Read with Me
2 Timothy 3:10-13 (HCSB)
But you have followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, and endurance, along with the persecutions and sufferings that came to me in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra. What persecutions I endured! Yet the Lord rescued me from them all. In fact, all those who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Evil people and impostors will become worse, deceiving and being deceived.
Listen with Me
Paul has just finished writing strongly against all those who were trying to corrupt the Church, redirecting it for their own gain, and in the process destroying some people’s faith. He has nothing but condemnation for them.
Now he contrasts what those corruptors were doing in the Church with his own ministry. Paul had spent more than 30 years as an apostle, a missionary, an emissary of the Kingdom of God, all at a great cost to himself. But despite the suffering he had endured, he did not waver in his bedrock beliefs and teachings. He never tried to use the Church or the people in it to turn a profit for himself.
Paul brings to Timothy’s mind the persecutions he had suffered in the cities of Galatia: Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, Timothy’s hometown, where things had reached such a state that Paul had been stoned (Acts 14:1-20, 16:1-3). But even in those horrible situations, Paul’s emphasis here is that God had delivered him and had empowered him to continue on in his ministry.
Pull notes in verse 12 that what had happened to him in all those places, and more, was not an anomaly. It was to be expected, according to the clear teachings of Jesus Himself (John 16:1-4 and several others). Therefore, Paul had shrugged off those struggles and had moved briskly forward, facing each challenge squarely as it had arisen.
Paul also understood that as the Church moved forward and displaced the darkness in the hearts and souls of people with God’s divine light, the darkness was going to push back, struggling to regain its lost territory. Even though Paul understood the God’s light was infinitely stronger than the darkness of the enemy, he knew that the struggle was real and would be ongoing. Even when the enemy was forced to cede those who had been brought into the kingdom, the enemy would double down on those who were still in his camp, pulling them ever deeper into his corruption, and setting them to oppose the people of God’s kingdom.
Pray with Me
Father, thank You for pulling back the curtain so that we can see the battle for the hearts and souls of people for what it truly is. Even though the fight is often challenging, and even though the war at times looks unwinnable, help us to use Paul as our model and to continue to fight. Every soul we help to find its way into Your kingdom is territory that is taken from the enemy’s control, and that is powerful motivation to continue the fight until Jesus returns to bring the final victory. I praise You today, Lord! Amen.