Brother Gary Wednesday Evening 6/29/16

1Ti 4:11  These things command and teach.

1Ti 4:12  Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.

There are a million people in the world looking for a good example.  Many times our minds are baffled when we see people that way too young have the marks of being influenced by the world and evil people.  Right in the midst of that there are young people that know that the world doesn’t have the answer to the emptiness in their soul.

I was thinking of the children in the schools of our surrounding counties.  We thank God for every school that there is a good example in.  We thank God forever work place there is a good example in, and for every home that there is a good example in.

Paul wrote to Timothy:  “these things command and teach… be an example of the believers.”  Who will be an example?

An example in the Word of God:  You are not too young to hear the bible stories or to have a bible even if you cannot read.  You are not too young to know where scriptures are that will be beneficial to you through your childhood, life, and into eternity. 

Devotion is not reading 27 scriptures.  The important part is that the scriptures have a bearing that will affect the life in the time world and in eternity. 

For the young people, the adults, and the seniors: there is a very important factor that every one of us realizes and that is that we are an example of the Word of God.  The Word of God is wonderful.  We are blessed to have our own bible and easy access to bibles. 

We need to read the bible and know the doctrine.  The bible teaches us where we came from.  All of us have had our time after reaching the age of accountability.  We came from Egypt being slaves to sin.  It is sad how the bondage of sin affects children.

Children, it is important that you know what the bible teaches about being truthful, honest, and kind.  It is important that children be kind to each other.  The world is bigger than just themselves.  If you want to live a very difficult life then draw a circle where no one else is in it other than yourself and yours. 

There are many that there is no one as important as their family.  Today many of them are in cults.  The devil is mean.  He takes precious people that have had the opportunity to know and enjoy the gospel.  He gets them lean in their heart and soul and they are then open pray to whatever religious spirit that will come along to inject them with pride and whatever else. 

These People, I am told, cannot even be contacted in a friendly manner by a family member or they will be disciplined.

Know how to love your mother, father, brother, and sister.  Be ye kind, tender hearted, forgiving one another.  As children know how to reach out and how to go to someone that doesn’t have a friend. 

There is a friend that sticks closer than the brother.  The best example that you can give is knowing the Word of God and reaching out.  Don’t be in a closed circle; your life will turn sour.  It will turn bitter. 

Keep your life big.  Have a big prayer list.  Everywhere you go there are people that need prayer.  If you don’t reach out you will become an island.  Talk about heartache!

Know your bible.  Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needs not be ashamed.

In conversation: we need to know how to talk, what to talk about and what not to talk about.  We need to know what questions to ask and what questions not to ask.  We need to know how to give a complement and how to take a complement. 

Be an example:  If everyone was rude, what a world we would live in!

If you don’t care for someone then let me help you pray for them.  Know how to be an example in your talk.  Know how to get something from God to talk about.  Don’t go on the internet looking for a subject.  I don’t believe that stuff. 

Be an example in conversation.  We have good and profitable things to talk about. 

What is the next step and exploit of my life?  God doesn’t want to just give us one good service, we want to have many and we want to know how to reach out to others. 

Be an example in charity: holy love in action.  Showing love one to another.  Loving burdens.  There are really heavy burdens in this audience.  You don’t have to know anything about them to show love. 

Be an example in spirit:  On your knees is where you get something to talk about.  Don’t come up with a subject when you are so exhausted that you are spiraling down.  Rather do so when you are alone with God and you see the heavens open and God bigger than any problem.  When you see bodies being healed, atheists falling on their knees, then we have something to talk about.

We serve a God that wants us to be an example in spirit.

Be an example in faith:  This journey is life.  We will be faced with challenges.  Have faith in God.  School is tough.  Tough days.  Tough years.  Failing grades.  It was tough for me. 

Have faith in God then you can make it.  I did graduate from high school.  It is possible.  Faith in God.  You can stay saved this year in school.  You can be an example, you can have victory this year.

Be an example in purity.  There are many writings written on purity.  There are instructions to pastors, to adults, to young people.  Paul wrote, ‘Be an example in purity.”  That is what we are called to be an example in: purity toward God, toward each other, and toward those all around.

Be an example in purity, in exhortation, in doctrine:  It is important to not only desire to say something but to know how to listen.  Listen without your mind all the time saying, “What do I say?” It is ok to say, “I need to think on that a while.”

Neglect not the gift:  It is not my calling from God to give any one any gift.  I don’t give miracles, or any of the other gifts.  God gives gifts.  He wrote to Timothy, “Don’t neglect the gift.” 

How about your gift to work with souls?  Is there any need greater than people that will supplicate?  It is a full time job to pray that God will keep evil spirits away.  It is a perilous time. 

Children are exposed to spirits that they never should be exposed to.  They are vexed with spirits that they should never know anything about.  We need the gift to intercede and supplicate.

Is God’s hand on one or more to preach, to teach, to evangelize?  We have a whole world before us.  You don’t have anything that you are not going to leave.  The eye of God is going across this little congregation checking us all out. 

To be an example:  Don’t neglect the gift.  The gift to pray, the gift to testify, the gift to teach, to rule, to get things done. 

I believe in holy men and holy women with the Holy Spirit of God lifting up the standard, taking the responsibility of deacons, elders, pastors and evangelists, and getting the job done for God.

We must ask God to remove the spirit of unbelief, the thought that no one wants to hear about God, from our mind.  The enemy wants you and me to believe that that relative doesn’t want the gospel.  If you don’t ask then you don’t know.  He wants us to believe that that young person only wants sin.  I don’t believe that.  There are a few that have seen the wages of sin.

My example is the picture that I am placing before others.  How do we portray the gospel?  Serving God is hard?  That is not what my bible says.  It says that the way of the transgressor is hard.  I know about being lost, about Egypt, and about wandering.

Take heed to the doctrine.  It is of utmost importance that we know that we have confessed, repented, turned from our sin, and gotten saved. That is the first work of grace: I know I covenanted with God to quit the sin business and quit playing around. 

Lay aside every weight and the besetting sin, the carnal man.  You say, “I still fly off the handle.”  You better get rid of that ax and cry out to God to be rid of that carnal man.  You say, “I just had to say something.”  That is carnality. 

There is a vast difference between the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God and a person getting carnal and speaking their mind.

Heb 4:9  There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.

Heb 4:10  For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.

Heb 4:11  Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

Manipulators are not sanctified.  We don’t want to be manipulators in the church.  God wants us to have entered into that rest, “May the will of God be done.”

Be challenged.  Live challenged.  Enjoy the challenge.  My expectation is of God.

Others are looking for an example.  Be an example of the believers.  That is one of our callings.  This is one of God’s greatest tools.  Be an encouragement to others.  It is not so much words.  It can be even your handshake. 

Be an encouragement to others.  More than just a select few.  If there is one that you don’t have anything in common with, get something in common.  You want to be an encouragement, a testimony to souls wandering. 

My heart aches.  I spoke to a little girl the other day and asked her if she prayed.  She told me that she was Catholic.  I asked her if Catholics could pray out of church.  She looked at me and my wife over.

We represent something.  We represent the king of kings and the Lord of Lords.  We represent something and we look like something.  This loose world that doesn’t dress up for a funeral or a wedding, it is a shame.

The disciples in Luke 11 came upon Jesus praying and asked Him to teach them to pray.