 off switch we'll do for you there. Let me try that again, good morning. It is so great to be here with you guys today as we worship the Lord and study his word. And if you have not yet made plans for joining Calvary Chapel of the Chino Valley for the midweek study, I would invite you if you've not heard my brother Brennan speak. He is an excellent Bible teacher. If I don't say so myself as his big brother and better looking older brother. He is a great, great Bible teacher, a great minister. And if you are not a regular on Wednesday nights, it's a great pit stop in the week to be able to recharge the spiritual man and to finish the week strong. But it's great to be here with you this morning as we continue in what is really the ethos of Calvary Chapel and especially this church where you can come every Sunday and have the word of God open and taught and what a great blessing it is to be able to fill in for Pastor David this morning. I hope that you have come to receive from the word of God. It's living, it's powerful, it's sharper than any two-edged sword, it pierces down to the innermost recesses of our hearts and the Lord knows what we need. And today we're gonna open his word and study it. So if you have your Bibles, can you please open to 2 Timothy chapter four? We're gonna be looking at verse five this morning. And yes, verse five. We're gonna kind of unpack this really, I think important part of Paul's letter to Timothy and let's begin just for some context in reading verses one through five of 2 Timothy chapter four. Paul writes and says, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom. Verse two, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and teaching for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine but according to their own desires because they have itching ears they will heap up for themselves teachers and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables. But you Timothy, be watchful in all things endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. Let's pray. Father, we ask that you would give us ears to hear what your spirit would say to your church. We ask Lord that we would not only be hearers but doers also. And Father, we ask now that you would add your blessing to the reading and to the study of your word and we ask these things in Jesus' name and all God's people say amen. So a little bit of the background. Paul is writing to Timothy who is a young man, a young pastor who is being handed a great spiritual responsibility. Not only as a pastor but as an overseer of the churches in his area. Paul was in prison in Rome. He was testifying before Nero himself according to history where he eventually would be martyred for his faith in Christ. And one of these letters that Paul is writing here, they're like the last bits of advice, the last pieces of encouragement that Paul would share with his spiritual son, Timothy. If you picked up in the verses that we read, Paul writes and says there's gonna come a time in church history where the people that are in the church will not want to hear about what the Bible has to say. Does that sound a little bit like the day and age that we're living in? Where they will heap up the exact words where they will gather together teachers that will tickle their ears, that will basically not tell them what God's word says but rather they will tell them things that they want to hear. And it's been, I think, one of the great privileges of growing up with guys like your pastor as a mentor and as a teacher and other men like Pastor David that have been faithful in teaching the word of God because when you come to a church that teaches the word of God, you'll love it or you could hate it but at least you'll know it. You'll know what it says and then you're able to make your own decisions and stand on your own two spiritual feet. But Paul is saying that there's a time that's gonna come and we believe that it's now where Christians or professing Christians in the church don't wanna hear what God's word has to say. They've replaced the truths of God's word with some sort of fable or fairy tale. I mean, have you noticed today how feelings are more important than facts now? That if I feel something, then it doesn't matter what science says or what truth is because my feelings will determine my reality. And I hate to break it to you but facts don't care about your feelings. They don't at all. And truth is truth. And whether you believe it or not, I could drop this phone into the land to the floor because of the law of gravity. Doesn't matter that you hate it at all. Back in the day I played college basketball and I was one of those guys that I played shooting guard. I was pretty quick back in the day and I was known to jump very high. I could jump very high. But then I had an injury and where I broke my hip in a basketball game and really, really messed myself up. And my high jumping career was over and I became pretty much like every other white guy and I could get a little credit card under there if you jumped high and hard enough. And I remember that really distinctly and I remember the things that just changed in my life. I remember looking at things that were important to me in the world and things that I thought I was gonna be doing with my life and it all changed. The way that I felt about the things that happened really did not alter God's plan. And so often we'll find that we feel a certain way about something but it doesn't change the truth of the matter. When you're a Christian living according to God's word I may not like something that it says. I may disagree with that in my own understanding or I may not understand it. But if you're truly to say you're a follower of Jesus Christ your feelings are subjected to the lordship of Jesus Christ. You subject yourself to what God's word says you'll