Ever felt your faith dwindling during challenging times? What's the secret to keeping it aflame? Join us for an enriching conversation with Dr. Rex Horn as we contemplate the potency of our faith, the impact of the church's legacy, and the crucial role of divine love. Dr. Horn reverberates the call to fan the flame of our spiritual gifts, an urgent message in the face of heretical teachings.
We then pivot to explore fear and love within sacred church spaces and our daily routine. Through thoughtful reflection on cherished church moments, you'll remember the eternal significance of these spaces and Jesus' ever-present persona. So, prepare to reignite your faith, live with power, love, and a sound mind, and join us in a heartfelt prayer for the church's journey and victories ahead.
Ever felt your faith dwindling during challenging times? What's the secret to keeping it aflame? Join us for an enriching conversation with Dr. Rex Horn as we contemplate the potency of our faith, the impact of the church's legacy, and the crucial role of divine love. Dr. Horn reverberates the call to fan the flame of our spiritual gifts, an urgent message in the face of heretical teachings.
We then pivot to explore fear and love within sacred church spaces and our daily routine. Through thoughtful reflection on cherished church moments, you'll remember the eternal significance of these spaces and Jesus' ever-present persona. So, prepare to reignite your faith, live with power, love, and a sound mind, and join us in a heartfelt prayer for the church's journey and victories ahead.
Hi and welcome to the FBC Eldorado Sermon Podcast. We hope God will use this week's message to both inspire and challenge you as you seek to walk closer with the Lord. Now join me as we listen into this week's sermon.
Speaker 2:Our speaker today is Dr Rex Horn, and we are so grateful to have Dr Rex Horn back again this week and to have Becky joining him as well this week. Rex Becky, you are family and we are glad that you're with us here today and we are glad that we can call you friends. So thank you for being with us and pointing us to Jesus today.
Speaker 3:Today I want to preach a message that I hope will be inspirational but also will be instructive on how that we can live and how we should live in our Christian life, corporately, of course, as a church, but also as individuals. When I read from the passage will be from 2 Timothy, chapter 1, there it's talking about begins when Paul said you know, I recall the remembrance, the genuine faith that's in you, which grew up first in your grandmother Lois, your mother Eunice, I'm persuaded, in you also. It's about generations. That's what it is, isn't it? First Baptist Del Doret is a generational church too in a lot of respects, and I know that some of you, you're the first generation. That's a part of this church, but it's been around a long time and there's a lot of people that many of you can still see. When you come to church on Sunday, you remember where Brother So-and-So would sit and who was in the choir and who was in the balcony and all those kinds of things. It's generational and that's a good thing. That's a good thing. It's a wonderful thing, in fact. Well, I want to talk with you about the son, the grandson, timothy. Timothy who looked to Paul kind of as his father in the ministry and this letter is believed by many in the New Testament scholars. That was the last letter that Paul wrote and Timothy that's in Scripture and it's written to Timothy and he's going to encourage Timothy about some different things. So we're going to look at that and think about that.
Speaker 3:I don't know, but I've always enjoyed a fire now a good kind of fire and a fireplace, a fire at a camp fire, a fire there's something mystical about it. There's something mesmerizing about a fire, isn't it Just to sit around the fire? And when you sit around a fire, what do you do? Well, you think and you talk. You might think about nothing and you might talk about nothing. Or you might think and talk about things in the past, things you hope in the future, things as they are in the present. You think and you talk. Not, women do it too, but most of the time it seems like it's guys. They also like to poke the fire. Take that iron, a piece of wood. I think it's called an iron stoker or something. I just call it a poker, don't you Just something you poke the fire with? And you do that because you kind of scatter the ashes around and kind of adjust the wood a little bit, so that the wood will burn longer and brighter and warmer. It's just a part of the experience I want you to think with me in a spiritual kind of way about. It's kind of time to poke the fire a little bit in our spiritual life. The fire's not out, but the fire that we have within us can diminish and can kind of lose some of its brightness and some of its warmth. And so today I want these verses to help us to poke, stir that fire a little bit.
