Living Word Live! Hold Fast

``Paul's final word to Timothy, wasn't a strategy either. It was, it wasn't a leadership framework. It was this. Stay in the word. The people who taught it to you believed it with their lives. The scripture that shaped you has always known where to point you. The god who breathed it is still breathing. And everything that you need for every good work that lies ahead, it's it's already in your hands. Hold on to it. Hold fast. [01:03:45] (38 seconds)  #StayInTheWord

Think about the hardest thing that you've faced in the last year. It could be a loss or a diagnosis, a broken relationship, a decision that you had to make that just felt impossible, like you couldn't do it, or a conversation that you dreaded having. And now think about this. If if you'd been saturated in scripture, if the word had been living and and active in you, how might that have changed how you walked through that situation? The point is Paul's not describing a distant ideal. He's describing something that's available to every single one of us as believers. Amen. [00:59:08] (53 seconds)  #SaturatedByScripture

And as I was studying this, I thought, what does that say about the bible? Well, it tells me that the bible is not a book that tells you how to be a better person. It's not a how to manual for good people. It's a book that tells you about a God who became a person. And then he died and he rose again so that he could help you be with him forever. And Paul is saying, hold on to it. It's always been pointing you home. [00:51:37] (35 seconds)  #BiblePointsHome

What it is, it's the kind of wisdom that knows what is true when everything else claims to be true. It's the wisdom that sees through the noise in life to find the thing worth living for. And here's the breathtaking part. Paul says that salvation at the very end, that salvation comes through faith in Christ. Not perfect theology, not perfect behavior. Thank you, Jesus, because I would not qualify. Not through a a flawless track record, through faith, through trust, through that simple stubborn act of saying, Jesus, I'm in, all the way, even now, in the most desperate moments of our lives. [00:50:35] (60 seconds)  #FaithNotPerfection

So Paul is saying, the reason that you can trust the word of God is that you've seen it work in real people, grandmother, mother, Paul himself. You haven't just received a theology. You've received a testimony. And testimonies are are harder to shake than an argument. Here's what Paul knows that that Timothy needs to hear, that when the pressure comes, and it will, when the critics speak, when your doubts rise, you will not just remember a verse. What you will do is you will remember a face. [00:45:59] (42 seconds)  #TestimoniesOverArguments

But during this transition, familiar voices will go quiet and new questions will arise, And in that fog, the temptation from you all will be to drift, to drift to what what feels comfortable, maybe to drift towards what's new and exciting or toward whatever voice is loudest in the moment. Paul is saying to us, don't drift. Open the book. Trust at the compass. It's never lied, and it's not gonna start now. [01:03:10] (35 seconds)  #DontDriftStayAnchored

The words of scripture were in the room when when Timothy was learning to walk. They were on his mother's lips as a as a lullaby. They were the furniture of his childhood. I mean, imagine that for a moment. The voice you heard most as a child. What was it saying? For Timothy, it was the word of God. It was simply the the the air of his home, the rhythm of life, what we say today. The story of his family lived inside of the scriptures, Paul says. [00:49:10] (42 seconds)  #RaisedByScripture

He hooked me in with music, but he kept me in with Christ, with this story that made me want to come back for more. I was out on a I was on a path, and I could have gone one of two ways. And the way that I was headed was, you know, theft and robbery and drugs and, you know the story, sex, drugs, and rock and roll and all of that. I still kept the rock and roll, but, you know and Pat, I remember, called me in after a a band practice, and he did what the scripture says. He rebuked me. [00:44:40] (40 seconds)  #KeptByChristAndCommunity