humble yourself under the hand of God and you say not my will but your will be done. But see what's happening in the world today even as Satan said I will exalt myself I will be like the most high God. Satan whose name was Lucifer who was a beautiful creation of God an archangel. He had a desire to exalt himself to God's status. And when somebody today says I look at what the Bible tells me and this is how I get to heaven or these are the things that please the Lord and I say I don't like it and I reject it. Guess who elevates themselves as the authority? It is no longer God it is no longer his word it becomes the individual person. And so now we're seeing that words used to describe reality. I used to use words to describe oh that is hot or that is cold but now words are being used to create reality. And if we don't fall in line with a reality that is being created then we're looked at as hateful or as bigots or these terrible people that need to be silenced. And I wonder where are the people proclaiming the word of God and truth today because it's happening with our young people. It's our kids that are being groomed in schools to be desensitized to sexual perversions. There are things that are happening in our world today that are not meant to be. And I really truly believe in my heart of hearts that there is a push by the devil not only a concerted effort to silence the voice of Christians but to really silence anyone that would try to provide an alternative to the lives of Satan. To be able to speak the truth in love in an understanding way. We know that in the end times which we believe that we're living in because all of the things that are needed for the Antichrist to step on the scene are now available. You know in the 80s maybe you grew up watching those left behind movies and you know everybody that took the mark of the beast had this giant barcode on their forehead and we wondered who in the world is going to tattoo a giant barcode on their forehead. I don't think that that's really the way that it's gonna go but we didn't have the technology that we have today. Now the size of a grain of sand you can have implanted a chip implanted that has all of your financial and banking records all of your health records it can have everything about you on it. And they've discovered that the best place to put that chip is on your right hand or on your forehead. Even though the Bible said that thousands of years ago that there will come a time where you won't be able to buy or sell unless you take the mark of the beast which is an absolute act of worshiping the Antichrist. We're seeing what's happening in our own nation. The decline of the United States is being a superpower in the world. We're seeing an ecumenical movement of all roads lead to the kingdom and just be a genuine believer of whatever it is you believe in and that'll get you to heaven. We're seeing with cryptocurrencies and we're moving to a one world monetary system a one world government and a one world religion. And then we have people that are in the church that don't wanna hear what the Bible has to say and that's why you'll have popular pastors on TikTok and other social media platforms that will say it's okay for Christians to have abortions and we should provide that for people. How can you have a biblical worldview or know what the Bible says and say that it's okay to murder children? This is what's happening in the church today even as the Bible told us that there will come a time when people will not endure sound doctrine. They'll not want to, and Paul's not writing about the world he's writing about people in the church. And so the very thing that Paul is telling Timothy to stay true to, which is to teach sound doctrine he mentions that there will come a time which we believe we're living in even now where people will want nothing to do with it. They would rather focus on the delivery of the person that's speaking than the one who can deliver them from sin. They prefer the absence of biblical truth than the presence of biblical truth in the message because the sinful desires of our flesh desires sinful things. And if we're living in sin we wanna hear people tell us that what we're doing is okay. The church will find itself replacing the godly desire of subjecting sinful desires to God and we'll find themselves forsaking the laws of God and aligning themselves with things that are against him. They turn aside to fables, Paul says. Fairy tales. It's not real. It's not truth. It's completely made up. It's fictitious. I mean how else can I say it? It's a lie. And so on one hand you have those that are turning away from the truth of God's word but for those of you who are not. Those of you that even here today as an act of obedience and worship to the Lord have set aside time to open your Bibles and to receive from the word of God. God is doing a great work in your life through his living word that is sharper and powerful than any sword. It pierces down to the needs of our hearts. It gives us what we need. Some of you may have even walked in here today saying, man my faith is being tested. I wonder if there are any of you that are saying that today. I'm going through it today pastor. I'm going through it today. I've been going through it. My faith is being tested. Might I just say that if you feel like your faith is being tested, guess what? It means you actually have some. You actually have some faith to be tested, to be strengthened, to be found, to be tried and true. And if you're living according to God's word, God's hand is upon you even in the most difficult of situations. And so in verse five we see here, Paul writes to Timothy and I think these things are important to understand that Paul is writing some of the most important last words that he could to his spiritual son. At the end of somebody's