Timothy's Thoughts

I ’ve heard it said that 90% of what a person will learn in his lifetime he learns before he turns age five. I figure that statement is just one of those things that someone threw out there to highlight the importance of teaching young children rather than having much basis in fact. Even if someone attempted to back up this claim with a scientific study, the big question is what you consider to be learning. Young children learn a lot. They learn to talk. They learn to walk. They learn to dress themselves. They learn to draw and paint. Some may learn to cook. They learn to play together and share. They learn to turn on their favorite television shows. They learn all of this before they turn five. But people learn throughout much of their lives. Whether we realize it or not, we’re learning something new every day. Look at all the people who can talk coherently about which professional athletes will have a good season or why a trade is going to ruin a team’s chances. It’s debatable how ...

L ast week, I alluded to the fact that pride looks for one’s own success at the expense of others, while humility seeks the success of others. I was speaking primarily about authors because authors struggle over the issue of praising their own work. Looking at my own work, the two non-fiction books are very clearly books that are designed to help other people. But it’s never so clear when we look at novels. If our goal should be to help others, what should a novelist be doing? The traditionally published author can say he’s helping the publisher’s employees put bread on the table. But even the most haughty author can make that claim. We would hope that there would be something significantly different between the haughty author and the humble author. If the author puts aside pride and takes on humility, we would like to see some change that takes place in the way he does things. With novels, it’s all about the story, so any difference will show up there. I think the difference betwe...

I f you want to get God upset with you—and I mean really upset—take credit for the things he has done. That’s pride . Isaiah 42:8 says, “I am the Lord; that is my name. And my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images.” When we lift ourselves up with pride, we try to take God’s glory. The Bible gives many examples of blessings lost because of pride. Recently in some writer circles, the topic of pride and humility came up. Some writers are opposed to false humility, referring that people would just say what they really think of their work. Honest pride seems better than dishonest humility. And when you consider how the publishing industry is structured, I can understand that feeling. Writers who are trying to succeed have to promote their work. But some people have the idea that it isn’t pride if we let others validate our work rather than just saying we think it is good. Look at what happened to Herod in Acts 12. He gave a great speech to some visitors an...

A uthor Jeremie Kubicek recently stated on Michael Hyatt’s blog that if you are a leader, your followers will be asking “Are you for me, against me, or for yourself?” I agree with what he says, to a point, but it seems to me that it may not just be your followers who ask that and how they answer that question may determine whether they are willing to follow you or not. In any case, that is certainly true with books. If you are an author, one thing you want to know is why people aren’t reading your books. I visit the forums on Amazon.com occasionally. I participate until the conversation gets old and then I stay away for a few months. One of the things I’ve noticed is that people on the forums hate authors who self promote their books, even to the point that some become angry if an author even mentions he has a book. If we look at this as a moral issue, there’s nothing wrong with an author self-promoting a book on Amazon.com. The whole reason Amazon.com provides a forum is to sell st...

R ecently, Michael Hyatt blogs about The Benefits of Playing Full Out . In that post, he begins by saying, “I attend a lot of conferences and meetings. I have noticed that most people play it safe in these settings. They are reserved—arms crossed and skeptical—or simply distracted, hunched over their smart phone. Precious few take the plunge and play full out.” But rather than focus on what attendees ought to be doing, I’m more interested in the question of what we can do when we are speaking to a crowd like that. We can’t send the audience to a conference attendee training session before we start and yet, a speaker’s success requires that the audience learn. The crossed arms and skepticism, as well as playing with the smart phone, are protective mechanisms. Instead of faulting the attendees for fearing things we think they ought not fear, if we want to engage the audience, we must become the protection. One thing people fear is the dunce cap. In a room full of people they don’t ...

W oodrow Kroll coined a word which he used on Back to the Bible, oughtness . He used it in relationship to prayer, in that we ought to pray. He defined oughtness as "that inner sense of obligation to obedience that many Christians find annoying and therefore unheeded." In the context of prayer, we sometimes find it difficult to pray because we pray and it seems like nothing is happening or we feel like we don’t have time. But we ought to do it. One of the things that stood out from what Woodrow Kroll said is that he made a distinction between oughtness and legalism . It would be easy enough for us to make this into a legal requirement for religious practice. We might tell people, pray three times a day or God won’t bless you. But it isn’t a legal requirement. It is just something we ought to do. But oughtness applies to more than prayer. There are a number of things that I see church people doing or not doing that bother me. Some of it is things clearly defined in the ...

