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Good evening. We learned hand signs Sunday morning about stretcher bearers, work together and all that good stuff. My wife was teaching me new hand signs to get my shirt untangled from my microphone. So I've never seen that hand sign before. But I appreciate that. I thought she wanted me to steal second base for a second. I thought she was really getting into the theme. Well, we are open for business at the resource table. I think we have solved our IT problems. Remember we got those flashcards like first P tier. What's in the book of first P tier? Let's see. Why is he crying? Because he's in pain. But it's pain with a. See how this stuff works? Flashcards, coloring books, and then also 10 different series from the biblical character series. This particular series that we're going through here is brand new, but the workbooks for that available, you pay $25. You get a workbook for whatever course you choose. QR code in there. You can stream the videos, download them on your computer, on your phone, use them for your small groups. You want to order extra workbooks, you can do that later. Here's one. Chosen I really, really like. This is about the life of Mary. This has been an enormous bridge builder between Protestants and Catholics in some parts of the world, between Orthodox Christians and more evange evangelical Christians. This is the life of Mary. And it's kind of cool as I've talked to some priests and some nuns about this. They're like, you finally discovered our girl. And I'm like, your girl. And you know, we kind of have some conversations about that. And one priest told me and this actually made it into the course. He said, we both end up in the same place with Mary because we so adore her as Catholics. And you Protestants, you're like freaked out by her. Like we're trying to make her God or something, which we're not. So you ignore her and we both miss out on the lessons from her life. Cause we think she's so special. She never struggled though. That's not what the Bible says. And you all don't know her story at all. So this is pretty cool. It's called Chosen When God Calls yous Name. And this has been just really uniquely used by God in a lot of places around the world. So check that out. Check the other ones out. If I could give one gift to each of you here that walk through the Bible has, I would choose the Daily Walk Bible. This is the one that, as my dad says, this is the one that'll get you through Leviticus he read through the Bible after his 80th birthday for the first time with my stepmom and said, I didn't wanna meet Esther in heaven. And go, you look familiar. Your name sounds familiar. There's a book about me. Oh, okay. And, you know, have God go, seriously, Gayle, I gave you a eight decades plus. It was one book. It's like two Harry Potters or three John Grishams. It's not an insurmountable task for a lifetime. This takes the Bible and it's dated, so you can use it that way. For instance, is today the 14th or the 15th? Okay, good. So here's July 14th. You would read today. You'd be reading in the book of Isaiah. You would read today a couple of pages of Isaiah. Really? It's actually just two pages. There's usually a chart that shows you. This is where what you're reading fits into the big picture of the Bible or the Old Testament. And then this is something to look for as you read. And then kind of a. How do you get it off the page and into your life? This breaks it down into 365 daily readings. What do you do if you miss a day? You pick up the next day. Okay, this isn't some legalistic thing. This is a relationship we'll talk tomorrow about. One of the best ways we get rooted is rooted through the Word. And this is a tool that's helped a lot of people do that in a lot of places. If that seems like more than you want to bite off, or you're really new to hanging around and doing Christian stuff. And again, you've logged more church hours this week than in the past three years. You may like closer walk. This isn't just the New Testament part of that. This is something completely different. It also goes through. This just goes through the New Testament in a year. So it's shorter readings. It's great for really busy moms and dads with young kids. And I highly recommend this. And each day you get reflections on whatever the passage is from somebody who walked with God in a past generation and is no longer with us. Some of the names you'll recognize. Martin Luther, you may have heard of him. G. Campbell Morgan. Less people heard of him. J. Wilbur Chapman. You had to Google that one. Happy Fillmore is in here on day three. Anyway, that's just a great resource. I'll be there afterward tonight to answer questions. And then tomorrow morning, Tomorrow evening, we're back over there. So it's kind of tonight and tomorrow morning. Are your Big chances to do this. And I don't want to waste money mailing this stuff back to Atlanta. I'd way rather you take it home with you and share it with other people. Let us jump in to God's word as we continue our series that we call rooted. Father, help us now as we look at your Word, help us ourselves to not just learn about Timothy, but to become more rooted as a result of what we hear. In Jesus name, amen. So we've talked about being rooted by family, the number one way that the faith gets passed on from one generation to the next. And it is so much fun watching, especially those of you. How many of you have three generations of your family