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Hi, I'm Nancy Dufresne. Welcome to our podcast channel. We know you'll be blessed by today's message. Second Timothy and verse, chapter one, verse one. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God. Am I at the right place? Okay, sometimes I write down things wrong, and then you're just flipping and going, where's this? Where's this woman at? I know where I'm at. I just don't know where you're at. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the will of God, according to the promise of life, which is in Christ Jesus. Don't you love that phrase, the promise of life? He didn't just come to give us better behavior, he came to give us life. Amen. Verse 2. To Timothy, my dearly beloved son, Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, Jesus Christ our Lord. I thank God whom I served from my forefathers. Look at these next phrase. With pure conscience. This is the key to faith working, is a pure conscience. If our conscience isn't clear, faith won't be bold. And we're to come boldly to the throne of grace. Why? Because faith has a boldness, and you need a clear conscience for your faith to be bold. So he says, I have served from my forefathers with pure conscience that without ceasing, I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day, greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy. And verse five is where I want to camp a little bit for a while tonight when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith. Well, what's it mean? Unfeigned? We don't really use that word in today's vernacular, but it's your sincere faith. We're not pretending to have faith. We're not pretending to be Christians. We're bearing the fruit of it. We're bearing the fruit that faith produces. And so he says, when I call to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in you which dwelt first and your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice. And I am persuaded that in thee also. So Paul, when he's writing to Timothy, he's going to give him some instruction further down in this letter. But he starts out with reminding him of something. Sometimes to hear something right, you have to remember something, right? That's right. And so Paul says. He says, I call to remembrance. So Paul remembers something in writing to Timothy that will help Timothy in the instruction that he's going to be giving him. So he remembers that there was A faith that began before Timothy's life began. It began with his grandmother Lois. It was then passed to his mother, Eunice. And he reminds him that same faith is in you. This is a faith that has endured the generations. This is not a pretend faith. This is not an insincere faith. This is a faith that made conquerors of previous generations. And he's reminding him that faith, it didn't originate with you. You're not the beginner of this thing. And I want to remind you of that based on what he's going to tell him later. So Timothy inherited a faith, and it was a living thing. Why? Because it could live from generation to generation. It's not a dead faith, because a dead faith can't get to the next generation. It's a living faith. What's that mean? It was a demonstrated word way of life. He saw faith, lived in the home. He heard it, saw it in his grandmother Lois. It's a living thing. Then. She was a faithful steward of what was alive in her. When something's alive in you, you treat it differently. You know that's right. She was, as a faithful steward of what was alive in her, passed it to her daughter, Timothy's mother. Then Eunice, as a faithful steward, passed it on to her son, Timothy. So we know this. He didn't just see this in his grandma's house. He saw it in his mama's house. It's not enough that the grandparents demonstrate something. The parent needs to demonstrate something. Amen. And she passed, went from Lois to Eunice. And it didn't lose momentum in the passing. It didn't lose value. It wasn't diminished by the next generation. It was embraced and kept fueled and kept alive. And then it was passed to her son Timothy, who became something of public note. He became a spiritual son and a trusted, faithful laborer, a helper alongside the greatest apostle of that generation. And he stood there next to that man of God for one reason, Grandma. She started something. So Timothy had this great honor of serving alongside because he was a recipient of something that preceded him. Faith is such a force that it doesn't have to die with the one carrying it. It's a living thing because it sources from God and God is the same. So it's something you want to invest your life in, something that can live beyond you. Amen. Timothy never could have moved into the role he played in the body of Christ, the role he played in church history, had not his grandmother not had a living faith that governed the generations after her, despite the Flow of society. In her day, Lois had a hard won foundation. She was the first in her family, in her lineage, she was the first that we have record of that laid a groundwork of the faith life and said, this is how I'm going to live. This is what's going to govern me. This is what is going to be the flow of my home, my life. My daughter will get it because my daughter will see it demonstrated in the grandmother. Our children are what they see. They're seeing lots of things. Make sure what you're showing them is really what you want them to be. So this grandmother, Lois, she heard this life of faith. She chose it. Faith is a choice. It's not a feeling. She chose it every day. She chose. My life is governed by faith. It's not governed by my feelings, it's not governed by my emotions, it's not governed by my intellect. So lo, as she heard this message of faith, she chose it, she learned it, she became skillful with it, and it was a living thing that governed her, and it directed the unborn children because of what she chose. Faith was demonstrated in such a way that Eunice got wasn't something that she just heard her mama do on Sunday or at synagogue. It was something that was a living thing in their household. What's this mean? They're doers. This means that that word is changing them day by day by day. They can look back