Speaker 3:So, after Paul reminds Timothy of his mother and his grandmother and the faith that he has, he begins to tell them the next two verses, verse six and seven of 2 Timothy, chapter one, what I'd like to think with you about today. He said, therefore, I remind you, in light of their faith, to stir up the gift of God which is in you. Through the laying on of my hands. I want to speak to you about an action and an appropriation. The action is to stir up, to stir up that gift that is in you, he said. First of all, he said I want to remind you, I want you to remember the idea. Simply, I want you to call these things to your mind. So he set the context with mother and grandmother and about faith. And now he's moving toward that, warming up that flame, poking that flame, that spiritual flame. I want you to remember to stir up. The word stir up means to keep fresh, it means to rekindle, it means to resuscitate. Timothy, keep it fresh, stay stirred up, rekindle the fire that's in you by the laying on of my hands. Now, he's not claiming, paul, that he's the giver of power or the giver of gifts. That's the Lord, that's the Lord, that's the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 3:Romans 12 talks about spiritual gifts that the Spirit gives to us. But he's saying you have something in you. It was recognized. Your mother and your grandmother taught you right. You came to faith yourself. We saw it in you and we laid hands on you. But I got to remind you. I want you to remember to stir up, rekindle, resuscitate, rekindle that gift that is in you. And that's the charge that he's making, that's the action that he's calling for. He's saying to you I want you to stir it up. Now, why is he wanting him to stir this up?
Speaker 3:Timothy lived in a day, just like the day we live in, where there was a lot of fear, there was a lot of challenges and there was some heretical teaching going on in the church and out and about the church. So it's important for Timothy, who's looked upon, and for leadership in the early church, that he might be able to keep things going and keep things right and keep things, as we'd say, between the ditches. But to do that he's going to have to constantly be rekindling that flame that is in him. In fact, stir up is a word that's present tense in the Greek language. That means it's a continuous action. It's not enough to say well, you know, after I was saved, I was stirred up. Our 10 years ago I went through an experience and it stirred me up again. Well, those are good, those happen along the way.
Speaker 3:But this is talking about brothers and sisters, about a daily kind of thing, really, and maybe more than a daily thing. Maybe we need to stir up several times during the day when we realize we're not stirred up as we should be in our walk with the Lord and the good that we wish to do for Christ. So he says to him I want you to stir it up, stir up the gift that's in you by the laying on of my hands, and he's going to talk in a moment I'll talk more about it in just a moment about fear. I don't know where again the scholars get it, but maybe it's through writings like this. But it's thought kind of widely thought, that Timothy was something of a timid sort of guy, kind of shy perhaps which there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, they're all made differently but he was a guy that might have been somewhat timid, a little shy, and maybe because of that he might have had a tendency to be a little fearful about things. And so Paul is saying here's what you need to do and here's what you need to remember. Now let me just move aside for just a second.
Speaker 3:Fear is something that we do not deny. We all have fears, don't we? We all have fears at times. I think that those studying human development, human life, character, they kind of group things into about five different fears that I've read and you might be interested to hear what those are that people have the fear of death, the fear of losing their autonomy. We understand that the fear of loneliness, not connected, not being with others, losing touch, the fear of sickness, the loss of well-being and the fear of humiliation, being left out, excluded, scorned. There's fear. Stir up the gift that's in you.
Speaker 3:Don't be fearful, timothy, because the world's filled with fear and there needs to be someone, some man, some woman, some young person that can walk in this world confidently not cockily, confidently, not with arrogance, but confidently that things are going to work out even when things aren't good and that, with the Lord, we're always going to win. It may not all be on this side, but we know, ultimately and finally, victory is ours through the Lord, jesus Christ. And in the meantime, he's promised us that he will never leave us nor forsake us, and time and time again in Scripture he said I will not leave you comfortless. And even we respond to the Holy Spirit. He's called at times the comforter, the paraclete, the one who walks alongside. So, listen, we have a lot to restore our confidence. If we'll just stir the fire a little bit Just remember, just get it burning a little brighter, we'll find that not only is it good for us, it's also good for other people. So that's the encouragement that he has. We need to return, when we're sitting by the spiritual fire, to some pivotal moments in our life. Spiritually speaking, it's good to think about when we were saved, when we were baptized the churches, the youth ministers, the pastors, the Sunday school teachers, the Bible school workers, the mission leaders, the music leaders, the people that have so impacted our life over time.