here? Raise your hand. At least three. Wow. Anybody have four? Wow. Anybody have five? Okay, so four. Four was the limit there. That's so cool. What a picture of that. Then last evening, we looked at being rooted by mentors. We talked about the importance of having men and women in our life, not who are perfect, but who have successfully moved through one stage of life that may have made a ton of mistakes, but they're just reaching back and going, I thought that was a shortcut too, Phil, but it's really a minefield. You don't want to go that way. Us opening our minds up to God may want to use us that way. Especially with younger people. Gen Z, one of their greatest requests is, I wish I had somebody older speaking into my life. Okay, so the problem is not receptivity. The problem is finding people available to do that. And I think I'm staring at a hundred or a couple hundred of them this week who would be really, really good at that. Tonight we're going to talk about being rooted by trials. Yeah. All right. This will be fun. I love when you read the scripture. Read James 1, 2, 4 to me on the screen, will you, please? Here we go. Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. It's pretty cool. That idea of trials of many kinds is kind of. I don't pull out the scrolls very often and talk about Greek and Hebrew because I think your English Bible works real well. And I never want to shake your confidence in that as a reliable tool. But sometimes you get extra meaning from the language it was originally written in. And that's a word that many is the idea of like, like, many, hued, or like, can you Name the seven colors of the rainbow kind of thing that we just did at dinner that trials come in all shapes and sizes. That's a good remember for us. Good reminder for us. God uses trials in our lives to deepen our roots and transform our character. Transform our character. There's our first fill in of the evening right there. It says that we should consider it all joy. When we go through trials. This is like we build special homes for people who go, yes, I have cancer. How awesome is that? Give me five. Or I thought my career was set. Heading into retirement. I got about eight more years. I want to work and I just got laid off. How awesome is God? Okay. We build institutions like Happy Acres and Mellow Sunsets and names like that. It's not the trial itself that's supposed to produce the joy. It's us knowing that ultimately, what do the trials do? They teach us? Perseverance. That's a cool word. It means to be able to remain under, to hold up under the weight, to not get crushed by life, to not give up by the pressures in our lives. First Peter. Pain with a porpoise. Here's why that book has that as a theme. One of many verses. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory and honor. When Jesus Christ is revealed, we can rejoice knowing that God uses trials for our good and his glory. We've talked some about trees this week. And you know, if you look at a tree, one of the conference centers we love to go to is out in California. It's called Mount Hermon. It's in the middle of the redwoods. You feel God is huge and we are small. When you go there, and there's a park near Mount Hermon Conference center where they have this tree that fell down. And then they have the bottom of the trunk and you can see all the rings. And there are so many rings. This tree was so old that just a little bit in from the bark is like 1776, 250 years ago. And then all the way back and here's the Middle Ages. And then you go back and near the core, just a little bit outside the core, this will be. This is where Jesus Christ was born. Tree was over 2,000 years old. And you can look at the rings on that tree and a lot of the Rings are about the same size. And every now and then there'll be one that's just really, really skinny or maybe three years in a row that are skinny. And as they've counted back, they go, yeah, there was a huge drought that lasted two or three years. There wasn't much growth this way or even this way. But you know what trees do in times like that? They send their roots deeper. And people are just like that. Aren't we now, kind of that illustration breaks down when we talk about the redwoods. Because the weird part about the redwoods is their roots don't go deep. You can take these 300 foot tall redwoods. I mean, that's like the size, that's the length of a football field, all right, Straight up. And their roots only go down six feet. How in the world is that possible? Because they're all intertwined with other trees they call a group of trees. And I don't think Christians made this up. They call a group of trees a cathedral. Isn't that a cool lesson? So that's part of being rooted too, is not just going deep as an individual, but having your life intertwined with others. That's why that session on mentors is so important when it comes to Timothy and trials. I've identified four significant trials in his life that in fact parallel our experience. Here they are. I'll give them to you first. Family challenges. Anybody here have a family challenge? Oh, she's on your row, three seats down. Don't raise your hand. Just kind of subtly nod like you have a twitch. Okay. Physical illnesses, fearful tendencies, age concerns. We're going to look at these one at a time. And the cool thing about this is for each challenge you, God provides to Timothy and by extension to us, both instruction and encouragement. So not just going now. This is why this is a big deal. When