The Gospel Messenger – Part 1

This is a engram lots of Hebrews 720, love says that Jesus ascended and they have a nieces of the right hand of the father he ever lives to make intercession for you. Jesus is praying for you is never fraction your listening to engram lots in an introduction to this week's message from God's word and a reminder that prayer was such an integral part of being a messenger of the gospel under the power the Holy Spirit who is interceding with the father on our behalf from second Timothy chapter 1 is an my grandparents were believers both sides. My parents of course are Christians committed Christian husband was his parents were our children are our grandchildren and people asked him and how is that passed from generation to generation.

I can tell you it wasn't on accident unit wasn't just osmosis. My husband said this because you're born in the garage doesn't mean that your car you know and just because you're born in a Christian home doesn't mean that your Christian is not automatic.

There has to be an intentional passing of that gospel baton into the next generation. Yes, I have to receive that for myself as I shared with you that I had received Christ when I was a little girl and I did that intentionally, but mother and daddy prepared me for that. What they had taught me in the home by what I saw on your own example and they use that opportunity of the passing zone when I was within their home to prepare me to the point that I wanted to receive Christ as my Savior. So I just want to challenge you. If you have children within the home. Don't miss the transfer zone okay but then also outside the home, just with other people. There can be an opportunity that you have like I had this last week had an opportunity to share the gospel and it just came so unexpectedly. I wasn't prepared for it and I should have been, and it was after I had missed it makes you feel really sick at your stomach does not that you didn't take an opportunity that God gave you so. The only thing I know about that. The comfort I give myself a sometimes God lets me go through something like that had to set up because he's going to give him another opportunity that's going to be maybe harder, more challenging this time I'll be much more alert to take it because I just missed that one, so that you just may encourage like I'm trying to encourage myself that all is not lost will be another opportunity to come and I'll probably take it a little bit stronger and better than what I would've done the one I just missed, but I point this out because if you turn the second Timothy chapter 1, which is our passage, Paul is passing, not just the baton of the gospel, but the challenge to be a messenger of the gospel to Timothy and so he's in the transfer zone because calls at the end of his life and is getting ready to actually spacing is execution. And so he knows he's going to die and so he's tapping Timothy to be his successor. He's passing not just the gospel message, but the challenge to be a messenger of the gospel to this young Timothy so would be similar to Moses tapping Joshua or David tapping Solomon or Elijah tapping Elisha on the knee. This way it would be like Billy Graham if he came here and said I want you to be my successor in your face would go white in the blood would drain her knees were knocking you it's a workaholic. I can't do that. But did you know that that's what the cove is about that mother and daddy establish this place and the purpose was to train up men and women in the gospel to the point that not only you will be familiar with it, but you know the Scriptures and you would be able to share with others that you would be in a sense that a successor I remember in Amsterdam that Congress were itinerant evangelists. In 1986 there were 10,000 evangelists in the Rye center in Amsterdam and they been asking daddy who's going to be your successor. Who's going to be your successor and daddy stood up and I remember sample a platform just about his arms and he looked at these evangelists is that you are my successor, so he was passing the baton to the challenge to be a message of the gospel does 10,000 evangelists and that's what's he's doing through the legacy of his left ear. The Coke to all those who come to the seminar is the purpose is to equip you and intentionally challenge you to be a messenger of the gospel. So that's what Paul is doing with Timothy. He's challenging him to be a messenger of the gospel and, if ever, if you can follow the apostle Paul. If you're going to be successor. Then, if ever somebody needed to be mature. It would be Paul successor. But Timothy was so immature.

Paul told him don't let anybody despise you because you're young. He must've been letting people despise them because he was young, and then Timothy was so weak he would think the success of apostle Paul, be strong enough that you do so many things in traveling and Timothy was so weak. Paul told him to take a little while and for some, and then you would think somebody who took over after the apostle Paul would be somebody who would be very bold and courageous, and Timothy was so timid that Paul said God is not given you the spirit of timidity he's given your spirit of power and love and self-control and so if you're thinking you cannot be a messenger of the gospel because you are weak in your timid and your immature and doesn't seem to make any difference because that's the person that Paul was tapping to be his successor.

And you know one of the things that says to me is that is not by my and is not by power is by God's spirit that this is done in a person who is timid and weak and immature is somebody in there called to be a messenger and your call to be a messenger but a person like that is someone who is very dependent on the Lord and and I know and when you're very dependent on the Lord that he comes through and your ministry is powerful. So let's look at Timothy for minute what Paul tells them in this first chapter.