life it would seem that they start to separate the essentials from the non-essentials, those things that are priorities from those things that are not. And so he writes to Timothy and says, Timothy, be watchful in all things. Endure afflictions. Do the work of an evangelist fulfill your ministry. Here in verse five, the first thing we see is to be watchful, which in the original Greek language means to be calm, to be collected, and to be sober-minded. You think that's a pretty tall order? Pretty tall order in all things, to be calm and collected and sober-minded? I mean how many things do we deal with on a daily basis that are just so stressful that cause us to be completely beside ourselves? It could be marital problems or raising kids. I have four kids, I have four kids and there is never a dull moment. I have my oldest son Hudson who is just about to turn 14 and he is the best big brother for the family you could ask for. And he takes care of his little sister Eva who has special needs and she has a disability where she can't speak or walk and she'll be 12 this year. And then there's a big gap and then there's Harrison who just turned five. So I have a 14 and almost, you know, 14, 12 and then a five-year-old, Harry, who is just this beautiful little kid, little boy. And then I joke about this that my wife and I hated sleep so much we thought we'd have one more child and Georgie was born and little George is two. And we have a full house and I think of the type of world that my kids are growing up in. The kinds of pressures that are on the children. What's happening in our classrooms across the country, the kinds of curriculum that's being just propagated. We see these things as being evil and a work of Satan where children are being exposed and conditioned and I would even say groomed for things that are against God. And so Paul tells Timothy as even we should be hearing today you must in the midst of all the chaos stay calm, stay collected and be sober-minded. I mean, how many times have you found yourself in a situation where you feel like you're just in way over your head? Way over your head. Have you ever felt like you're at a breaking point? Maybe the pressures are just too much. You feel like that's the chink in your armor. What you're dealing with and what you're having to endure is just too much. It's too much. Now I know in my own life I have been in a place of crying out to God for mercy like Lord would you please help me? Lord save me. And as you study the letters of Paul to Timothy Paul will time and time again speak to Timothy as if he were speaking to an elite athlete or as a commanding officer would speak to a soldier. He addresses Timothy as if he's an Olympian or as if he's a special operator in the military. You know, don't we love the men and women our United States military? We do, don't we? Don't we love our law enforcement officers, the brave men and women that risked their lives for us every day? I have many friends. My grandfather served in World War II who's a part of an elite ski unit that took German fortresses in the Swiss Alps. You know, it's like some pretty crazy stuff I've heard. Some of the finest men and women I know serve in our military and in our law enforcement agencies. When Paul writes to Timothy he's writing as if he's talking to a special operations unit. He's writing to somebody that needs to understand that there is a spiritual warfare that is taking place everywhere and that inside the church Satan is gonna try to corrupt the church from the inside and he's gonna take culture and try to pressure the church from the outside. So he says be watchful. And I've needed the word of God in my own life time and time again to remind me and maybe you need to be reminded of this today that you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. All things. And that God's strength, that work in your life is usually most evident in our weakest and darkest moments. Don't forget that. In second Timothy chapter two, verse three, Paul wrote, you therefore must endure hardships as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. So you need to be watchful, be aware of your surroundings, have situational awareness when it comes to spiritual things. Paul tells Timothy to endure afflictions and this word for endure is actually a word that would be directly related to the type of hardships that a soldier would endure while he's enlisted. Some of the most grueling situations, some of the most challenging mental pressures where you wanna quit, where your body's telling you I have to stop, I can't go one step further and you're required to go further. There are some of you that feel like I just can't handle this situation anymore. What do you do? How do you endure? How do you be watchful? How do you fulfill your ministry? My prayer for my church, even as I know the prayer for this church is that each of you would know what God's word says. And it wouldn't just be, oh yeah, the pastor says that or pastor mentioned that or he believes that, but that no, you would own it for yourself. In some churches today, it's like going to a concert where you hype up the crowd, you say some pretty catchy phrases and all this kind of thing. But did you know that the Bible doesn't say the emotional experience endures forever? It says the word of God endures forever. And some people think that I wanna go to a place where I feel something. Well listen, you may feel something, you may not feel something. But that's not the litmus test for whether a church is a good church or not. Because the emotional experience, even if you do have one today, is probably gonna end after lunch this afternoon. And then what are you gonna draw upon when you hit your problems this week? What are you gonna draw upon when you find yourself in a situation where you don't know what to do or