Your Labor in the Lord Is Not Vain
Dearly beloved of God, God our Father has not given us a spirit of cowardice but of power and of love and of sober thinking.
The Apostle Paul wrote these words by revelation to Timothy, his true child in the faith, while he was imprisoned, and he was about to die.
All Asia had turned away from him. Israel was a conquered country under the dominion of the Roman empire. A number of the spiritual leaders in the Sanhedrin were born of the seed of the devil, and led the people away from the True God, not toward Him. Many myriads of the Judeans that believed were zealots for the law, not for the doctrine of the grace of God, and the mystery of God concerning Christ.
The circumstances were definitely troubling.
What was God’s instruction via the Apostle Paul to Timothy? God our Father has not given us a spirit of cowardice but of power and of love and of sober thinking.
He exhorted Timothy to not be ashamed of the witness of our Lord, nor of him, but to share with him in suffering hardships for the gospel according to the power of God, Who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before the time of the ages.
Paul exhorted Timothy to hold fast the form of sound words that he had heard from Paul with believing and love in Christ Jesus. Paul told him to guard the good deposit of the gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ by means of the holy spirit that dwelled in them.
We are not the only ones that have lived in troubling times; the times have been troubling since Adam and Eve were driven out of the garden until the time of the great flood; from the flood to Abraham’s day; from his day to Moses’ day when they lived in as slaves in Egypt; from the time of Moses to the time of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion, and his resurrection from the dead, to his ascension into heaven, and his sending the promise of the Father on the Feast of Pentecost; to the time that God gave the Apostle Paul the revelation of concerning Jesus Christ’s accomplishments, the revelation of the grace of God, and of the mystery concerning Christ, to our times today.
Dearly beloved, give thanks unto the Father, Who made us competent for a part in the share of the holy ones in the light. He delivered us from the authority of darkness, and He transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
The Day of Redemption is drawing nigh when God will send His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will deliver us from death, and/or this evil world. We will obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Faint not dearly beloved; Jesus Christ is coming as surely as he came the first time.
Christ freed us with freedom! Until we see him face to face and we are as he is, stand fast in the freedom. He justified us and he will glorify us; you can stake your life on it.
Use your freedom to serve one another in love. Walk in the complete reality of Jesus Christ’s accomplishments and the new birth. Renew your thinking to who you are in Christ. Believe the measure God has given us to believe, and live with the hope of glory always before your eyes. Stand fast, and speak His Word with boldness, dearly beloved.
If God is for us, who can be against us? The worst that can happen to us is that we die. Since there is no awareness of time in death, the next thing we will be aware of is being glorified with the Lord Jesus Christ when we meet him in the air.
We will be with him and like him forever and ever. That is our impetus to stand, dearly beloved. Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Therefore, dearly beloved, be stedfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not vain. Be strong and of good courage, and stand!
The God of the hope fill you with all joy and peace in the right way of believing so that you may abound in the hope by the power from the Holy Spirit.