Continuing for Life (1961)
Message from Urbana 61by Charles Troutman
"Really, it isn't the casualty that bothers us, it's the sore feet. Many of us could be quite noble; when things get hot, we could stand up and get shot at if necessary, but oh, the sore feet - the miles of marching till we get there."
This is the Lord's day, in which at seven-day intervals we meet together to remember His resurrection. Shall we turn now to the Word of our risen Lord, asking that He may speak to us from it today? Let us consider together II Timothy,
the second chapter, and the first seven verses.
You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to satisfy the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops. Think over what I say, for the Lord will grant you understanding in everything.
Seven verses here, seven points. They are relevant to us, for in his last recorded letter, Paul is speaking to his first vice-president, Timothy, urging him to continue in the work. You and I have ahead of us in the coming days the problem of continuing the work which God has given us here. Thus these seven principles are very much to the point.
Principle number seven covers the other six and covers them in a unique way. As we look at this passage in the Word of God, let us bear in mind that the seventh principle applies to all the rest. Think over, meditate-cogitate is perhaps the best word, although we don't use it much now. Turn over these principles in your mind, consider them deeply and intently; then if you think that you have the answer, forget it, for the Lord will give you understanding. The inference is that, having thought through these problems and their implications in order to understand what the Lord wants of us, we must get from Him, not merely a principle, but direct information concerning the working out of that principle.
We must obtain this information directly from God Himself, in order that we do not become bound in a legalism of principles rather than in the freedom of a Person. Principles there are, but there is more than that here.
These principles are the ground rules of Christian life and service, and each one applies personally. Paul is warning Timothy. He says, "Look, you're going to need God's understanding, because, quite frankly, the specific application of each principle may differ considerably in the lives of different Christians." This seventh verse gives us a foretaste that it is going to be this way, that there will be variations in application. Therefore, we have got to understand personally what these principles mean. Now let's get into them.
God Our Strength
Number one: "be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus." Now it's my guess that if you're familiar with this phrase, you haven't a clue as to what it means - simply because the words are such simple English. Let's put it another way. "Timothy, your strength is to be in that which has been given to you, not what you have naturally." In other words, the Apostle Paul is saying, "Timothy, you've got a job down there to do, for which you are not properly qualified. Now your strength is to be in the fact that you're trusting Jesus Christ."
Specifically, some of us find it much easier to trust our Lord to keep the pearly gates open than to open the next door of opportunity. We find it much easier to postpone our trust to eternity than to rely on God for tomorrow or even today. "Now the things that you are strong in, Timothy, are the things which you have been given, given from God and by God-not the things that you normally possess."
Timothy had a remarkable background, and the Apostle Paul said he was to build on this. Apparently his mother and grandmother were women who had a solid confidence in God. And Paul says, "I see this same confidence in you, Timothy." Now this trust, as the Apostle wrote to the Ephesians, this faith is a gift of God. Be strong in that. As you and I look at our own work, as we return to our campuses and homes, the job is too great. That's precisely the situation and the opportunity of which the Apostle is speaking. You're to be strong in what you have been given, not in what you have naturally. If you have been given an insight into God's work around the world through this convention, your strength lies in that. You may never have been to Australia or India or China. Never mind. You have been given an insight into the heart of God here - into His love for you and for all men. Now your strength lies there.
This thought can be phrased another way: God never gives us a job to do for which we're capable. Some of you have been elected to Inter-Varsity chapter positions. You're quite capable of fulfilling the duties of your office now, but you weren't when you took over the job. And of course, you prayed like fury then. You don't have to now. You know how to do the job. (That's another matter; the Apostle hits that subject later on.) Certainly in a few months, God is going to take you out of this job you're in now, and He is going to give you another job for which you are not prepared. Trust Him, for your strength lies in God's endowment, not in your ability.
Teaching to Teach
Number two: "what you have heard from me … entrust to faithful men who will … teach others also." We have heard this command often. Paul gives us here as a general principle the command to instruct, to educate. He himself speaks to teach others to teach others to teach others to teach others to teach others. We could go on indefinitely - a tape recorder would do just as well.