Speaker 3:I did this in my message recently at the state convention when I kind of gave my testimony and my testimonies wrapped up and deeply rooted in South Arkansas. In fact, I showed a picture on the screen of old Cullendale First Baptist Church over by the mill, cinderblock walls, not nearly as nice as this beautiful church. In fact I said and I could say it because my dad and all of those wonderful guys are all in heaven I would have said it and they were still living. I'd been in trouble. But I said obviously we didn't have an architect. I think the guys were eating their sandwiches out of their lunchbox and turned a napkin over and kind of drew that thing out. But I tell you it's special to me. I was saved there and I was baptized there and I was ordained to preach there. I even showed a picture of the old cast iron sign that was out front. I mowed and edged around that sign in the summers and my brother after me.
Speaker 3:It's a special place, like this place is to you all. Listen, it ought to be special to you. There's not a church. I don't care how nice or how bad it seems to look. Every time I go to any church, of any size, I like it. It's a sacred space. It's a place that was built to worship and honor God, and there's been eternal things happen in every church that you go into. So just stir that up a little bit and think about when you were saved, when you were baptized, where you were married. Even think about the things where you know dad's service was there, memorial service, or grandparents or our dear friends, or during that crisis in our town, we came together and we prayed together. It's a special place. Stir it up when you're sitting around that spiritual campfire.
Speaker 3:The interpreter Barkley said it this way Courage, get courage from the continual consciousness of the presence of Christ. Courage comes from the continual consciousness of the presence of Christ. I don't think we emphasize that enough. I really don't. We know that we're going to see Jesus, don't we? When we pass from this life and go to heaven, and we know that the promises of His Word are true and we cling to them now. But, man, if we could ever capture the truth that Jesus is here now he's with us, now he lives in us now, by the presence of His Holy Spirit, Do we live like we're living in the presence of Jesus, that he's with us? You know, we used to sing the old hymn he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am His own. Well, he's still doing it, he's still walking, he's still living in you. Live your life in the consciousness that Jesus is present. Stir it up, that's the action.
Speaker 3:Well then there's an appropriation that comes in the next verse, verse 7 of 2 Timothy, chapter 1. And there we read for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Four kind of connects, of course, verse 6 and 7. Stir it up Four could be translated because stir it up, because God has not given us a spirit of fear. We talked about fear for a moment. He's not giving us that fear, but he's giving us power.
Speaker 3:The word power is a strong word. It's a word that talks about dynamite. It's dunamis is the word, the power that we have, strength, the might that comes our way. You know what this power does for you. It just gives you the ability to hold on. You know, sometimes we get to the point and we think, well, all I can do is hold on, that's right. So hold on, just hold on. That's the strength that comes from the Lord to hold on. So when you hold on, you're persevering.
Speaker 3:Some of you today would say you know, maybe you're there, or maybe you've been there or you will be. We all will. You know, I'm just kind of I feel like I'm at the end of my strength. We used to say the end of the rope. I just feel like I don't know how to go on, how I can go on. Well, friends, just hold on. Just hold on. When you're holding on, remember this it's not that it's depending on your grip, but when you hold on to the Lord, what happens? His hands hold onto your hands and you're going to get through. How do I know that? Well, you're here today. You've been through it, you're going through it. You're here. Things are improving. You're here. You've got the ability to be here. You've got the strength to be here. You've got the life to be here. You're healthy enough to be here. You're here. Sometimes we can't see it, and that's okay, but let's just hold on.
Speaker 3:God has not given us the spirit of fear. So remember this when fear comes our way, that's not from God. Now, you know, I'm not talking about the fear of heights or fire or whatever else it may be. You know what I'm saying the fear about life, the challenges we face in ordinary life. How are we going to work this out? How are we going to get past this? How are we going to do this? Well, god gives us minds. We work on it, work through it, but God has given us not fear, but power, the ability to hold on Might and strength that is not our own. That's the reason why, when we're saved, the Holy Spirit comes to live within us, because the Holy Spirit, according to Paul and Ephesians, I believe it is says that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you and me. That's power, that's the power that's in your life, is the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead. He's not giving us fear. So know that fear doesn't come from him.