we struggle in this area, this is what makes it hard. But you can do this. And these are some things God has done for us that should encourage us. Let's talk about family challenges first. What a delightful place to talk about family challenges. Some of you have logged more hours of togetherness as an extended family. And by the way, it's only Tuesday, so pace yourself now. But every family has challenges. I don't care how healthy your family is, your family is not perfect. My family is not perfect. It's through families that, yes, the faith has passed on. It's also families, more than anything else that really drive us to be closer to the Lord. They're the most fulfilling of all relationships. They are also sometimes the most frustrating of all relationships, are they not? Back to Acts 16. You're going to get tired of this passage by the time tonight's over. Paul came to Derbe and then to Lystra, where a disciple named Timothy lived, whose mother was Jewish and a believer, but whose father was a Greek. The believers at Lystra and Iconium spoke well of him. Paul wanted to take him along on the journey, the second missionary journey. So he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in that area, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. As they traveled from town to town, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders in Jerusalem for the people to obey. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and grew daily in numbers. What chapter is this in the. Of the book of Acts? What comes before Acts 16? Some of you are like, I know it's a trick question. I'm tempted to say 15, but I'm sure that's. No, it's 15. What comes before 15 is 13 and 14. This is higher mathematics here. My dad was an actuary. I already told you that. 13 and 14 is Paul's missionary journey. And on that missionary journey, they first go to the synagogues. You know, the early church. Almost all of their background was in Judaism. And so they're presenting Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise that someday a messiah will come, even clear back to Father Abraham. Abraham, Sarah, I'm going to give you a child. I'm going to give you a land. You're going to become a great nation. And ultimately, you're not my pet people. You're my pattern people. Through you, I will bless every nation, every people group on the earth, even the ones who are still waiting on Jennifer's lists over there. That's part of the promise of God to Abraham. And so, you know, we have that promise. And mostly the early church was from a Jewish background. But on that first missionary journey, something really strange and unexpected happens. Some people who weren't Jewish heard about Jesus coming, dying on the cross in our place for our sins, as our substitute. And they went, I'm a sinner, too. I need that. And they prayed, they repented of their sins. They asked for God's help. Now we have a dilemma because most of the early church leaders were Jewish. So what do we do with these Gentiles? Well, the question on the table is, do they need to go back and take the same path we did? Do they need to follow the law or try to follow the law? At least do they need to keep to the sacrifices, the special Jewish holidays. What do they do? And so after 13 and 14, in Acts chapter 15, there's this big council. This could have blown the church apart if they had not handled it so well. They said, no, you don't. You don't have to follow the law. We couldn't follow it ourselves anyway. The law is a tutor that shows us our need for a savior. And if you already know you need a savior, welcome. It's based on grace, not works. This is a long shot. Is there anybody in the room tonight who's from a non Jewish background, like I am, but I'm weird. Anybody else? Raise your hand if you're from a non Jewish background? Man, a bunch of people. Are we glad that that got resolved in Acts 15? You bet we are. That was when we got the Bible term grafted in to the tree of life. That was this emerging church. Well, so then they go off on Acts 16, Paul meets Timothy, and one of the messages that they were to take to the people was the results of that council. It said that right there in the verses, they're sharing the decisions of the apostles and elders, the leaders in the church in Jerusalem. And the church was strengthened and it grew daily in numbers. It's working. People are responding. And yet here's your Fill in the blank. Paul circumcises Timothy, so his father's unbelief will not hinder Timothy's ministry. You see, word would get out about Timothy's background that his father was evidently not a Christ follower and not even Jewish. And they're going to the synagogues first and it's like, yeah, your mom's Jewish, but you're not really Jewish at all. And I don't know how they would or wouldn't have known that he's circumcised. That's probably another topic for another evening for somebody smarter than me. But, you know, we're really glad that that decision was made. I mean, think about your church. You may have a class for prospective new members. You go over the church doctrine, the church government you talked about. This is what the church does for you. This is some commitments we'd like for you to make to the church. We'd love to have you be involved in giving. Each of you, if you're a Christ follower, you have at least one spiritual gift. If you don't know what that is, let us help you find it and let's work together and let's do some stuff for God. Well, this is our sixth week