Your work for God and my work for God should be of such a nature that it fosters the spiritual knowledge, growth, life of others - that they may in turn so train others. I think more than any other of the seven principles here, this one depends upon our attitude. What I do for God should be done in such a way that the person or the persons to whom I am ministering grasp God's idea that they're to do the same thing. If you're leading a Bible study group in your chapter or in your church, your purpose should be to have, say, in six or eighteen months' time, a whole flock of Bible study leaders just raring to go. Then you have to start all over again. But that's the way it should be.
One of the curses of the way we have tended to live out our Christian faith is that we have ministered with no idea that our ministry is to go beyond itself, to outlast itself and us. If we do not leave this convention desirous of getting others to see something of God's goodness and God's work around the world, then we have failed. We may be fizzing over inside with enthusiasm, but unless this spiritual exhilaration is reproduced in others who themselves will go on in life with God, it's empty effervescence. So very often our personal work is like this: even the people whom God brings to Himself through us never catch on to the idea that they are to do precisely for others what we have done for them. Perhaps our Bible study and our prayer life ends with us. If this is so, if this is the principle under which you operate, you are robbing God and you are robbing your friends of the privilege of serving Him. You may say, "Oh, when I get elected to be an officer of the chapter or when I get out on the mission field, I will do this or that" - but your dream will end there. The principle of the Word of God is that in the work you do for Him, you're to instruct others. You're to teach teachers. You're to win potential soul-winners. You're to pray in order that others will pray, and that they will pray in order that others will pray, and so on ad infinitum.
This is a principle of the Word of God; we neglect it to our peril. It is not enough to say that some people have the gift of enthusing others. In the ground rules of Christian activity, you and I are commanded so to act that those to whom we minister will also minister to others as we have ministered to them. Now I say this is largely a matter of attitude, yet it is an important attitude. Think about your activities for God and see if they end with you. If they do, fall on your knees and ask Him for His viewpoint and His solution. Consider this problem, and let the Lord give you understanding of the way out. For whatever we do - on the campus, overseas, in our churches, wherever we may be - should continue to be multiplied for Christ's sake.
Our Share of Suffering
Number three: "Take your share of suffering as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." Basically and in modern English, stop fussing. What did you expect when you became a Christian? That the angels would come down, and pick you up by the ears, and carry you on? That every time things got a little rough and the sidewalk a bit wet, there would be supernatural rubbers to keep your feet dry? What did you think you were getting into? Our Lord Jesus Christ was made perfect by the things that He suffered. Who do we think we are, who do you think you are, that we should escape when the Captain of our salvation took this particular way? One of our constant difficulties is that we're surprised when we run into trouble, in spite of the fact that the Word of God always says, "Look, you're headed for trouble, you're going into battle." What do you expect to do, throw cream puffs? Remember, there is such a thing as a casualty. Really, it isn't the casualty that bothers us, it's the sore feet. Many of us could be quite noble; when things get hot, we could stand up and get shot at if necessary, but oh, the sore feet - the miles of marching till we get there.
I remember talking to one of the new missionaries in Singapore just three years ago. He said, "Look, the people around here, they don't want to become Christians." Well, what did he expect? You and I also share that infantile vision. I'm not sure where it comes from, but perhaps some of our early Sunday school literature still gives that impression by presenting the missionary, sitting on a camp stool under a palm tree, with a lot of little black children around him eagerly listening. I suppose they do that on the campus - that every time you stand up in a corner of the library and open your Bible, the students just flock to you with eager faces!
What did you think you were getting into when you decided to become a Christian? Stop fussing. Endure hardness. Self-pity can rob us of enthusiasm; it can rob us of confidence in God, which is worse. We can become so sorry for ourselves - but look, we enter the Kingdom through much tribulation. Tribulation is a frightful English word. I think if it were translated properly in business terminology, we would say, we enter the Kingdom through much pressure of work. The term is that from which we get our modern English word pressure. You say, "But there is so much to do. Everyone wants something at once." Ask Eric Fife. He's just close to going mad, I suppose, as this convention goes on. But what did he expect as its director? I happen to know that he expected this, and he's not fussing. It is in the very nature of the work that you and I will be pressured beyond endurance. That's the kind of game we're in. Paul is saying to Timothy, "Cut it out, stop fussing."
