When you woke up today or any other day, was preserving and proclaiming the gospel or enduring suffering high up on your list of things to do for the day? Is it the mindset you leave home with on a typical day? If you’re not a professing Christian, then it would be quite surprising if this was your mindset. However, if you are a professing Christian, then it should be surprising if this is NOT your mindset. Let me ask you a serious question though — How many professing Christians do you know who think and act like this?
I’ll keep it fairly short today. Let’s just highlight a few verses from 2 Timothy and a short video from Voddie Baucham driving home a few of these points.
2Ti 4:1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom:
2Ti 4:2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
2Ti 4:3 For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,
2Ti 4:4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
2Ti 4:5 As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
—2 Timothy 4:1-5
Here are a few of the points Voddie made:
Preserve and proclaim the gospel and endure the war with your flesh.
Preserve and proclaim the gospel and endure the temptation to be silent about the gospel when your reputation takes a hit.
Preserve and proclaim the gospel and don’t you dare back down when those who have perverted the gospel have bigger numbers than you do. Endure that!
If we are going to suffer anyways, then we may as well be busy preserving and proclaiming the gospel, right?