together. Get back to me on your decision. Ladies, you can go ahead and go. Guys, there's one more little detail we need to discuss. This is not a really scalable church growth plan right here. And so here they're going out to share. This is good news. And Paul has Timothy circumcised. And again, I wonder, were there discussions of, like, Paul? I mean, I was willing to do that because I don't want anything to stand in the way of us sharing with all different kinds of people. But is there a contradiction between me doing that and the message we're carrying? And to me, I'll tell you, that tells me something about Timothy, that he didn't want anything to be a distraction from sharing the gospel. It was priority one to him. And it also teaches that we're living in an age where it's all about, these are my rights. I am claiming my rights. My kids are back there. They will make faces at this. But a hundred times they heard me say, your rights. Stop. Where what the rights of others begin. Well, that sounds good when they're six years old. But you realize there's more collisions of that in our culture now. And so we're all about demanding our rights. Rights. And here's Timothy goes, yeah, by right. I sure don't need to do that. But the law of love overshadows everything. So, hey, I don't want that to be an objection. First Timothy 1. Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus, our hope. To Timothy, my true son in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Don't miss this detail. Paul provides. God provides Paul as Timothy's spiritual father. I think that's so cool. We don't know how long his dad lived. We don't know the circumstances. We don't know if he ever came to the Lord. But that relationship with Paul and Timothy is so much more than just a professional relationship. Timothy becomes like family to him. So family challenges. Timothy had them. God said, here's some things that you can do. Number two for him is physical illnesses. Has anybody here ever been ill other than exhaustion? Some of you may be sick this week. I won't have you raise your hands. But some of you here have not just something popped up, and I've got a sinus infection this week, but you're fighting some big major illness right now. When we took our wedding vows, I mean, it was like we laughed at for richer, for poorer because we had like $300 between us, and we accidentally spent 450 on our honeymoon. Yeah, Dave Ramsey wasn't around yet, and Larry Burkett was there, but we knocked him off my shoulder and had an awesome honeymoon. We talked about for sickness and in health, and we're both 22 years old. We kind of smiled and went, I suppose we'll probably go through some stuff. We didn't know that Ellen would have melanoma. Thankfully, they caught it fairly early. She had a little bit here above her eye because she used to be a sun worshiper at Myrtle beach, but she also had a pretty bad one here that they had to go quite a lot deeper, and they had to check the nodes around it and all that stuff. She didn't need chemo or radiation because regular checkups caught it early enough. But you all know how quickly your life can change. I mean, you go for a routine mammogram, guys, are you having your PSAs? You get a PSA. And the doctor goes, probably nothing, but this number jumped a good bit. I want to run another test. Things can change so quickly with that. Physical illnesses. We didn't know that. One time I had a. Your appendix is supposed to be the size of this joint of your little finger. I went to the doctor. I just. It was a regular checkup. And the doctor pressed here, and I went, ooh. And she goes, does that hurt? And I go, yeah. And she goes, scale of 1 to 10, how much? I go, I don't know, a 2 or a 3. And she goes, just out of abundance of caution, I want you to get a CT scan. We're driving home after the CT scan, and she calls my cell phone and goes, where are you? And if you know, Atlanta. We were at Pleasant Hill and Satellite, or as Ellen calls it, Unpleasant Hill and Satellite. It's a bad intersection. And she goes, turn around right now. Get to the hospital. They're waiting on you. They said your appendix is not the size it's supposed to be. It's the size of a Japanese eggplant. I don't know what is special about Japanese eggplants. And they said, a surgeon will meet you there. And the surgeon goes, okay. It's huge. We think we can do this through the scope, but we won't know till we get in there. They got in there, it had already burst. And eventually when I came to, the doctor goes, okay, that's like your basement just flooded because the toilet backed up. We've tried to get all the infection out. We'll load you up with antibiotics, but we're Going to have to really watch carefully. I said, so you didn't do it through the scope? He goes, no. He goes, I have good news and bad news for you. I go, okay, bad news. He goes, you got quite a scar. Your bikini days are over, Phil. I go, what's the good news? He goes, for the rest of the world, that's awesome news. I'm like, everybody wants a surgeon who wants to be a comedian. A month later, fully recovered, I'm flying to Philippines the next day to launch a new parenting class. And I spike a high fever. And Ellen goes, you can't go to the Philippines. I go, I've left on trips before, sick, always. By the time I'm land, I feel fine. And she's like, no, you can't go. And I go, I have to go. I'm that important, that indispensable. When we eventually called our team in the Philippines, they go, that's all