* The warfare for your soul takes place on the battleground of your mind.
* This isn’t just about temptation or negative thinking.
* It’s about lazy thinking.
* In our minds, we’re supposed to:
* Take captive (bad thoughts)
* Be proactive (good thoughts)
* Backstory - Paul is teaching Timothy lots of things.
* He just taught him how to lead like a:
* Soldier - don’t meddle in something outside your fight
* Athlete - play to win but do it by the rules
* Farmer - work hard and trust God
* Then he tells him something just as valuable.
* Vs 7 - “Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.”
* Thinking through something is hard - mental work is the most exhausting work.
* When it comes to Scripture, follow these steps:
* Read - make Bible reading your habit.
* Think - what is it saying (don’t be distracted).
* Ask - ask God to speak to you.
* Apply - how does it apply to you.
* THEN:
* Live - do what it is you read (this makes it your own).
* Share - this locks It in even more.
* If you don’t do this, other people suffer.
* Vs 8 - “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David…”
* Essentially, “After you’ve reflected, be consciously aware of Christ’s presence in your life.”
* Oswald Chambers - “If you cannot express yourself on any subject, struggle until you can. If you do not, someone will be the poorer all the days of his life. Struggle to re-express some truth of God to yourself, and God will use that expression to someone else. Go through the winepress of God where the grapes are crushed. You must struggle to get expression experimentally, then there will come a time when that expression will become the very wine of strengthening to someone else; but if you say lazily - "I am not going to struggle to express this thing for myself, I will borrow what I say," the expression will not only be of no use to you, but of no use to anyone. Try to state to yourself what you feel implicitly to be God's truth, and you give God a chance to pass it on to someone else through you.
* Always make a practice of provoking your own mind to think out what it accepts easily. Our position is not ours until we make it ours by suffering. The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance."
2 Timothy 2:7 (10/26/22)
The Power of Good Thinking
October 26, 2022 • Benham Brothers
2 Timothy 1:1-18 (10/22/15)
October 22, 2015 • Benham Brothers
• Paul was set for execution and almost all his friends had deserted him. • So what did Paul do in his last days? He didn’t sulk - he didn’t play bridge and golf in Florida. • He poured into Timothy. • In this chapter he encourages Timothy with three essentials for success: • 1) Courageous enthusiasm (vs 1-7) - Christianity was not the for the faint of heart. • He was to fan into flame the gift that was in him (vs 6-7) - this means being where Satan would try to blow your light out. • 2) Shameless suffering (vs 8-12) - he needed to be ready to embrace suffering. • 3) Spiritual loyalty (vs 13-18) - he needed to maintain reverence to God’s Word and not concern himself with relevance to culture.
2 Timothy 1:4-5 (10/22/20)
October 22, 2020 • Benham Brothers
* The best job of all is raising up kids who love Jesus. * Nobody can do that job for your kids better than you. * Anyone can replace you at a meeting, but nobody can at the ballgame. * Paul was Timothy’s mentor, but the spark of Tim’s faith came from his mom and grandma. * Vs 4-5 - they didn’t have a book or blog or on the speaking circuit, but they were faithful to raise a young boy who would turn the world upside down for Christ. * A river touches places its source knows nothing of. * Tim’s mom was faithful when nobody was watching. * Much like the mom who packed the lunch for the kid who’s lunch Jesus used to feed the 5,000. * My mom did the same thing. * Anyone could’ve spoken at a conference or written a book I read, but only one person could’ve walked my lunch up to me at school - and she was faithful to do just that. * As a parent, what do you do? * Run at the pace of your people. * Whatever the pace is in your kids’ lives, wrap your life around that.
2 Timothy 1:7 (10/18/18)
October 18, 2018 • Benham Brothers
* Darkness isn’t a thing. It’s simply the absence of light. * We have flash lights, not flash darks. * Fear is not a thing. It’s simply the absence of power, love, and a sound mind. * When we’re not living by the power of the Holy Spirit with a love for people and a sound mind bent on truth then fear will fill the void. * God made our spirits fully capable of power and love, but we have to walk in it by having a sound mind. * So what do we do to keep fear out? * We renew our minds in God’s truth, fueled by our love for Him and others, so that we can walk in power against the threats of the enemy. * Power, love, sound mind.