Speaker 3:And why does the Satan, why do evil things and people and principalities and powers use fear? Because it paralyzes folks. And you know, most of the time I think it would be most of the time, don't you Something that we're afraid of never happens, or it doesn't happen like we thought it would, or we look back and say it's not as bad as I figured it would be, but just having that fear, it can be paralyzing to us. He's not giving us a Spirit of fear, but of power. Then of course you know this verse and you know the next word but of love, self-sacrificing and Self-forgetting kind of love. So love first, power, then love, self-sacrificing, self-forgetting yes, agape kind of love. Now, why do we need that? Because the same things that were happening and Paul and Timothy's day happened today.
Speaker 3:Danger on the outside, division on the inside Happens in every age, every generation. There's always danger on the outside. We expect that, we expect that, but if we're not careful, there's division on the inside. You look at the early church. I've been reading in my daily reading back through acts and it's amazing what happened to the key characters. Of course, outside of the Lord himself and the Holy Spirit Are Peter and Paul.
Speaker 3:Now let's make this verse applied to Peter and Paul. What did Peter do when Jesus was betrayed? He denied the Lord and he cursed the Lord. And he had said to the Lord the rest of these guys might run, but I never will. The rest of these guys may try to protect their lives, but I'll give mine up. I'll never. I'll never leave you. Now we did. He leave him. He cursed him, paul Saul. He stood there and watch Stephen Even Be martyred and he gave approval. And after that he took off to different places around to find those who were naming the name of Christ men and women, acts, tells us and would put them in prison, perhaps thinking he'd kill some more. And he met the Lord on the road to Damascus and he was converted and he was saved.
Speaker 3:Now the devil Would say to Peter and Paul who do you think you are To talk to people about Jesus and be leaders in the church? Who do you think you are, peter? You've cursed him, you deserted him. Paul, you're a murderer. You killed people that named his name. You persecuted his church.
Speaker 3:Now, just be honest. If you were walking in that path, wouldn't that be easy to just think? You know what? That's the truth. Who am I to be doing this? And it would been easy, wouldn't it, for Paul, for Peter, to just step back and say you know I'm out. My past has got a hold of me. You can't redo it. No, you can't.
Speaker 3:But that's where power and love comes, the power of Christ, the love that God first had for us and that should overflow our lives with gratitude. His blood covers our sin, our guilt, his grace. What does the Bible say? Where sin was, grace abounds. It means that the sin that you have, the grace of God just washes it, just overflows it. And the truth is, every one of us is a sinful person, saved by grace, through faith. Only difference in us in the rest of the world is we're saved sinners, their law centers, and God is not giving us that spirit of fear, but of power and of love.
Speaker 3:Now, how does the division come inside? We understand outside danger, because human beings have this tendency. We'll just think about our own life, because in a way, I just want you to sit by that spiritual fire yourself and deal with it. So just think about yourself. Is your default position One of fear? Our faith Is your default position? I mean just your natural way of doing and thinking. Is it of weakness or of power? Is it using the word can't or can more? Well, that says something. Now I know we say well, we can't be ridiculous with our faith. Who's asking us to be ridiculous. I'm not asking us to be ridiculous. I'm just asking us to stir up the gift that's in us, and I think when we do we at all agree there's far more that we could do and should do and could be involved in than what we presently are. Stir it up. God's giving you not to spirit fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
Speaker 3:Some of your translations probably have it self-control. Another interpreter said it's control of oneself in the face of panic or passion. It's self mastery which keeps us from being swept away or running away. He writes the greatest challenge for you and me is not the people that we serve or that we are that answer to us and the work week Are the position that you have at church, the people on your committee, the people in the choir, the missions, that all this. The greatest challenge is not ruling over them or that. You know, the greatest challenge you've got is ruling yourself. Ruling yourself, and you know how we can do that is To call what the people in the Bible, in the New Testament, called Jesus.