and say, I'm not the same as I was last year. I'm not the same as I was five years ago. I'm not the same as I was 10 years ago. If things aren't changing, kick yourself into living faith, because living faith will not leave you like you used to be. The things that tripped you up aren't still living with you because the living faith kicks them out. So Eunice, she didn't just get tired of hearing Mama pray, watching Mama read the scriptures, listening to Mama set things straight according to the word. She said, hey, I'm gonna live that too. She didn't diminish it and think it's not worth having. Just because she'd always had it didn't mean she should treat it lightly. Let me tell you, those of you who are second generation, you better value because the faith of a previous generation has spared you a lot of hardship. And you have no idea what God's power has protected you from. Don't you diminish it and treat it light when it's offered to you for your life. Mama can't make you have faith. You choose it. And it's not enough that Mama chose it. You have to choose it for your own life. And so we see in Timothy's past, we see a lineage of right choices when it comes to spiritual things. People don't arrive on the forefront of what God's doing by floating. They get there by purposeful choices that they say, there's something more and I want it. And you have to know this. You can't be born into it until your choice is added to it. You're born into the option, but the choice is still yours. Dad Hagin used to say to us, you ought to do far more than I ever did because you have the ground we took to build upon. So what is he saying? It's never acceptable that the next generation produce less. And Eunice did not dismiss or treat Mama's faith as just something to a fable's tale. It was a living thing. Amen. And she took that as the second generation and she said, I want it for my generation too. And her life demonstrated that flow. She wasn't careless toward it. We can't be careless toward what God offers us. When God includes us in something, we ought to see the high honor of that. God allows us to do something in his body, sets us in the place. Who are we to diminish the role of that? When God includes us and invites us into something, that's an honor. Amen. And Eunice saw the honor of what was offered to the generations that began with her Mama. She honored that faith and then carried it further and she demonstrated it to her son Timothy. We don't know if Lois ever really realized when she began this life what would happen generations away from her, that her grandson would forever be noted in God's word because. But his name was forever linked with hers because the word would not leave her out. When you're with moving with living faith, the word won't leave you out. Amen. Timothy was not the one to lay the groundwork faith life. He was to carry that life further by being that assist to this precious apostle. And I say to you tonight, you say, well, I don't have a heritage like that. Well, you may be a Lois, And Lois is important, and you may be a Eunice. You may be in between where faith began and where faith is headed. You might be in between it, but what an honorable place to be. A link in the chain that doesn't break and doesn't undo what it was connected to by the previous generation. Amen. You may not have the spiritual lineage and you May say I'm the first generation. Well, join Lois. Don't think that God's going to do less with you just because you didn't have a spiritual, spiritual start because you weren't raised in a spiritual home. You can put that living faith by choice into the operation of your everyday life and say, my generations after me will produce something because of what I chose to start. No nominal Christians here. Weak links in this life of faith, barely hanging on to the truths that it's received of. No, a strong link that keeps linking up others. Amen. Amen. It's honorable to be the Lois of the family. So many would just read this and want to be the Timothy because Timothy got to travel with the man, he got to be used in a public way. We don't know that Lois or Eunice were ever public. Nothing about their public life. Just at home building the foundation. Lois rewrote the story of generations to come. That's what. When you're the first one of your family that moves with God, you rewrite stories, you rewrite futures, you rewrite coming generations. My husband was that in his family, there was nobody that he knew of that had any kind of spiritual input into his life. He never saw faith demonstrated. He didn't know anything about a living faith. But he wanted something more. And he did the hard work, the hard work of getting something moving. He was the beginner with God. He went into the faith laboratory and started trying to mix things together and how does this work and finding out things. And God put him with those who had made advancement because his choice demanded that he be promoted. Amen. He was the first to be born again in his family that he knew of. Then he led the others in. What an honor to be a Lois. What an honor. Amen. If you're the first of your family, you're the down payment. And when you're the down payment, when the down payment comes, it's cause there's other payments. Amen. You're the down payment on the rest of your family. And God is demonstrating through you that he will not just move in you. He's going to visit your whole family. God reaching you is a sign to you. He didn't just begin and end with you. He begins with you to keep going and to keep going and reach those relatives and reach the ones who were ignorant and silent and uninterested about God. He chooses you when you choose him to have a living faith that you can demonstrate and say, you can have this life too, or you may be the eunice you're not the Lois. You didn't begin it. You're the Eunice. You didn't see all the hard times because Lois lived through them. You bypassed the hard times because Lois got through them and got through with a living faith on the other side. But just because you don't see the hard times doesn't mean you have to learn the hard way. Don't be a bullheaded one who's got to learn the hard way. Before you believe anything, You appreciate