H ow can salvation possibly be just? When we as Christians attempt to share the gospel with those around us, one of the issues we may encounter is that a person may question why a loving God would send anyone to hell. It is simple enough to say it is because the Lord is just. The Bible describes him as just also. “The just Lord is in the midst thereof; He will not do iniquity: Every morning doth he bring his judgment to light, he faileth no.” (Zaphaniah 3:5a) But how do we then explain salvation? If he saves us because he loves us, does that mean he saves everyone? Or maybe as Calvinists believe, he loves the world, but the world isn’t really the whole world, just the elect? But even if that were true, how can salvation possibly be called justice? Is there something about us that makes us worthy of salvation? That would imply works for salvation. Looking at what we have to offer, none of us deserve salvation and yet the Lord has offered it to us anyway. How can he be called just if he ...

I s this you last day on planet earth? Some people think it is. The rest of us are just making bad jokes about those people. We know that Harold Camping is wrong because his predictions are against the Bible that he claims to have gotten them from. The Bible tells us that no man knows the day nor the hour. It also says it is not for us to know the times or the seasons concerning Christ’s return. And if that isn’t enough, Camping is predicting the total annihilation of the world too soon. The Bible tells us that there will be a seven-year tribulation period. That hasn’t happened yet, so the world isn’t going to be wiped clean later this year. The Bible also tells us that there will be a 1,000 year reign of Christ before the world is destroyed. So, Camping is at least 1,000 years off in his prediction—which he would know if he had read the Bible instead of trying to use it as some kind of code. The sad thing is that many people will point to Harold Camping’s mistake as yet more proof t...

W hen we have trouble understanding what a passage is saying just from what the writer wrote in the verses around it, we must look elsewhere. It’s at this point that many people turn to commentaries, to see what other people think it means, but then we’re forced to rely on the opinion of others. The great thing about the Bible is that it is all true. If we have one passage that is difficult to understand in one book, we can look at what other books say on related subjects. Our understanding of a passage can only be correct if it doesn’t require something else the Bible says to be incorrect. For example, if John had said a coin was black and Peter had said it was white, it would be valid to think that it is black on one side and white on the other. It is rare that thing work that well, but you get the idea. To understand 1 Timothy 2:12, it is helpful to consider 1 Corinthians 14:34, 35. “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but [they...

I n coming to an understanding of 1 Timothy 2:12 we need to understand how it fits in the whole of the letter Paul wrote to Timothy. To understand the purpose of First Timothy, it helps to read the first chapter. What we find there is that Paul is encouraging Timothy to continue to teach people to teach sound doctrine, which is why he left him at Ephesus in the first place. He also warns him of those who would compel the believers to keep the law without understanding the purpose of the law. So, the first thing Paul tells Timothy should be done is to pray for our governmental leaders. If we understand this letter to be telling Timothy what he should be doing to encourage teaching sound doctrine, the call for men to pray is the first task Paul gives Timothy. As we noted before, that leads into the instruction concerning women: In like manner also, that women should adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobermindedness, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or...

W e began by trying to understand what 1 Timothy 2:12 means. To do that we pulled together the verse that form the paragraph around it. But that paragraph begins with a backwards reference to the previous paragraph, “in like manner.” Looking at the previous verses, we see that Paul is talking about the need to pray for our leaders. It appears he could be talking about both men and women praying until he gets to verse eight, “It is my will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.” It is my opinion that Paul is drawing a connection between the men “lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting” and the women being modest, shamefaced and soberminded. I don’t think he is saying that men should pray and not do good works or that women should do good works and not pray, but it appears the emphasis is on the men praying and the women doing good works. In like manner also, that women should adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedn...

L ast time I asked you to consider what you want 1 Timothy 2:12 to mean. Depending on what you’ve been taught, here are a few things you might want it to mean: Women can’t preach or teach in the church. Women can’t argue with their husbands. Women shouldn’t disagree with their husbands at church. Women can teach, but only women and children. Women can teach men, as long as their husbands aren’t in the class. Paul just found it painful to listen to women teach. This has nothing to do with women today. This deals with the home and not the church. I’m sure there are many others, but the important thing is that you don’t try to force this passage to mean what you want it to. It may mean what you want it to, but be open to the possibility that you are wrong. A good place to start with understanding a verse is to look for the complete thought. The verse and chapter markings are not part of scripture. They are there to aid us in finding passages, but they often create breaks in pa...