where to go or how to handle it? It's not gonna be like, what's the feeling that I had on Sunday? No, it's gonna be, what does God's word tell me? How does it instruct me? How will it lead me? And it will show me how to handle the situation that I'm in because the word of God endures forever, not the emotional experience. And so what we see here is Paul telling Timothy, and I think it would be wise for us to listen to the same instruction that we're in need. We're in a great need to maintain our composure when we have every reason, honestly. When we have every reason to validate a complete meltdown or we have every opportunity to completely fall apart and lose it, that we would maintain our self-control through the power of the Holy Spirit. In verse five, we read of four actions that should be found in every believer. If you missed those, I'll give them to you here right now. It says, number one, be watchful in all things, which is the calm and collected and sober-minded. Translation from the Greek language. And number two is endure afflictions. Number three is work evangelistically. And number four is fulfill your ministry. The first three things that Paul mentions to Timothy here in verse five are general characteristics, but the fourth is unique to you. Did you know that there is not another person on the face of this earth that can do better than you what God created you to do? I can't replace you. Pastor David Rosales cannot replace you. There is nobody on this earth that can replace you. You are irreplaceable. God has given you a unique calling. He has given you a unique skill set. He has given you a unique circle of influence. And so when we are to be watchful and we're to endure and when we're to evangelize, it's also that we might fulfill our ministry. And so yes, the follower of Jesus is to be sober-minded, calm and collected. Fruit of the Holy Spirit is self-control, where you're just not spazzing out and losing it all the time. The follower of Jesus is to endure afflictions. The pain that you experience in your physical, emotional and mental state, really I have found is weakness leaving the body. As you find that your own capabilities are diminishing. When you find that you're not able to overcome what you're facing. Paul said, and I think it's important for us to know, he says we're not ignorant of Satan's devices. But sometimes Christians are. And if you happen to be in a place where you know, I don't really know how these spiritual attacks work, well let me lay this out for you very simply, very quickly. Satan would love nothing for you, nothing more than for you to fight him in your physical abilities. He would love nothing more than for you to fight him in your emotional ability or in your mental ability. He wants to fight you in those three areas. He does not want to fight you in the spiritual realm. Because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. And if you're relying on the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome spiritual warfare, then Satan is a defeated foe. But if you lean on your own understanding, if you go with how you feel about it or what you think should be done, and you start relying on your own strength, you will find that Satan would love nothing more than to have you stay in that weakened state. And so Paul is telling Timothy, you have to understand that there is a dimension that you cannot see with your eyes, where there are principalities and powers and rulers and heavenly places over even the Chino Valley. There are demonic entities, demonic entities that are overseeing this area. And there is a spiritual battle that is taking place. But yet God has his soldiers, his sons, his daughters, who are filled with the Holy Spirit, have the wisdom from the Word of God and are going out and making a difference every single day. This is your training center. When you come in to this place and are taught and you're equipped for the work of the ministry so that you can go out and be the Lord's ambassadors. And if you find yourself in a place where you're now hitting opposition, you're running against some people that do not like you and don't like what you stand for, take heart, endure it. The Lord will use those things to strengthen you. He will use those things to further his work here on this earth. And in case you're wondering, the Holy Spirit at work in your life is greater than all things in this physical world. Jesus is greater than your bad attitude. Jesus is greater than your despair. Jesus is greater than your loneliness. Jesus is greater than your discouragement. Jesus is greater than your situation or your problem. And he is greater than he who is in the world. And so when you rest upon the power that is found in the Holy Spirit, you'll find that you overcome and you endure and you watch and you evangelize and you fulfill your ministry. What God's called you to do. And so the third thing that we see here besides being watchful and enduring hardships is that every Christian should be evangelizing in one way or another. Now for some of us, we might be like, well, you know, I don't really know if I'm an evangelist. You know, it seems like it's kind of like an awkward thing just to kind of like randomly approach somebody and you know, what am I supposed to even do? You know, I'm not Billy Graham or Franklin Graham or Greg Laurie or anybody like that. I mean, how am I to do stuff like that? Well, you know what? It's interesting. I found that in the life of the believer that the Holy Spirit is constantly at work and he's working in ways that we don't even know he's working and he's actually preparing people's hearts before they even cross your path. And one of the things that has happened to me regularly is that LA fitness in the mornings between nine and 1030 in the morning. If you like going to the gym and getting