plenty of them will make it clear that they don’t like Christian books and you won’t have many who will come to your aid. Forums display the opinions of the small number of people who ...

D o you suffer from imposter syndrome ? I think most people do at some point in their lives. If when you hear someone singing your praises for something you’ve done and you don’t feel worthy of their praise then you are suffering from imposter syndrome . It really isn’t as dangerous as it sounds and it can take many forms. One place I’ve seen it is when a person gets up to speak before a large group of people. Afterward, people tell them what a great speech it was and talk about how they wouldn’t have the nerve to get up in front of that many people. The speaker dismisses it as nothing. Another place we see it is among authors. A publishing company offers them a large contract and they feel like someone made a mistake. Or after the author self-publishes a work, people actually enjoy reading the book. The author tells himself that they are just being nice. I believe that imposter syndrome is a result of us having an ideal of what success looks like that doesn’t match what success fee...

D o you share the gospel with your friends and neighbors? I’ve often heard people talk about how we’re afraid to even go across the street and share the gospel with a neighbor. It gives the impression that someone who is afraid to do that is pretty worthless as a Christian and yet many Christians do have a fear of sharing the gospel with a friend across the street. If you find yourself in that situation, don’t feel guilty. The fact is that God has gifted some of us to be great at bringing up the subject of salvation with people we don’t know very well. Praise God for that! But some of us have other gifts. But just because we’re otherwise gifted doesn’t mean we don’t want to share the gospel and perhaps see someone get saved. What it does mean is that our success at soul winning is more likely to come closer to our comfort zone. When people tell you to get out of your comfort zone, they often mean to get out of your comfort zone and get into theirs. Some distance out of a comfort zone...

B ack in the days when most people didn’t actually own a personal computer, I had a TRS-80 Model IV. The programs for this—at the time—wonderful machine were written in BASIC. The nice thing about that is that you could hit the Break key and edit the program. These days, with our understanding of the need for computer security, we can see that there are all kinds of things wrong with that, but back then, it allowed me to edit the games I had for the machine. If I wanted it to be easier to win, I simply had to change a few lines of code and run the program. These days, many computer games have cheat codes that will effectively achieve the same thing. You don’t have to play fair. In life, God doesn’t play fair. When something doesn’t go the way we would like, we are often tempted to cry, “That’s not fair.” The evil seem to prosper and the righteous are persecuted. “That’s not fair!” But when we look at the bigger picture, we really don’t want it to be fair because it is God who isn’t p...

B e in the world, but not of it, the Bible teaches us. Some people have trouble balancing this concept. Some people seem to overemphasize the “be in the world” concept by taking part in the ungodly activities of the world, even bringing these things into their churches. Their claim is that they hope to reach the world for Christ by making friends with the world just like Jesus was a friend to sinners. Other people overemphasize the “not of the world” concept by completely avoiding anything they see as worldly. I believe we are to balance these two concepts. Be In the World If we are to be in the world, we are to actually be in the world. That means we’ve actually got to get out and talk to the world rather than hiding away in our homes. I don’t however think we must conclude that because Jesus was “a friend to sinners” that we are to participate in the bar scene, get involved with dancing with its immodest clothing and movements or anything else that we might do to assure the world th...

P rayer is a funny thing at times. Consider two equally matched football teams. Prior to the game, they both kneel in prayer to ask for victory over their opponent. One will leave the field later believing that God answered their prayer and the other will leave the field wondering why God didn’t answer their prayer. Let’s not put any limits on God and say that he can’t answer both requests, but the reality of the situation is that he doesn’t often do that. From our perspective, it appears that God didn’t answer one of the prayers, but which one? And how does this apply when we ask God for our success? There is more than one possibility here. One is that God doesn’t actually answer prayer at all, so the only value of the two teams praying was the placebo effect. Because they felt like God was on their side, they played with more confidence. Another possibility is that when presented with two choices God picked a favorite and his favorite went on to victory while the other went on to ...

A cts is largely a sequence of events. Because we don’t want to read long passages before teaching a lesson on it, we often break it up into manageable chunks. We might for example, talk about how Paul cast a spirit out of a damel. We might talk about Lydia. We might talk about the Philippian jailer. All of these stories stand on their own in our head, but we lose sight of the sequence. All of those stories I mentioned are connected with a cause and effect relationship and it all started with a vision. Paul saw a vision in the night of a man of Macedonia saying, “Come over into Macedonia and help us.” Why there’s a sermon on missions right there. But what we find is that because of the vision, Paul and his companions travel to Philippi, which was the chief city of Macedonia. On the Sabbath, they meet Lydia and some other women in a prayer group. After baptizing Lydia and her household, they stayed in her house. But while they were doing that, they encountered a damsel possessed by a ...