Speaker 3:Think about it. They called him Lord, they called him Savior, they called him master, master. We don't call Jesus master much we call him Lord and Lord me same thing. But there's something isn't there. When you say Jesus is my master Not only my Lord and Savior, but my master he tells me what to do and I obey. So, sitting at the master's feet, and he says look, rex, look for spambus deltorata. I've not given you the spirit of fear, but I've given you power and love and a sound mind. Well, lord, how do we know it? Because he's given us his presence through the Holy Spirit, and when the Holy Spirit comes, he gives us presence like gifts, the gifts of the Spirit. So I've got it covered, jesus would tell us. He does have it covered, he's got it all covered. So what we do is simply obey the master and trust that he's right and he is, and follow his way and he'll encourage us and he will bless us and he'll bring so much more to pass Love, power and a sound mind.
Speaker 3:When I read 2, timothy, thinking that it's his last letter, I wonder what all Paul's thinking about is. He sits by the fire and he thinks about Timothy. He loves him like a son. He's encouraged him the best that he can. He's reminded him of the truth. He's told him to stir it up. That's the action, the appropriation, the gift of the Spirit power, love and a sound mind. But then he might think you know, what I've taught and what I've thought In large part depends on what Timothy does with it and the letters that I've sent to the churches.
Speaker 3:It kind of depends on them. Do you know? Your parents and grandparents and those before them had similar thoughts about you and about me and about what the church will be when they're gone. When the church is here and you're here and you have a bright future, the influence of this church could be as great as it's ever been. That's not cliche, that's truth. That's truth. The day when so many would name at my home church, at your home church, they're in heaven. They're in heaven. This is your time, this is my time. Whatever time is left, this is it. This is our time to stir the fire and to strike a blow for the Lord in our time, in our city, in our county, and it could be as good and better than it's ever been. I believe that because I believe that Jesus is always about the present, always in the present, and this is the time for you and me to make those commitments. There's always somebody that'll stand up and do something like that.
Speaker 3:Winston Churchill, of course, was one of the greatest leaders the world is known, particularly in a crisis, critical time of World War II. When you think about the context of some of his speeches and some of the words that he spoke, it's incredible. Indeed, united Kingdom was about gone, about gone, and we like to think, and we did in a way that America came running in and helped save the world. And we did, in a way Churchill would say, what took you so long? He sat on his hands and bit his tongue, knowing that he had to have the Americans to help, and we did get around to sending some old warships and other stuff along the way before we got in, because we'd been attacked too. So most folks thought some in Washington, probably a lot in the United Kingdom, thought it's about over for us. We're going to come under probably Hitler's rule. Freedom and democracy as we've known it is gone.
Speaker 3:In that context, churchill spoke these words. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth should last for a thousand years, men will still say that this was their finest hour. Now you could say we've said what a powerful statement of hope. What a leader to stand up and say that. Or what a lunatic to say that during that time. That's crazy talk, but it was a word that the people latched on to.
Speaker 3:Now I want to tell you this If words from a man like Winston Churchill can move a country and a world and they can, and they did what about the word of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, god in flesh, who conquered death, hell in the grave, who lives forevermore? Not only that, he lives inside of us today. If he tells us something, it's not in the balance, it's already been determined. Would you battle with me for a moment? You're still by the fire.
Speaker 3:I want to ask you just to say to the Lord Lord, stir it up.
Speaker 3:The gifts you've given me, the relationship I have, lord, let it burn bright. Stir it up in me one more time, today and tomorrow, when I need it. I'm going to ask you to stir it one more time. It's a part of your DNA as a Christian to want to be what the Lord wants you to be and what he's made possible for you to be. So ask the Lord to stir you up and tell Him you want to live your life not in fear, but in power and love and a sound mind, taking the challenge from the master and obeying Him in all things. Father, thank you for this church and for the attention of the people today. I pray that you will bless them and bless the church family, not only with optimism about the day and the future, but, lord, even beyond that, that we're on a journey and there's victories to be won, and we want to be a part of it. Bless this invitation and those who respond in any way, for we pray in Jesus' name, amen.