right. We got several people who can teach the stuff. I'm like, well, thanks. It's like, I'm indispensable. Then stick your finger in a glass of water and pull it out and look how much impact you left. Wow. So by that night, Ellen prayed. She goes, I'm going to pray. God makes it so obvious that you know the right answer. By that night, I'm begging her to take me to the ER and spend another 11 days in the hospital. Not just doctors, but folks from the CDC coming by my room. They couldn't get the recipe figured out right. Our board chair is a doctor. He's calling Ellen every day, interpreting the results. And he eventually told us later, he goes, you had about another 48 hours and you would not have made it. Didn't realize that when we took those vows, didn't realize there would be family conflicts. Didn't realize five years of infertility. I mean, we don't know what we're committing to, but there's a lot to this, these physical illnesses. Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy 5, stop drinking only water. Use a little wine. Because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses. Wine was. They drank it commonly back then. It was also one of the ways that they purified water. Jesus first miracle was at the weighing of Cana, turning water into wine. Jesus or God has some pretty tough things to say about drunkenness and the importance of self control. But here he says, hey, Timothy, take a little wine for your stomach. Don't just drink water. He then goes on, and he says, the sins of some are obvious. Reaching the place of judgment ahead of them, the sins of others trail behind them. In the same way, good deeds are obvious. And even those that are not obvious cannot remain hidden forever. What in the world does that have to do with Timothy having some. Some trouble, Stomach troubles? I think it has everything to do with it. He's saying, if you are not careful with how you treat your diseases, you can get in big trouble. It's not just alcohol in our day. I mean, you know, you go east a few states and you hit ground zero of the opioid conflict, Just the crisis of opioids. I know so many people. We're not talking about, like, skid row alcoholics. We're talking about people with productive lives. Who. I know a guy that he was cutting down a tree, and the tree fell the wrong way, and he had a back injury. And just to get through life, he starts on painkillers. And pretty soon the painkillers aren't keeping up. And so the prescription gets increased, and then it gets increased again. And then the doctor goes, I can't take it to any higher level. So he gets two other doctors that don't know about each other. This warning is for us. This is so relevant to today. And he says, you can hide things for a while, but over time, things do get revealed. You know, the Bible talks a lot about sins not being concealed forever. You think of the advent of DNA. You think about that of sending in the ancestry23andme or ancestry.com. you know, they have special counselors on board because they're just answering questions, and they end up doing, like, major counseling. Like, I just found out my dad is not my dad. Am I reading this right? What should I do about that? We're heading to their house for Christmas. That is not what these counselors sign onto. That's what this verse is talking about. Paul encourages Timothy to treat his ailments, but to do so carefully. Carefully. Why was Paul so sensitive to this? Well, because the Holy Spirit inspired him. Yeah, but I think it's also his own life experience. 2nd Corinthians 12. Paul says, Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, he's talked a lot about gifts that God has given him. But to keep me from being conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh. That means it's physical. A messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, basically, no, I won't. Instead, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. You know, part of the unseen curriculum that Gold Lake excels at. Maybe Ambush will talk to us and mention this tomorrow, but those counselors that are serving our kids and grandkids, that is one of the most serious discipleship programs I've ever seen in my life. And they push those students. Most of those are people who have excelled. They've excelled in the classroom. They've excelled in extracurriculars. They pretty much are living a life that's honorable. And one of the goals of the program here in the summer is to push them where they're like, okay, I do have a breaking point. I do have some limitations. I can't do all this on my own. I need God's help every day to get through the rest of the summer. We're now in the second half. We're week six. I got to meet with them in the same room this morning and talk with them. And we had a great time together. And our son talked to him about his appreciation as a parent. It was a cool morning together, but that's part of the curriculum. I wish somebody had taught me that when I was, you know, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25 years old, because I thought it was just about me becoming strong. And it's going, no. Sometimes when I'm weak, that is when he is strongest. Paul had compassion for Timothy because he, too faced persistent health challenges. We don't know what they were, this messenger from Satan that tormented his flesh, but evidently it was long term. And even though he prayed, God didn't take it away. So family issues, illnesses, physical illnesses, number three, fearful tendencies. Fearful