I solemnly charge you before God and Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead, and because of His appearing and His kingdom:  Proclaim the message: persist in it whether convenient or not:  rebuke, correct, and encourage with great patience and teaching.  For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear something new.  They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths.  But as for you, be serious about everything, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.  2 Timothy 4:1-4 HCSB

I don’t know why I continue to be so amazed when I read a scripture passage and it is so applicable to our lives today.  Paul is writing this letter to his friend Timothy who is a dear friend, but he could just as well have written it to you or me today.  Timothy is also a minister of an influential church in Ephesus.  Paul encourages Timothy to continue to preach God’s word even when it is not convenient.  He warns them that people will turn to preachers that will “tickle their ears” as my pastor likes to say.  This means that they will turn to preachers that tell them just what they want to hear, even if it is not the truth.

This describes what is going on in our country today.  So many people are blindly being lead by politicians that tell them what they want to hear, but do the opposite. They are being blindly lead by pastors that run what I call desert ministries.  They tell you what you want to hear.  You see like our diet, our ministry should be well balanced.  There is some scary stuff going on in the universe and we need to know about it.  If anyone tells you that once you accept Christ, you will be living on Easy street, you are being misled my friend.  Don’t be deceived.  The road to heaven is sometimes rough and bumpy.

So, here Paul warns Timothy of two problems.  First, if we are going to fight the good fight and spread God’s word and lead others to Christ, we are going to have to do it even when it’s inconvenient.  We tend to shy away from things that are inconvenient.  We have drive through everything.  Most stores now offer grocery pickup.  Many offer delivery now.  We can order from websites and get items shipped to our door within two days.  We are all about convenience.  We have all types of technology at our fingertips.  While these things are great time saving devices that I am grateful for, they tend to spoil us.  We tend to walk away from anything that is inconvenient.  Be careful of that, my friend, sometimes following Christ is inconvenient.  Sometimes witnessing to others is inconvenient.

Paul encourages Timothy to rebuke, correct, and encourage.  There are many false prophets out there today.  They are making millions of dollars getting up on stage and claiming to be preaching God’s word.  In actuality, all they are really doing is lining their pockets.  They are able to become millionaires because they are not concerned so much about preaching God’s word, but about telling the people what they want to hear.  Let’s face it, we would much rather hear that God will understand and overlook our sin than to hear that we are miserable sinners that need to repent and give our sin up, right?  We want to hear that we can continue to do what we want to do and we will just live happily ever after.  If you are not careful, you may follow that high dollar preacher right into hell, just sayin’.

The truth of the matter is this, God sent His one and only Son, Jesus to die a horrible, humiliating death on the cross for you and me (John 3:16).  He did this while we were sinners (Romans 5:8).  We didn’t have to clean up our act for this to happen.  It was a gift in hopes that we would have sense enough to accept it.

What God did for us is beautiful indeed.  What He went through to get there is not pretty. We may have to suffer a bit down here (1Peter 5:10) to get that crown in glory.  If someone is telling you otherwise, you better do a little fact checking.  You better make sure that what they say lines up with God’s word.  Many will take a verse out of context to make it suit their needs.

The reality is this, we all want to hear that we are good just like we are and we don’t have to change a thing.  But the reality of the matter is that we must be diligent in our pursuit of Christ.  We must stay on our toes and be ever watchful.  The devil wants to deceive us.  He wants us to believe that being a Christian is easy.  He wants us to believe that if it gets hard then we can just give up and still get all we want.  He wants us to believe that if it’s inconvenient we can just walk away and still be blessed.  These are all lies, my friend.  Don’t let anyone tickle your ears and tell you what you want to hear.  Be sure that any message you hear lines up with God’s word.

Know that it won’t always be easy or convenient, but that we are fully expected to keep on keeping on ’til the good Lord calls us home.  There will be highs and lows.  But know this, when you experience those lows, God is right there to take hold of your hand and lift you up again.  He will walk you through the fire and the flood. When we pursue God with all we have, he makes even the bad things that come our way work for our good (Romans 8:28).  Knowing that He’s got our back, we have no need to fear. We can have peace and joy even in bad times.

Have a great day!