2 Timothy 2:15-18
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly. Their teaching will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have departed from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some.
Paul says that a worker who does not need to be ashamed has 2 traits: First, he will do his best to please God. A good worker is surely a hard worker. He will strive to make his boss be satisfied with his work. Workers all have this experience. If a person meets difficulty in his work, he will surely do everything he can to solve the problem. He will never say immediately, "Sorry boss, this is too difficult, please find someone else to do it." In the same way, in knowing God's word, we should also do our best to pursue it and not just let it go if we don't understand. We need to pay careful attention and spend time to read and to truly understand. Devotional bible reading is the greatest challenge Christians have to face. When you want to draw near to God, the devil will make your body very busy and not able to quietly sit down. After you have sat down with great difficulty and just opened the Bible, you discover things that you usually don't think about all of a sudden start to come into your mind: the trash haven't been take out, the phone call you need to make,...etc. The devil uses all kinds of methods to hinder us, doing his best to make us not be able to do our best. That's why a pastor once said, "In the matter of 'doing our best' we should learn more from the devil." May the Lord help us so we will do our best to make every effort to know God's word, and remove the hindrances of busyness and laziness so our lives may be pleasing to God.
Next, we need to correctly handle the word of truth. Not only do we need to do our best to read the Bible, but even more we need to know what is God's will. "To correctly handle the word of truth" in the original language means being in forest surrounded by thick trees and opening a way so that others can successfully pass through. This is exactly our responsibility. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to give us wisdom from the Lord, otherwise we will be like Hymenaeus and Philetus whom Paul mentioned. They only depended on man's wisdom to explain God's word and wandered from the true word of God. They not only failed to build people up, but instead they destroyed the faith of others. May the Lord help us so that we can do our best to be workers who does not need to be ashamed and who are pleasing to the Lord.
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