Freedom to Please Him
Number four - and this principle, probably more than any other in these verses, requires the covering umbrella of number seven: Don't get "entangled in civilian pursuits." Our aim is to satisfy the One who has enlisted us. Now the difficulty here is that what may be an entanglement for me is not necessarily an entanglement for someone else. Those of you who have read Sacrifice [an IVP book originally published in 1936] know that the chief means of financing Howard Guinness's first visit to Canada in 1928 was the British students' sale of their camera equipment to give him a one-way ticket. They felt that if Guinness was any good, he could get himself back. Actually, he went on to Australia, so it wasn't too bad. Now I have talked with a number of students who have felt they should give up their cameras. We are very grateful this morning that certain men who have been roaming about in our midst did not give up their cameras. To them, cameras are God's tools to do a job, whereas if you and I were behind these whirring machines, there might be overexposures, underexposures, and all varieties of error. What is a hobby of hindrance to one is the tool of grace for another.
But we are to be careful. As soldiers on service, we are not to get ourselves entangled. The thing you and I have to do - and it doesn't get any easier ten or twenty years from now - is sort ourselves out to discover what comes first. Now we usually think of this in terms of cutting out things. But this principle is not set simply in negative phrase. Its end is positive-in order to please Him.
I wonder how many of us have thought through our courses, particularly our electives, with the aim of serving God at home or abroad, professionally or nonprofessionally in the days to come. "Now don't get yourself entangled," Paul is saying, "in unnecessary, things. Get down to business with the things that are necessary. Positively work out your schedule." There are some students at secular universities who feel that their only legitimate campus activity is either the IVCF chapter or other Christian group, or the local church. They fail to see that one of God's purposes in putting them at the university is that they might participate in its activities, learn, and develop. There's athletics, there's music, there's art, there are the academic societies. There are all kinds of possible interests to explore. Sometimes, of course, students get so entangled in academic and nonacademic pursuits that they haven't time for Christian witness. That's the negative side. But positively, your life and my life should be ordered.
What are we going to do after we leave here? There should be a course of reading for each one of us - not just for the time when we've finished Missions in Crisis, but for the next five or ten years. There should be a course of speaking, of sharing your experience with others. You and I who have had the privilege of being here have an obligation to pass on. This is going to require a change in schedule; we don't have time for this. Of course, we don't but again, stop fussing. It's going to mean that God will expect us so to organize our lives that first things will come first, and incidentally, second things will come second. We don't live on top priority all the time. And third things will come third, and fourth things will come fourth. But we'll not be entangled in things that are outside of God's plan and purpose for us.
Think about this for your life. What God has spoken about to me in my life as being entanglements may not necessarily be entanglements in your life. For one thing, I am not in the business of courtship at the moment. If I were, I would have trouble with my wife. Yet for the majority of us here, next to our decision to receive Jesus Christ, the choice of our life partner is by far the most important decision we have to make. Now there is nothing quite so exciting as courtship. Most of you know that. Marriage isn't quite as exciting, it's deeper. But you may be in the midst of courtship - and again, some of you will find it easier to trust God for your eternal destiny than for husband or wife, when actually He's vitally interested in your grandchildren even if you're not. Now isn't it easy to get entangled in courtship, in the fun and excitement of getting to know a member of the opposite sex with the possibility of marriage? It is one of the great privileges God has given us, and our particular society makes the most of it, you'll have to admit.
But let us return to the principle of nonentanglement. For some of us, it's going to mean postponing thoughts of courtship and marriage for some time for Christ's sake. For others it's going to permit getting involved soon. You see, you mustn't let me tell you. You must find from our Lord what entanglement and disentanglement for you is in His sight. The way that He has led me is probably not the way He will lead you. Don't be entangled. Know what He wants for you in a particular area.