tendencies. What was Timothy afraid of? I just about missed this when we were studying this, I didn't think about Timothy being talked about. In Hebrews 13. The writer of Hebrews says, in verse 22, Brothers and sisters, I urge you to bear with my word exhortation. For in fact, I have written to you quite briefly. I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon, I will come with him to see you. Question, if he has been released, and that's talking about released from prison, what can we assume happened previously? He was sent to prison for the proclamation of the gospel. You heard Jennifer talk about. Now, 13 states in India anti conversion laws. They pay a price it's not just a governmental price. Usually it's more of a price with individual families. And he had been imprisoned. I know a lot of our leaders over there have been jailed before. You can't even get them to talk about it. It's an honor. It happened to Jesus. It happened to his followers. That's so far from my mindset. Timothy experiences external persecution. We talk a lot about that in our country. Certainly there are instances of that, but I'm sorry, when Starbucks takes the Christmas tree off of their cups, that's not us being persecuted. Not only is there external persecution, look at the other side. First. Corinthians 16. When Timothy comes, remember the Corinthian church really messed up. You're doing stuff that would make the average pagan blush. There's immorality there. There's worship of false gods and goddesses, and yet he still calls them brothers and sisters. It's a really messed up church. He says, when Timothy comes, see to it that he has nothing to fear while he is with you, for he is carrying on the work of the Lord just as I am. No one then should treat him with contempt. Send him on his way in peace so that he may return to me. I am expecting him. Along with the brothers, Timothy experiences not just external persecution, but internal opposition. Internal opposition? I don't know about you, But in some ways, it's not what the culture does to us. It's not just that boss who doesn't know the Lord who ridicules you for your faith. It's inside the church that we have this terrible habit of shooting our wounded, that there's just this opposition, and it leads to division. And some of it will go, we planted a church. Well, how did you plant a church? Well, it was more of a church split, actually. So often we multiply by division. Walk through. The Bible has had an interesting role in a lot of people's lives through the years who become our instructors. Some of them have been through really tough experiences as pastors and ministers. And yet, you know, they would say, I wasn't perfect. I made some mistakes. Not some big moral failure or something like that, but just a conflict. And they're this close to going, I'm done serving God. There's been times in my life I've thought, you know, that doctor thing, I could do that. I mean, we went back to one of our reunions, and Ellen, like, she'll give me a hard time for telling this story, and she'll even question if some of the details are accurate. But I believe they were this really nice car goes by and inside driving the car is some guy she used to date. And I just kind of watch her eyes and they kind of go like that. And I go, nice car, hon. She goes, what? Whose car what? And I go, you are so busted. And I said, so he drives a nicer car than we do, big deal. And I go, you think my schedule's nuts? He's a doc, his schedule's great. She goes, actually, he's an anesthesiologist. He sets his own hours. He has call maybe once a week. I caught up with them. It's a pretty manageable life and it's more under control than, than yours is because you don't know how to manage your own calendar. And I go, so he gets paid a bunch of money for putting somebody to sleep. I go, baby, I can do that to hundreds of people any Sunday morning I want. I go, you made the right choice. You definitely did. But there's times when I've thought I could take the MCATs. I always tested pretty well. I'd have to read some textbooks. It's too late now, but during the toughest years of ministry in that little country town. Yeah, I thought about it a lot. It's not just external persecution, it's internal opposition. And some of you have been hurt deeply right at church. Second Timothy 1. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of hands for the spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me, his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the Gospel by the power of God. I truly believe that things are going to get a lot tougher for Christians in our country in the next generation. I may not experience so much of it in the years I have left here, but my kids, my grandkids, it's going to be tested. That's not all bad. You look at the places in the world where the church is growing the fastest, and most of them, it's where the persecution is the worst. I mean, I hate the thought of people dying for their faith, but it really is true that the blood of the martyrs is the water that waters the seeds of the gospel and causes it to grow. And Christianity isn't just a convenient add on to our lives. At that point, you're either in or you're out. The most committed Christ followers I know are living in the toughest situations. Paul Reminds Timothy that God's spirit fills him with power, love, and self discipline. We've got one more to talk about and we're actually on time. I'm so happy about this. Age concerns, age concerns. First, Timothy 4:12. Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young. Some of you are like, problem solved. I don't even remember when that was a problem, but I believe it. Well, we'll talk to you in a minute. We don't know Timothy's age, but he was young, a lot younger than Paul. It would be natural for people to look down on Timothy's youth and in experience. That first church that we went to, I didn't want to be a lead pastor. I had this pathological fear of public speaking. In high school. I actually played a cassette recorder about how to give a speech without giving a speech. And I sat in the back row and cut up. And nobody knew because I used my humor to disguise my crazy fear of public speaking. This is the last thing I ever wanted to do. I mean that very sincerely. People go, oh, you're an introvert. I thought, you seem like you like people. Introverts love people. It's just you suck the very life out of us. Whereas extroverts are like, what do we do next? Let's see. 9, 30. There's another activity. Let's go. No, not me. I didn't want to be a lead pastor. Somehow this church got ahold of my resume. They had like 65 resumes. They said, we just like the way you said some things, and your resume keeps floating up to the top. And so I was. We'd had a couple conversations on the phone. I was helping a friend of mine who was moving to a church in Iowa. I drove his rental car so he could drive in the car with his family. And I said, I'm going to go see my parents. And Ellen and I go, should we call that church? Sistine park sounds like a suburb. It wasn't 100 miles south of Chicago at the corner of Corn and Soy. I already told you that. Wild place to live. And I called and they said, well, you know, we've already actually chosen our pastor. At least we've made an offer to a guy. He's an evangelist. He's ready to come off the road, and we think he'll be a great. I go, great, well, thanks. And they go, but would you like to do a practice interview? I'm like, maybe. So after we were with my parents, we dropped off that guy's truck. We drive out the 90 miles to this place. And the paved road gave way to what they call a slab, which is the weirdest thing. It's one lane that's paved with gravel on both sides. It's not in very many counties in Illinois. And you drive down the middle, and when you meet another car, you put one side, one set of wheels off there, and you pass each other, and of course, you always wave, and you're in the country. Ellen didn't understand that. She thought that the gentleman yielded to the ladies, so she just would stay on there. And that almost had tragic results. But eventually we get to Marv and Lila's house, and we pull in this driveway, and it's a hog farm. And you know what hog farms smell like. And all the way over, we're hearing the bean count and you know what soy futures are. And Ellen, when she gets really nervous, will get the giggles. And she literally slid off the seat, and she's down kind of under the glove compartment. And she's like, I can't do this. I go, hon, they already have their pastor. This is just practice. We're going to meet some nice Christians. We're going to fly home to Dallas. We'll figure out where God wants us, and it won't be a place like this. We walk in, we sit down, we meet the other three couples, and they go, oh, by the way, that other guy turned us down. So this is live now. And Ellen looks at me like, did you know this? I'm like, I didn't know this. We're trying to be ventriloquists. And eventually they go, do you want to see the church? And I said, yeah. And one guy goes, I'll take them. I got to go to town. Anyway, we drive. We're following his car. He pulls over this beautiful brick, red brick church on the south side of town. We get out, and I'm like, this is gorgeous. You know, he lets me go for about two minutes. He goes, yeah, this isn't our church. I just thought this would be the best place to leave your car. So I'm like, this is going to go great. Then we drive up. He's telling the truth. We drive up to the church. There's some people our age in there practicing for vacation Bible school. And I, this isn't all old people. These are like, that's interesting. By the time we were done with that, Ellen goes, I think I could see us here. I'm like, there's no way. I wanted to slide down on the glove compartment now. Anyway, we end up. We go. We candidate for nine days. Never do that to a pastor. And there's no hotel within miles. So they put us in a different home every night. The first night happened to be in the home of a young woman and her husband who had been in our youth program 90 miles away growing up. And she goes, she just about fell off the pew when they announced I was coming. They're like, all he cared about was girls and money. No way is he a pastor. But Philip Tuttle's a weird name. There can't be two of them. And so I'm like, yeah. So they put us in their house first. Ellen got up to go to the restroom of the night, and she knocked their chimes off their wall, those big brass chimes. They hit the floor. This couple comes out. We end up sitting on the floor laughing and talking. And I finally said to her, I said, look, I can go any place in the world and serve, but this is your church. If by the end of the week, you don't think God really has changed me from the inside out, just say something to me. We won't even vote. We'll get out of here. Well, they took a vote that last Sunday. That's being counted. I'm back with the elderberries. And Junior, who. That