Timothy's Thoughts

A t the beginning of every story, there is a point at which we realize that if something doesn’t change, the hero will die. Often, this is a figurative kind of death more than a literal death, but the hero also comes to the realization and makes the necessary change that takes us into the meat of the story. That makes for interesting storytelling, but so often we find that life isn’t that way. How often do we come to that point in life where we feel we have the weight of the world on our shoulders and if something doesn’t change we’ll surely die under the load. But unlike the heroes of our stories, we don’t often have the option of choosing to change things. It will surely kill us. But the thing about real life is that when you come to the realization that we’re on the verge of death and it is hopeless, we also come to the realization that death isn’t an option. Oh, death will come soon enough, but no matter how much junk life dumps on you, you don’t have the option of giving up. No ...

“ G odliness with contentment is great gain,” Paul told Timothy. Most people turn that around, believing that if they can gain a lot then they must be godly. I work in a corporate environment and all most people care about is what other people can do to help them advance their careers. That takes priority over the product. If producing a good product will advance their career, they’ll produce a good product, but what they really want is to advance their career. There are times that it’s hard to stay content in that kind of environment. People are always asking what you’re doing to advance your career or why you haven’t reached some level in your career. But I can’t help but think that another statement by Paul is very true in the corporate world as well. “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” Paul is referring to the fact that we can take nothing we gain in this world into the next, but there is some truth to that in the corporate world ...

“ D o you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” It’s a question we might ask a person we’re trying to share the gospel with, but would you believe there is a bad connotation to the concept of “a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” In some evangelical circles, the personal relationship with Jesus Christ is viewed as the highest form of the Christian life. In other words, a person has a personal relationship with Jesus and they need nothing else. Jesus talks directly to them, so nothing could be better, right? Wrong. The problem is that most elevated relationship in the Bible is that of Jesus and the church, not Jesus and the individual. I’m sure that at this point, some of you are thinking I’m grasping at straws. After all, isn’t it true that all saved people are part of the church automatically and so the only thing we need to strive for is the personal relationship? No, that isn’t true. Aside from a few passages that could be taken either way, all of the references ...

O n my way to work one morning, I happened to hear John MacArthur on the radio talking about the importance of the church. In particular, he was talking about the local church, not the big invisible body of believes that some people believe everyone who has been saved is a member of. He got off on things like church membership and lettering members from one church to another, baptism and the Lord’s supper, all of which he is for. I won’t repeat all he said, but he also got off on the issue of parachurch organizations, which is any faith-based organization that works outside the church and/or across denominational lines and engage in social welfare and evangelism efforts. Perhaps to my shame, this is a topic I’ve avoided. This is partly because I have friends who either currently or sometime in their past worked for one of these organizations. It’s a difficult situation to be in when you end up saying something against the organization a friend works for, especially when it has the ap...

I was listening to Dr. Tony Evans the other day and he had a view of 1 Corinthians 11 that I thought was interesting. You recall that this passage talks about the relationship between men and women, but it gets off into this thing about long hair and short hair. I’ve heard some people say that Paul was dealing with the customs of his day so some of what he said might not have the same application today. I’ve never liked that idea because it opens the door for us to ask how much of the rest of the Bible doesn’t apply to us today. Dr. Evans made the point that this dealing with the man being created before the woman. The woman was created to help the man. The woman is there to fill in the gap of what is missing in the man. Dr. Evans says that is why Paul gets off on hair. The man has short hair and often has a whole lot less of it, but the woman has long beautiful hair. She makes up for what the man lacks in looks. What the man lacks in other areas of life, if wife makes up. It remi...

H ave you ever thought about why the world is round instead of some other shape, like flat or square? I hadn’t really given it much thought, but I found a very strong spherical magnet the other day. It had some metal filings on it. The magnet was about the size of a ball bearing. How do you get metal filings off a round magnet? I tried wiping them off with my finger and then with a tissue, but I succeeded only in pushing them around to the other side. It made me think. Isn’t that what happens at a much larger scale with our world? There are things that try to wipe us out, like storms or famine or extreme heat or cold. Flood and fires come, but what do we do? We stay here affixed to our planet, but we might move around to a safer location. The shape of our planet keeps us from being wiped off into space. I did eventually solve my problem. It turns out that the magnetic bonds of the molecules in Scotch tape are stronger than the magnet I found. By rolling the magnet across the tape, ...

H ow easy it is to say something wrong. The other day, someone asked me a question and I gave an answer, but after she walked away I thought about what I had said and realized that I hadn’t given her the correct answer. It wasn’t an important question. She was asking it more as small talk than anything else. This particular person picks up the trash where I work, so she speaks to many people throughout the day. Now suppose she repeats what I said. That person will also have the wrong information. That information could spread, simply because I misspoke. We all know that gossip is wrong. We’ve heard that all our lives and yet there are so many people who engage in it. I think what happens is that people don’t see what they are doing as gossip—they’re just repeating information someone else gave them. Of course, we all know that gossip is talking about the personal details of other people’s lives. The danger in gossip isn’t so much that we’re talking about people as much as it is so ea...