B ible study sounds like a good thing to do, but how many people do it well? For many people, the extent of their Bible study is that they read the Bible. There are various plans to read the Bible through in a year. That’s a good thing to do, but there is a risk that a person will read the words in an effort to meet the daily quota without understanding the passage. Some people don’t even do that much. For some people, the limit of their Bible study is that they have a few favorite passages they read from time to time. They may have memorized these passages, but we often find that they use them out of context. My favorite example of this is when people mention that the Bible says “where there is no vision the people perish” just before they talk about the need for a leader to cast a vision. In context, that verse has nothing to do with a leader casting his vision. And the worst form of Bible study is to listen only to what the preacher says. Preaching is good, but preachers can be wr...

S ometimes it is easy to forget just how amazing God’s creation is. I planted some seeds the other day. I looked online to see how long it would take for them to come up. What I saw indicated that it could take from two to four weeks—a whole month. Why does it have to take so long? I wondered. But when you think about it, seeds are an amazing thing. A seed can lie dormant for weeks, months, or even years. It doesn’t do much, it just sits there. We pack them in little envelopes and ship them around the country. They sit on store shelves, waiting for someone to pay a couple bucks for the package. And then we put them in the ground. We may add water or wait for God to, but that’s about all we do. Then from that tiny little speck comes a green shoot. Some will grow several inches in a day. Roots form. Leaves unfold. The plant continues to grow and branches form. Before long, the plant has flowers, beautiful in their detail, that form. Then as the flower withers, fruit begins to form and...

W e often think of leadership in terms of who has the authority to tell other people what to do. This probably develops from childhood. Parents are the leaders of their families. Children who don’t respect that leadership may receive a few good swats on the backside. But authority isn’t always so clearly defined. There are many cases in which a group of equals choose to follow a leader. Consider the case of a church choir. We could correctly make the claim that the choir director derives his authority from the church, since the church elected him, but the choir is voluntary. Its members don’t have to participate and yet they show up and look to the director for leadership. Maybe a better example would be a small group Bible study. Five or six people decide to get to get together for a Bible study. They are all equals, but one of them leads. That one person may set the time they will meet. He will control the format of the Bible study. He may choose which section of the Bible they will ...

S atan isn’t stupid. He may be a lot of things, but he isn’t that. God created Satan as a beautiful creature, one of his angels, but Satan turned against God and was cast from heaven along with those who followed him. I’ve often wondered how a being like Satan could stand in the presence of God and still imagine himself to be God. Though I suppose it is not unlike those of us who see how amazing this world is but reject the God who created it. Another thing I’ve often wondered about is Satan’s role in the crucifixion of Jesus. Did Satan not understand what was happening? Was Satan like many of the leaders of that time who thought Jesus was setting himself up to declare himself king of the Jews? Jesus died at the time of Passover. I can’t help but wonder if the leaders feared that Jesus would follow in the steps of Moses and attempt to lead the people out from under Roman rule at the end of Passover. But is that what Satan thought? And what of the end of the world? We know that Sata...

D espite the claims of some people, there isn’t much people can do to guarantee that a book will be a bestseller. You can dump a bunch of money into it and that might produce more sales, but the sales may not be enough to recover the cost. But consider the book Heaven is for Real from Thomas Nelson, which has recently had a quick climb up the bestseller lists and compare it to The Shack , which had a similar climb a few months ago. They are so alike that we could almost classify them as a genre. Both books handle the unknown. The Shack paints a picture of God, while Heaven is for Real paints a picture of heaven. They are both written by Bible scholars. They both have an emotional draw that makes the general reader feel good about the topic. They both disregard the clear teaching of the Bible concerning the topics they discuss. If you scan the Google search results for these books, what you’ll find is a fairly even distribution between those readers who are impressed with the book ...

T he saying “Preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary,” is often attributed to Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone (Francis of Assisi), though no one seems to be able to find any evidence that he actually said this. No matter who coined the saying, it grits the gourd of some folks. The saying itself sounds rather profound because of the irony built into it. When we hear someone talking about preaching the gospel, we immediately think of someone using the spoken word, since that is what preaching is, but then it turns it around to imply that words may not be necessary. In a way, that sounds good because it is very important that our actions reveal the love of God. We can also think of the sermons people preach and the lessons they teach, and we can see ways in which they might get the point across better if they would show us what they mean rather than just lecturing. The problem with this statement is that words are always necessary. What we do to show the love of God thro...