was his name because his parents ran out of names. They had, like, 12 kids. So let's call this one Junior, okay? He goes, how old are you? I go, 26. He goes, I got a tractor older than you. This is Timothy. They, in fact, had a rule. You couldn't teach adult Sunday school until you were at least 30. They go, that's going to be a problem. I go, I've met some of your kids. I mean, some of them have been with some of the same schools that our counselors from here go to. I go, you got some great younger generation. You better not hold the leadership away from them or they'll give up and you'll lose them. 26. I said, yeah, I'm going to make a lot of mistakes. And they go, then we better have a lot of grace. And over the next six years or so, occasionally we'd have an emergency elder meeting and, pastor, did you really do this? Did you say this? Did you do this? And sometimes it wasn't even true. Sometimes it was. And I said, I told you I'd make some mistakes. Please forgive me. And by the way, I'm just keeping my campaign promises. And they go, then we better keep ours, and we'd move ahead. That verse continues, don't let anyone look down on you because you are young. But set an example for the believers in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity. Paul encourages Timothy to set an example for others in five key his speech, his conduct, how he loves people, his faith, and then living a life of purity. That's worth a whole message or maybe a whole series. But we can't do it tonight. Well, I'm not young anymore. Neither are some of you. I submit to you, those five things are still what crosses the generations. You know, millennials and Gen Z's and maybe even more Generation Alpha that's coming up. They're not enamored by big names. They've been disappointed by so many famous leaders, both in politics and in the Christian faith. Their gold standard is authenticity. Are you real? And so if you're old, realize those five things are still the key to having a voice to speak in the lives of the generations that follow just as much as they are when we're young in being able to have a ministry with those who are older. Until I come. Devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to preaching, and to teaching. Paul encourages Timothy to prioritize scripture in his ministry. Somebody asked me, why do you use so many Bible verses when you preach? Because I think that's where the power is. And sometimes, I mean, we might do two verses and we'll dig deep into them, but here we're like surveying some. We're not going scuba diving with this topic, we're water skiing over the top. But I think the closer we stick to God's word, the more power we have and the more credibility we have. With a generation or two behind us, it's very disillusioned because they don't care what we say. They care how we live. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Paul reminds Timothy that God has gifted him and that other leaders trust him. Be diligent in these matters. Give yourself wholly to them so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers. Paul urges Timothy to focus on progress, not perfection. Bottom line tonight is our roots go deeper by facing our trials by faith. Which of those four trials are you up against right now? And do not go. It's all four. And there's two more you forgot, Phil. Let the Holy Spirit do some filtering down. Family issues, physical illness, either outside pressures or internal opposition, or the fourth one that we just talked about. Now, age concerns, which can go either direction. Let's take a poll. How many? Just raise your hand for me. How many would say, it's family issues. Look around the room. Don't look on your own row. You might not like what you see. Yeah. When we have our board meetings at walkthrough, the first thing we do is we all go around and share a prayer request. Nine board members, I think six or seven of them. The main personal prayer request is a son or a daughter or a grandchild raised in church. Now, they're far from the Lord. There's a lot of that going on this week, too. How many of you would say, I'm up against something physically that is really a challenge right now and it's a burden on me or a burden with somebody I love? Raise your hand. Thank you. How many would say, it's external pressure from others challenging my faith or I've been burned by other believers and the scars of that are real and they're deep. Raise your hands. And biggest group yet. How many would say, you know, it's age concerns. How do I connect by those who aren't just like me? How do I do that? How do I have credibility with older people? How do I connect with younger people? I don't even get their language. Raise your hands, Father. Whichever of these it is, Lord, I pray that by your spirit, you would just dramatically touch each person who was here, that you would use the scriptures that we've talked about tonight, that you would help them to go back and read those passages and not just read them, but really think about them, really commit themselves to you to try to live in light of those truths. It is through these tough times that you take our roots deep. So, Lord, I pray that we wouldn't run from your processes. We don't get any joy from what we're actually going through, but we can derive joy by knowing that if we will partner with you in the trials, we can learn perseverance. We can have our character refined, even though we don't like the hot fire. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.