So I'm here in all the confusion praying to hear You and in the hearing, listen and follow....I know You already know my confusion.....but dang today I feel very confused.....
Paul sounds pretty lonely here.....2 Timothy 1: 1-2 I, Paul, am on special assignment for Christ, carrying out God's plan laid out in the Message of Life by Jesus. I write this to you, Timothy, the son I love so much. All the best from our God and Christ be yours! To Be Bold with God's Gifts
3-4 Every time I say your name in prayer—which is practically all the time—I thank God for you, the God I worship with my whole life in the tradition of my ancestors. I miss you a lot, especially when I remember that last tearful good-bye, and I look forward to a joy-packed reunion.
5-7 That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn't want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
8-10 So don't be embarrassed to speak up for our Master or for me, his prisoner. Take your share of suffering for the Message along with the rest of us. We can only keep on going, after all, by the power of God, who first saved us and then called us to this holy work. We had nothing to do with it. It was all his idea, a gift prepared for us in Jesus long before we knew anything about it. But we know it now. Since the appearance of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light, all through the work of Jesus.
11-12 This is the Message I've been set apart to proclaim as preacher, emissary, and teacher. It's also the cause of all this trouble I'm in. But I have no regrets. I couldn't be more sure of my ground—the One I've trusted in can take care of what he's trusted me to do right to the end.
13-14 So keep at your work, this faith and love rooted in Christ, exactly as I set it out for you. It's as sound as the day you first heard it from me. Guard this precious thing placed in your custody by the Holy Spirit who works in us.
15-18 I'm sure you know by now that everyone in the province of Asia deserted me, even Phygelus and Hermogenes. But God bless Onesiphorus and his family! Many's the time I've been refreshed in that house. And he wasn't embarrassed a bit that I was in jail. The first thing he did when he got to Rome was look me up. May God on the Last Day treat him as well as he treated me. And then there was all the help he provided in Ephesus—but you know that better than I.
In Soul Care by Larry Crabb he says in lesson 6 that...'We're foolish people. Every child begins life w/a natural inclination to pursue personal satisfacton as their number 1 agenda and to find that satisfaction in some source other than God. Now again, I want you to recall there's nothing wrong biblically with desiring satisfaction. I'm not condemning our desire for satisfaction. The Bible doesn't condemn it. In Jeremiah 2, God looks at His people and He says, "You're thirsty people who are going to the wrong place to satisfy your thirst." He never condemns the thirst. The thirst is legitimate. The thirst is what when embraced, drives us to God. When we see what we really long for, then we go to God. Primarily to relieve our thirst? No. Primarily for Him, which is the process relieves our thirst. What God condemns is not the thirst but going to the wrong places to satisfy the thirst.....'
I think today I am really very THIRSTY.....
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