M oms are great. They come in all shapes and sizes. There are big moms, little moms, fat moms, and skinny moms. There are good moms and bad moms. There are gentle moms and mean moms. There are smart moms and dumb moms. There are pretty moms and ugly moms. But whatever they are, they are our moms and most of us are pretty happy with that. Moms are special. It’s an odd sort of thing that no matter how a mother might treat her children, there’s always that bond. Some children wish their mothers were better people. Some children don’t get along with their mother. Some children don’t see their mother for years, but she’s still their mother. I can only thank God that I don’t have a mother like that, but even if she were, I would love her. And then there are those mothers who came to motherhood in an odd sort of way. I suppose I have a fascination with mothers who adopt children. I wrote two books about mothers like that. ( Searching for Mom and Mother Not Wanted ) You kind of think that...

E arlier this week, I said that there is some confusion among Baptists concerning the tradition of dancing. Some have pointed to verses in the Bible (and rightly so) that tell us to praise the Lord with dance and have suggested that the tradition itself is wrong. God calls for dancing, so let’s dance, they say. Then there are those who don’t know why Baptists don’t dance, but that’s the way grandma taught it, so let’s keep those feet still. Then there are those who say that as long as we’re not dancing in the church building, it’s alright. You get the picture. It isn’t as clear as it was when everyone said that Baptists don’t dance. In the Bible, we find dancing that is appropriate and dancing that is inappropriate. (Ecclesiastes 3:4) That sounds simple enough, but how do we draw the line between the two? Psalm 149:3 and Psalm 150:4 appear to be talking about appropriate dancing in praise to God. When you look at the Second Baptist Houston video , it wouldn’t be hard to argue both wa...

Y esterday, we looked at tradition in meetings. In that situation, relying on tradition can be useful because it allows the meeting to run smoothly even when there are people involved who haven’t spent a lot of time planning for the meeting. This is especially important when the president is elected at the beginning of the meeting, as sometimes happens. But churches also have traditions. Once again, some traditions are good, while others make us wonder why we’re still doing them. I grew up in a small church. Like many churches, we would take up the offering just before the preaching service. That tradition was good in that we needed to take up the offering sometime and we might as well do it when people were expecting it. The church was small enough that they only needed one usher. He would carry the plate around to the various people, then he would place it on the table in front of the pulpit. Finally, he would cover it with a smaller offering plate we had. If he couldn’t find that,...

W hen I attended the BMAA annual meeting, the president of the association preached on the first night. The president’s message has become a tradition in recent years. There has always been an annual message. That is also traditional. But on the first night, one of the vice-presidents got up and did another traditional thing. He expressed the appreciation of the association for the sermon. It is traditional for someone to be asked to get up in front of the association after a sermon, shake the preacher’s hand and express gratitude for the sermon, usually summarizing the message as he does. There is also a tradition of someone getting up to introduce the speaker before the sermon. I’m not sure how these traditions got started, but they have become a part of nearly every church association I’ve been involved with. At the meeting, a group of us were sitting around discussing a few things and one of the things that came up was the level of planning of the worship services. Considering th...

T he idea that our Baptist predecessors might have been wrong in prohibiting dancing doesn’t bother me as much as how much it seems like people have such a disdain for tradition these days. I’ve heard of music directors who refuse to use any song in the church worship service that is older than ten years old. There are preachers who refuse to wear a suit and tie because they see it as steeped in tradition or they’re trying to impress “the young people” and yet, if you turn on the television, many of the actors on shows and the show hosts are wearing suits and ties. Some are even wearing vests with their suits. But I’m not trying to argue that every pastor should wear a suit and tie, just that not wearing one to break with tradition isn’t a great reason. What is tradition? The word itself might bring to mind the Thanksgiving turkey or opening gifts on Christmas morning or a bride wearing a white dress. But if we really think about it, tradition is society’s way of passing down a way o...

A few days ago, someone posted a video on Facebook of 2,000 people from Second Baptist Church in Houston, Texas dancing. In the comments, Roger Bennett (I don’t know him either.) said, “I remember when Baptists didn't dance in front of other Baptists.” His comment made me think about just how much has changed in just the past few years. He has a point. It wasn’t that long ago that Baptist frowned at dancing and now many of them use it as part of their worship services. It wasn’t that long ago that every preacher had a copy of John R. Rice’s “What’s Wrong With the Dance?” on his bookshelf and would preach against dancing from the pulpit with fire in his eyes. These days, many pulpits have been replaced with barstools and the sermons hardly call anything wrong. But what I’m seeing is confusion among the church members. One church includes dancing in their worship and yet I heard someone say just the other day that dancing is okay as long as it isn’t in the church building. But if da...