This is the last thing that Paul ever wrote last thing that we know that he ever said he's telling Timothy challenging him via messenger of the gospel. He says don't be afraid to be a messenger. Don't be ashamed to be a messenger and don't be apathetic about being a messenger so first of all, don't be afraid, and he was telling Timothy that Timothy was living in a Roman world and Nero was the Emperor at that time Nero was getting ready to execute Paul now was a madman with absolute power. Nero was somebody who is crucifying Christians on crosses and throwing them to the lines and bring them at the stake timing it was dangerous not only to believe the gospel, but to be a messenger of the gospel and so the first thing Paul says the Timothy. Timothy don't be afraid to be a messenger of the gospel you have for reasons you have to be afraid. First reason being prayed for in verse three says light and day.

I constantly remember you in my prayers. Can you imagine the encouragement would be to the young Timothy to know that the great old apostle Paul was praying for him 24 seven who's praying for you. You have somebody who knows what you're going through notes which are badly knows what your joys are what your heart aches are in and they pray for you and they come in they really don't just say I'll pray for you, but they pray for you. You need to be prayed for.

The world is so wicked and is so dangerous and is getting so hard out there. We need to pray for each other. When I first started my itinerant ministry asked the Lord to bring me some women who would pray for me and I was teaching of the time across the 500 women not but I just have a lot of people would want to come alongside and pray for me and actually just had seven ladies who came to me one by one, not prompted by me or anybody just the Holy Spirit thing and we want to pray for you and so I challenge them. God called them and I started out with that prayer team in the fluctuate a little bit over these 20 years because some of moved away in some have jumped up because of illness but still have a seven women who are praying for me and they pray for me every day on their own. Once a week they gather together pray for me on the knees when I speak the pray and fast. So call each other on the phone and pray for me and and so every week I send them on prayer letter so the one I send it out Wednesday to them and it's emailed out to themselves because they meet together on Thursday and I share with them the specific answers to prayer from last week's prayer so everything I asked him to play for last week. I make sure I let them know how the Lord is answered it and everything I'm asking them to pray for this week's of this week's was several pages long, because it included you all and all the ins and outs of the details of the seminar and we seen so many answers to prayer and I can't tell you I could not stand in this podium. I could not do the things I do if I wasn't being prayed for. And people say and how do you do what you do that's how mean is the spirit of God. But it's an answer to prayer. You need somebody to be praying for you. Who do you know that you can pray for and your pastor is an obvious choice your Bible teacher, your son is schoolteacher people that are messenger is in but maybe it's just your next-door neighbor. Maybe another mother who's got children your age is in your struggle. Something just pray for each other. Pray for your children pray for your schools and Timothy was being prayed for by the apostle Paul and I need to say that in my ministry itself after I have my prayer team, for myself and I had that for years. I was late to the party in several years ago.

I realize interpreting praise for me but they're not really praying for my office. My staff in our business and so I asked the Lord to bring me some women would pray from a office in the ministry itself, and God brought me again. Seven women. I think it's now down to five but they meet every Thursday morning and in my office designated one room in the middle of my office in the heart of my office we call the meeting place. Nothing takes place in that room except prayer in his room with chairs so that you know of everybody can have a seat. I have a kneeling bench on one end and across that's made out of mirror so if you kneel on the bench and you look at the cross.

You see yourself reflected in the cross little table with card so when people write in and they want to be prayed for them. We keep it in the cardfile's of the staff when they have a few minutes. They can slip into the prayer room window meeting placing pray for people who need to be prayed for and so that prayer team praise for the staff once a month they bring in a staff member to just pray over that staff personally go to her office and in pray over her office and is just such a blessing isn't seeing the answers to prayer and seeing how God moves and works in response to their faithfulness to stand by me in prayer. You need that to.

And if you're in a Bible study or in the church than your leaders need that to suggest asked the Lord to show you whom MA picture spouse, but sometimes you would share things with the friend that maybe sometimes you don't share with a spouse or just ask the Lord if you put some butter on your heart maybe be somebody fun this weekend who would be your prayer partner at least four year ends. All that you decide how often you contact and what you do but but we've had prayer partners like my husband had a prayer partner that was from here that they they call each other for years got to see Jill in the Galveston Canada. He made a point to the watch after my husband and come down and see us and is a precious blessing in my husband's life so God may have a blessing for you and if nobody is praying for you and is and I just would know how to go about that an isolated and I can't do that in Hebrews 725 I love says that Jesus ascended and they have any sense of the right hand of the father he ever lives to make intercession for you. Jesus is praying for you.

Is that precious, and he knows your thoughts he knows your struggles.

He knows your hopes he knows your dreams. He knows your fears.

He knows your sorrows, and he prays for you and I know one of the things he's playing is that you're going to be an effective messenger who gets a firm grip on the gospel and that you will be available for him to use the share that message to the people that are in your world that you come into contact with in Jesus is somebody who knows how to get answers to his prayers so you have a prayer partner. So he's praying for you.