Remembering Spiritual Rules
Number five: "An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules." That's why we have referees. Sometimes in the enthusiasm of our first love for the Lord, who set us free from the things that bound us, we forget the necessity of abiding by the rules. This is particularly true as we go on to the university, where the whole universe seems to open up to us-not only the physical universe, but also the world of thought and ideas. We sense a new freedom-and it is a new and true freedom, and we thank God for it. But sometimes we forget that there are spiritual rules. You and I will not accomplish our fight for character, we will not reach spiritual maturity by any shortcuts or negation of the rules.
In I Timothy, the second chapter, jumping over a few of the words there, the Apostle Paul says, "First of all, pray." In Inter-Varsity circles you have heard some of the staff talk about the Quiet Time until they're blue in the face. Now this is not just an Inter-Varsity gimmick. If you take your concordance and go through the Scriptures to see the importance God places on daily fellowship and study with Him and His Word, you'll be appalled. You'll need about eight sheets if you write small, about fifty if you don't, just to record the instances. You'll remember that the evening quiet time was the time of God's great manifestation of Himself on Mount Carmel with Elijah. And it was at the early morning quiet time, incidentally before sunrise, that the angel Gabriel met with Zechariah in the temple. These are but two illustrations of the fact that God does expect us to meet with Him daily. There is no nonsense about it. Some of His saints have made it three times a day, but that's another matter. Your life and my life are organized around the sun, and on a daily basis we meet with God. Any shortcut of this rule ends in spiritual disaster. In adult life there will be a different schedule, a different tempo. Someone has said that there are only two classes of people that can have a regular scheduled quiet time. The first are students, the second are those in prison; I haven't been able to verify the second.
There's another rule in II Timothy 2 that has to do with study-the verse we all know, "Study to show thyself approved unto God. . . ." So many of us hope that we may come into spiritual knowledge by osmosis; that if we just ooze close enough to spiritual things, somehow God will crack through. We attend Sunday morning service, throw our minds in neutral, and challenge the minister to do something about it. No shortcut is possible here. There is the matter of witness. There is also the matter of church responsibility. There are rules for Christian service and for the development of Christian character that you and I neglect to our peril. Forgiveness is one of them. Fellowship is another. Reporting is another. The Book of Acts is full of the obligation of Christian missionaries to report back to the people who sent them. You have a responsibility to the various groups you represent. Particularly those of you who have received scholarships to Urbana have a spiritual obligation to report back to the people who made it possible for you to come. This is not just a nice gimmick. It's not just something that would be good public relations for anybody. It's a spiritual obligation laid upon you in your Christian life and service by Almighty God. Again, we neglect such obligations to our peril. We could go on indefinitely.
Shunning Professionalism
Number six: "It is the hard-working farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops." There are two readings of this. The first is that those who do the work of God should not be deprived of support. But I think the clear reading is the second that speaks against professionalism. The one who is doing the work should know what he is talking about.
We mentioned professionalism before: when you were elected to an office in the chapter, you prayed violently for grace; now that you have had a bit of experience, you don't have to pray. You've got to the place where you don't have to trust God for help; you're on the border of disaster. Professionalism can ruin Christian service and the Christian life faster than anything else, luring us to that place where we imagine we no longer need to trust Him. When you and I speak of prayer, let's make certain we know what praying is. When we speak of faith, let's be certain that we know what living by faith is. Not that we await perfection in silence. We have a duty to proclaim things that you and I have not experienced nor completely understood. There is that duty. But as far as we're concerned personally, if we get to the place where we can talk about the things that do involve us in stale, vapid, pompous phrases, the Spirit of God has departed.
The Road to Understanding
Now number seven again: "Think over what I say." Apply it personally, and in detail, and thoroughly. And the promise: "for the Lord will grant you understanding in everything"-in how to act and how to live. Shall we pray.
Our Heavenly Father, do grant that we may see from Thee what we need to see. Remove the scales from our eyes and the goat skins from our Jacob-arms. We pray Thee that we may stand before Thee as men and women who have received greatly, and who desire to be great in Thee and strong for Christ's sake. Amen.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
Print
Email
Comments
Be the first one to add a comment.
To post a comment, please login or register