I f you have a Kindle,you want to protect it. There are plenty of covers available, some of which cost as much as $60 each. I wanted one that looked like a book. Here is how I made mine for approximately $15 and a couple of hours of my time.

I t’s no surprise that Todd Burpo’s book, Heaven Is For Real is a bestseller. People love hearing about that place Shakespeare called “the undiscovered country.” We want to know that there is something after death. Parents who have lost children want to know that their children are all right. People are looking for hope behind that great curtain of death. I believe many people will read Heaven Is For Real looking for that hope and they will find what they are looking for. At the very least, they will walk away having had an enjoyable read. But to be honest, I was a skeptic when I began reading Heaven Is For Real and I don’t think the book has done anything to relieve my skepticism. The book is told from the point of view of a father who hears about his son’s near death experience. Having read the Bible, I believe it is quite possible that God could take a child to heaven for a while. We have plenty of examples. But I see too much of myself in this child. Todd Burpo’s basic argumen...

A bsalom, David’s son became upset with his father and tried to take the kingdom from him. One of the things he did to gain favor with the people was to sit where the people going in to see King David could see him and he would say, “Oh, that I were made judge in the land, that every man who hath any suit or cause might come unto me, and I would do him justice!” It is kind of an interesting statement because it is the same kind of statement we hear from people who are complaining about the government today. “Those politicians don’t know what they’re doing. If I were up in Washington, this is what I would do.” But Absalom ultimately failed. In explanation of that, Woodrow Kroll of Back to the Bible says, “No one is ever successful in any kind of ministry if their goal is to make themselves successful. Our goal always ought to be to make the next person up in line successful. Because when they’re successful we’re successful.” [David: Deposed Ruler] Many people see writing as a mi...

Y esterday, we learned that the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Westboro Baptist Church and their protests at the funerals of service men and women. Westboro Baptist Church, which is Baptist in name only, has been in the news often during the past few years for their protests and use of hate speech. At one of their protests, you are likely to see signs that read, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Fags,” and “You’re Going to Hell.” These are not our kind of Baptists. These are the kind of people who give Baptists a bad name. These are the kind of people who are participating in things that do not show the love of God to a lost and dying world. I see no way to condone anything about the actions of these people. And yet, this ruling is good news. As much as we would like to see the Westboro Baptist Church protests stop, this ruling is a victory for free speech. Let’s turn this around. Not that long ago, a street preacher in another country was out preaching the gospel. A gay...

S teve Laube talked about this book trailer on his blog the other day. Okay, I’m impressed with the production quality, but it doesn’t really give me any reason to buy the book. It doesn’t really tell me anything about what I can expect to find in the book if I read it. What is the benefit to me? At first, I thought it was a pro-life book, since it showed the image of a baby on the preview, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. The title of the book seems to imply that it is a list of prices. I can’t think of why I would want that, though I doubt that is what it is. My conclusion is that this trailer is a huge waste of money. What do you think of trailers for books? Do you think they are beneficial or are they all a waste of money? What do you think of publishers requiring their authors to pay for trailers for their books?

T he award for the most anticipated book for the month of March as to go to Rob Bell’s Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived from HarperCollins. Even before the book officially releases, people are already speculating on what it says. In both the product description and the video featuring Rob Bell talking about the book, it appears that the book is going to declare that God won’t actually send people to hell for eternity because “Love Wins.” One possibility is that this is just a marketing ploy. In the promotional stuff I’ve seen, Rob Bell asks a bunch of questions without giving the answers. Though he implies that the view that hell is hot and full of billions of people may be wrong, he doesn’t actually say that in the promotional material. He only asks how people know that. He also suggests that his view of things is more optimistic than the view most of us hold. But here again, he doesn’t actually tell us what his view is, only that “Love Wins.” ...

D o you teach Sunday school? I do. Part of the time anyway. I actually hold the position of Assistant Sunday School Teacher . I also serve on our church’s Christian Education and Nominating Committee, but that isn’t important right now. The job of Assistant Sunday School Teacher is one of the most difficult jobs I’ve ever been asked to do and I say this from the perspective of someone who has held several positions in the church, including Sunday School Teacher . In some ways, the job of Assistant Sunday School Teacher seems less demanding than that of Sunday School Teacher . The Sunday School Teacher has more responsibilities and the Assistant Sunday School Teacher isn’t called upon to teach unless the Sunday School Teacher is out for some reason. It sounds easy until you realize that for the Assistant Sunday School Teacher to do his job properly he must be prepared to teach the class if the Sunday School Teacher calls him thirty minutes before class and says, “I’m sick, can ...