{"id":232,"date":"2013-04-11T17:33:00","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T17:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/?p=232"},"modified":"2015-01-02T06:58:16","modified_gmt":"2015-01-02T06:58:16","slug":"that-your-profiting-may-appear-to-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/?p=232","title":{"rendered":"That Your Profiting May Appear to All"},"content":{"rendered":"

Timothy was not necessarily your average Christian young person.\u00a0 The Bible records a substantial amount of his background from his mixed nationality (Acts 16:1 – half Jew and half Greek), to his Christian upbringing at the hands of his mother and grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5 – Lois and Eunice), to his early meeting with the apostle Paul which not only forged a lifelong friendship, but helped to mold him even further into the Christian servant he ultimately became (1 Timothy 1:2).<\/p>\n

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However, much like today, his youth did not work in Timothy\u2019s favor.\u00a0 In Jewish society young men were not considered spiritually mature until the age of thirty.\u00a0 Traditionally men were not appointed to serve as priests until the age of thirty, and interestingly enough Jesus did not begin His public ministry until He reached the age of thirty (Luke 3:23).\u00a0 Timothy was not that old.\u00a0 We obviously do not know Timothy\u2019s exact age during this period of his life but many commentators believe he was in his late teenage years (17-19, maybe even 20), still a good ways away from the traditional age of spiritual maturity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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For that reason it is very likely that regardless of how able Timothy was as a Christian, preacher, and leader among the people of God he was immediately dismissed by virtually everyone with whom he came in contact.\u00a0 He would have been despised and disrespected because of his youth.\u00a0 No one would have taken him seriously.\u00a0 Sound familiar?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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This is a problem that has been virtually unchanged throughout history.\u00a0\u00a0 Sure, the age at which we begin to recognize adulthood has changed, but our attitude toward those younger has not.\u00a0 We still dismiss them as too immature to make a valuable contribution to the cause of Christianity.\u00a0 We still assume that they are only interested in fun, frolic, and being entertained rather than being concerned with the purity of Christianity and the salvation of the world.\u00a0 We still despise their youth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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However, Paul essentially makes a statement to Timothy that needs to be repeated to empower our young people \u2013 DON\u2019T LET THEM!\u00a0 Don\u2019t let the world despise you for your youth.\u00a0 Don\u2019t let older Christians, even, dismiss your energy, your ideas, your abilities to do great things for Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Some of the greatest men and women in the Bible were young people (David, Hananiah, Mishael, Azariah, and I can\u2019t imagine that Ruth or Esther were very old when they each displayed their faith respectively).\u00a0 They beat the odds stacked against them to leave lasting legacies of faith and obedience.\u00a0 But how can young people set themselves up to be taken seriously in a world that simply will not?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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In the remainder of 1 Timothy 4:12 through verse 15 Paul tells Timothy that he had to make himself an example of the believers, and then highlights nine specific areas on which he could focus to set himself apart as a force for Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Over the next several weeks we\u2019re going to take those nine specific areas and focus our attention on them to both encourage young people to commit them to heart, but also to encourage older people (adults, and yes this means you!) to develop a better attitude toward our young people and the profit they are to the church right now.\u00a0 Young people, work \u201cthat your profiting may appear to all\u201d (1 Timothy 4:15)!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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-Andy Brewer<\/div>\n

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Timothy was not necessarily your average Christian young person.\u00a0 The Bible records a substantial amount of his background from his mixed nationality (Acts 16:1 – half Jew and half Greek), to his Christian upbringing at the hands of his mother and grandmother (2 Timothy 1:5 – Lois and Eunice), to his early meeting with the … Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/young-people.jpg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5xRY9-3K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1107,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions\/1107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerbetterfaith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}