Take comfort in that.

But it may be that you need to know. He works two visible people, so there may be somebody specific that you got asked to pray for you and with you, and I encourage you to do that and it sort of a humbling thing, isn't it every time I write that prayer letter and I share with them some things I'm going through and I share with them things I'm going through and and it sort of humbling to be vulnerable and let people know that you need something like that, but that's with the body of Christ is us with the family of God is a trust. Those women they keep it confidential and they pray for me and God is poured out his blessing and answer those prayers to ask God to give you somebody who you can pray with.

Also, Paul said to Timothy you have to be afraid you're being prayed for. And then secondly he says you got the passion for it, and I'm reading into this but in verse four he said I will call your tears, such as asked myself why was Timothy crying so I wonder if it's because he was so tenderhearted and he just really had a heart for a lost world.

That's was going to hell, and all these people in the Roman world worshiping their own gods and didn't know that there was a one true living God who love them so much that is sent Jesus to die on the cross to take away their Senate as it was.

He just weeping over tenderhearted concern and passion and love for the lost world, and I wonder if he was crying because he was brokenhearted because of the way the gospel is rejected by the same people and you can share the gospel with somebody when they rejected and you know they're going to self-destruct and it will break your heart, and was he weeping because he is broken out.

We couldn't because he was fainthearted.

Amir is terrified thought cannot do this.

I cannot go out there there crucifying people is really the lines I'm scared to death, and so one thing that the tears tell me is that Timothy cared. He wouldn't be weeping if he didn't care so can I ask you when was the last time you went over somebody who was lost sometimes and we weep like that is because we care, and Paula Singh. I see that you have a heart for what you're doing. What about you remember several years ago. Next is quite a few years ago when large organization, or having the 25th celebration anniversary and asked me to come speak in. I asked him why have they got my name and they so we know you have a heart for the gospel and so will you know that's interesting and and I hung up and I thought, why did they say that and the only reason I could think of that. They said that is because on Billy Graham's daughter.

They just automatically I would have a heart for the gospel and so I started examining myself and do you have a heart for the gospel and what I discovered was that Mark gospel was very small and I consider myself a Bible teacher and someone who disciple people, but as far as the gospel was concerned my heart was small for that and so I asked the Lord I pray deliberately and intentionally God enlarge my heart for the gospel to the point that the day when people describe me if sometimes they call me an evangelist. I'm not an evangelist. I don't have the gift of evangelism.

But what they're saying is that God has given me an enlarged heart for the cost asking to give you a an enlarged heart for the gospel that you would care about a world out there to do some the craziest things in it. Your sin is getting more more blatant and listen don't blame them for that is sinners do the good.

As you know, the decision is not going to bring happiness or purpose or peace or joy, or all and baby Jesus.

So God break your heart with the things that break his and give you a heart for a lost world that you might want to reach them with the message of the gospel posted Timothy ever call your tears and nothing with it was weeping because he cared MS that is one reason. You don't have to be afraid because you just that what's in your heart come out on your lips, and Timothy Nunnally is being prayed for you at the passion for he had the preparation and Paul says in verse five Robin reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois, and then your mother Eunice. So Timothy obviously came from a Christian home ribbon taught the Scriptures from the time he was small raised in the faith, and that was preparation for him now to be a messenger of the gospel. He knew the Scriptures have example of his mother and his grandmother and you're raised in a Christian home that preparation for you to be a messenger to think about what think about your experience. Think about your upbringing. Think about what you saw in your parents, and that's preparation for you now to be a messenger let me point out something else. Timothy's father is not mentioned Timothy's father. We believe was a Greek canonical and the reasons for that, but we believe he's not a believer.

And so Timothy was raised in a home where his mother and his grandmother were believers, but his father was not and did you have a home like that when one of your parents was a believer and the other was not so your parents were unequally yoked. And if you see up close and personal, but the tension that brings and the difficulty the conflict that can be in the home because one spouse is not say that can give you a heart for the gospel. That's preparation for you to go out and reach other people with the gospel to bring the unit in the reconciliation.

There should be an let me just add a little parenthesis to that because please note that it was Lois and Eunice who taught Timothy the Scriptures and the question about what do I do when husband of the father is not teaching in a my usurping his authority when I'm doing it and he's not know you're not it was Lois and user taught Timothy that prepared them for ministry, not his father. So I want to put fathers down all of you fathers out there please don't misunderstand me. Take the role that God has given you, and be somebody who would teach your children by your example and by your words, but the mother can instruct.

Also, in such a way that the child is raised in a way that stronger strong in their faith and able to serve the Lord when they grow older.

So Timothy obviously was taught by his mother and his grandmother even though his father wasn't safe so I don't know what your upbringing was maybe in your home.