testimonies of people who had horrifically bad pasts and turned to God, and God rescued them from the edge of ruin. But how much better never to go to the edge of ruin? It's a greater testimony to not have to be pulled back from the edge of ruin through being bullheaded. But thank God, we've all been bullheaded at some point. But it's a poor thing to pass that on to the next generation. Eunice was something that is so important. She was a faithful steward that it would. The living faith would not die with her. Amen. Amen. You might not have a very visible role. You might be one who really is more in the background of this earthly life, but that's where the foundations are built. Amen. To be a Eunice is vital in the divine lineage of faith. Then you may be a Timothy one who is entrusted with a public ministry that people hear about. They stand in the pulpit and they preach. They carry that living faith even further past the previous generations, bringing or even bringing a very public supply to a minister. Because he wasn't the lead man. He was Paul's helper. He was moving with the man of God, but in a very public way. People knew him. He traveled. He got to go where everywhere that Paul went. And he got to know all of these men who were original leaders of the church. He got to be around that. But he never could have been there without Lois, never could have been there without Eunice. Amen. There was a momentum that began long before he ever started believing God for anything. He entered into the labors of another. He advanced further because the foundation of this living faith of Lois and Eunice was under him. They gave him something to build on. You know, someone can go and admire a beautiful home, and when you look for a home, you look for certain attributes in the home. But no one ever goes and admires the foundation. Yet the foundation can disqualify you buying the beautiful home, because before you buy that home, you have that foundation inspected, and that decides whether that beautiful home becomes part of your life or not. You don't want to build a beautiful life with no foundation, that it's all smoke and mirrors, that it's all just what you appear. And Paul was reminding Timothy, you got something under you and this beautiful life and ministry that God is building through you. You've got a foundation of your mama's faith and your grandmother's faith, and I'm reminding you of that. You don't stand there alone. You have an obligation to people who went before you. It's a holy obligation. It's not a pressure, but it's a divine obligation that you go further. Amen. Even though Timothy was that visible house, he was not the beginning place of all this. And it seems to me that in this ministry we're getting to partake of some Timothy flows. God is moving this congregation, this church family into a whole other opportunity. That doors of ministry are advancing. But we can't stand here and say, look what God has done. We have to look back and say, look what God started long before we ever showed up on the scene. You have to go Back to the Dr. Summeralls, and I'm talking about the immediate ones connected to our life. Cause it goes even back further. But I'm talking the immediate ones of our life. The Dr. Summeralls who chose the Bible instead of the coffin when he had that vision. Dad Hagin, who went down to death's door before he learned about this living faith and then he came up and preached it and the devil regretted he ever put him on that deathbed. Because he imparted into the next generation a living faith that knows God and is moving with God in a whole nother dimension. Why? Because someone made choices. The door God's opening to this ministry was not first seen or declared by me. It was first seen by Ed, that in the 1970s he had a vision and he saw himself before we even knew the word satellite. He saw himself hanging off of one in outer space. He had a vision and saw what we know as a satellite. He didn't know what it was and it was a satellite and he was hanging off of it. And he was saying this Jesus is the healer. So when the opportunity came to go on television, I didn't have to pray about what is the title of the broadcast, what is the emphasis of the broadcast? It was shown in the 70s because I'm not trying to have my own and look to be that I got my own. I recognize that we can only go further as we stay with where we began. You Go back to the original. What was the heavenly vision? What was the heavenly direction? I'm just telling you, young people, you don't have to go after your own. Take what has been put in you and go further. The world talks about having their own because they're full of pride. But full of honor. You honor what has been put in you. You don't dismiss it and chuck it aside as invaluable and unnecessary. Amen. So when we were invited to be on there, I knew what the message would be. What if I would have forgotten that we'd be off course? Dad Hagin so often would say to us, if a pilot starts a trip, if he doesn't set his instruments right, he can intend to be going in one direction and end up in another. And he might just be a fraction off in the beginning, but by being a fraction off over a long period of time, the gap widens. What if I had gotten off and forgot? Well, you know what? I'm going to have my own message. I'm going to emphasize what I want to emphasize. No, I go back and what did God say years ago, before I was even part of this scene? What did God say? What did he say in that vision? Jesus is the healer was what he had ed declaring. Colossians tells us that Jesus spoiled, defeated and stripped Satan. And in his total conquest and victory over him, the timeless truths in this book, answer it, reveal how to answer every opposition and the steps to take to exit times of testing. Order this book now@DefrainMinistries.org if you need prayer, please call our prayer line. We have trained ministers on staff who are ready to agree with you for your miracle. We trust you've enjoyed this message. Visit us at defrainministries. Org to learn of our upcoming meetings. Share your testimony, become a partner or visit our online store. This program has been made possible by the friends and partners of defrain Ministries.