Neither neither parent must save maybe you were raised in a completely secular or maybe hostile to Christ. Home and family may be in your family.

There was abandonment or abuse or adultery or alcoholism room divorce disease.

I don't know and think about a four minute that itself is preparation for you to go out and reach other people who are going through a similar situation because you know what it feels like you can relate to them in a way that others of us couldn't. And God wants to use that so that when you present the gospel message or a messenger that other people will listen to have that same situation.

So you hear me look into your home look into your family look into your background. God is not whimsical. He doesn't just guess his way around.

He just doesn't play games everything in your life is very intentional and God is very intentional about the home and what you're raised import you've been through and is not to make you miserable not to take away a blessing. It's to prepare you to be a messenger whose effective as you share the gospel with other people. Today, so also is Timothy you been prepared right there in your family, and then he said you been prepared by your friends is that I myself have laid my hands on you and Paul was Timothy's pastor or his professor, his mentor and he had come alongside Timothy to help them grow up in his face. So who is that person in your life is been your mentor, your pastor, somebody who's helped grow you up in the faith and the wonderful thing today is that you don't even have to know that person necessary, although it could be your pastor or missionary or an older person in your congregation. Or maybe it's your own parent or you know on an aunt or uncle or somebody somebody who's a more mature Christian is come alongside and help to grow in your knowledge of God, your knowledge of the Scripture and and praise God.

Those people in our lives and in the Lord is given me some wonderful ones and I thank God for them, but sometimes you don't have somebody like that in your life but but today because of the videos and audios in the books. We can have a mental would never even met before. We just listen to them or we watch them or reread their books and as would be very careful.

You know who you expose yourself to butts is very important that we are careful about who we listen to but there's some wonderful ones out there and there's no reason that you and can have a mentor today or somebody would come alongside and help train us and teach us because there's so many out there that are available. So ask God to open your eyes to those who can be your mentors and them. We need each other and that way we can always grow from somebody who's older comes alongside fourth reason that you don't have to be afraid, Timothy, you have the power of God.

In verse six he says, for this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in use of the laying out of my hand. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, the spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline and is nothing magical about Paul's hands. Okay, so let's just put that on the table. Nothing supernatural about laying on of hands.

I think that Paul was there when Timothy was converted and when he laid his hands on Timothy that was at the moment Timothy was confessing us in telling God he was sorry claiming Jesus is a Savior inviting Jesus to come into his heart and at that moment he was given the gift of God and the gift of God is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God and you see them in chapter 1 of Genesis verse two, the spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep preparing the planet Earth to receive God's word be transformed in six days. That's the same spirit of God when you pray and asked Jesus to come in your heart. He comes in you in the person of that same spirit of God that was in the beginning, in the person of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a living person. She is Jesus without his man's body is Jesus living inside of you. When he has all the power of God that he had in the beginning so think about it, you have the Holy Spirit of the living God with you. If you receive Christ by faith.

Any comes in you and you have the power to share the gospel.

An effective way members not by might not baptized by the Holy Spirit that this is done hands. You and I need to let them loose in our lives. Paul says you need to fan into flame the gift of God and the Holy Spirit is not a fire but he symbolized by far, so the Holy Spirit is invisible.

We wouldn't know he was present except he symbolized something so at the baptism of Jesus. He was symbolized by the dove at Pentecost.

He was symbolized by flame of fire at the end of history in the book of Revelation symbolized by this branch of candles that burns before the throne, and that the fire that burns before the throne.

That's the Holy Spirit, and so he's considered the fire of God because, listen to me. The Holy Spirit is on fire for the gospel.

He's on file for the things of Jesus. He's on file for the things of God, and he inspired the Bible, every word is God breathed. The Holy Spirit inspired every word of this book. He's on far to show you the things of God. And so you and I need to fan them into flame letting loose in our lives will receive the Holy Spirit cannot tell you I was a little girl inviting Jesus come in my heart I don't understand about the Holy Spirit, but I invited Jesus to come in the my heart. Jesus understood what I was saying and so he placed the Holy Spirit within my life. Jesus can't possibly come and anybody he's in a man's body up in heaven getting ready to come back and rain and rule on this earth, we invite them to come in the hearts he comes in in the person of the Holy Spirit. And when I was a little girl cannot receive the Holy Spirit. He came in me even though I didn't know his name he came into me. I had all the Holy Spirit on ever going to get you know that you don't get them in pieces. The Holy Spirit is a person, so the new believer, the youngest believer is as much of the Holy Spirit is the oldest believer has you have all the Holy Spirit you ever going to get living in you. This has been living in the light please take advantage of all the free resources that and Graham Watts.board to help and encourage you in your walk with God and in your study of his word. Join us here each week for living in the light