some exercise or whatever, you'll find that there are the regulars that are there at the same time. You know, the same people that sit on the same machines for two hours on their phones are there every single day at the same time. And what I've noticed is that people will randomly, and I usually have my earphones in, you know, back in the day when I used to go to the gym and work out where they would come up to me and they would talk to me and one guy just poured his whole heart out and said, I'm having this problem and that problem and all this and I didn't even know this guy and he didn't even know me. And he actually looked at me and he said, I don't have any idea why I just told you my life story and all my problems. And I said, well, you know, it's funny, I actually help people with their problems. And he's like, no way, well, what do you do? And I said, well, I'm actually a pastor. And I'm telling you, the entire gym stopped like the moment I said that. Like, I mean, all the music even turned off. And it was like, wait, what did he just say? You know, guys that are lifting weights like, ah, and they just stopped. And it was like, everyone just froze. And I got to lead that guy to the Lord right there in the gym by the shoulder press machine. And there's other people that were listening. And I found that the Lord is actually preparing people's hearts for you to minister to them. But often is the case, what is it? You know, our heart starts beating out of our chest a little bit. Oh, this is super weird. You know, what am I supposed to do? I'm at the gym. Isn't this one of those cases of the separation of the church and gym? I mean, what is that? And you'll find that actually the Lord desires to use you wherever you're at. And you don't have to have a massive platform where there's the thronging crowds. And it's actually just relational evangelism with the guy you see every day at the gym or the person that checks you out at the shopping market or when you're picking your kids up from school and there's the crosswalk lady. I mean, it doesn't matter who it could be. That the Lord will prompt you. You know, years ago when I was in Bible school, I was suffering for the Lord on the island of Maui. And I remember I was working at a restaurant and clothing store called Tommy Bahamas. And some of you may have heard of that. But it was the only time in my life when I was 25 years old and I looked like I was 55 and retired as I wore these huge silk, you know, floral shirts and you name it. But I remember there was this time where the Lord told me, and I really felt it impressed on my heart that I needed to share the gospel with this girl named Julia who was a host on the restaurant side. And I remember thinking, you know, I was a single guy. I mean, this is kind of awkward. I don't really know Julia. You know, what am I supposed to do? Walk up and be like, hey, how are you? And then I'm supposed to tell her about Jesus? How is that gonna work? But I remember I just said very simply. It's like, hey Julia, how are you? I'm good, Garrett, how are you? And I said, I know this is totally random but would you like to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior? True story. And she looks at me and she's like dumbfounded and she says, yes. I had actually been wondering about how I could have a right relationship with God and from what I understand, I need to give my life to Jesus. And so then Julia gave her life to the Lord in the lobby of Tommy Bahamas. And did it have anything to do with me? No, the Lord had already been preparing her heart. Already been working in her. And it's such an amazing thing because Paul actually talks about this in 1 Corinthians chapter three, verses five through nine. Listen to this. He says, who then is Paul and who is Apollos but ministers through whom you believed as the Lord gave to each one? I planted Apollos watered but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything nor he who waters but God gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, you are God's building. So there might have been somebody that their granny for the last 15 years has been telling them Bible stories. Sharing with them every Sunday after church when they would come over and visit them for lunch about who Jesus is. But they always said, okay, grandma, okay. Okay, but then later on down the week, you come along, somebody had already planted the seed but then you share with them the same truth of the gospel. You water it. And maybe they reject you and they say, you're weird, you're crazy, don't talk to me. Maybe they give their life to the Lord right there. Doesn't matter, you were obedient. And one of the highest forms of worship that we can participate in as Christians is really just being obedient to the Lord. And as the Holy Spirit leads and as he prompts you, as he directs your steps, as the word of God tells us, a man can plan his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. You'll find that your life is led in such an exciting way. And then God gets all the glory for doing what he alone can do. Be watchful, endure afflictions, live evangelistically. Jesus said, let your light so shine before men. Matthew 5, 16, that they see your good works and they glorify your Father in heaven. All right. These are some important things that I see laid out here. How am I to be watchful in all things? Well, I would first of all say that in order to be watchful in all things, you must recognize the hand of the Lord in every difficult situation. Difficulty does not equal abandonment. The first thing that happens when we go through a difficult time, isn't it? Or at least on the top three to five lists of things that happen are Lord, where have you gone? Or Lord, why is this happening to me? Why do I have to go through this Lord? I mean, honestly, I can see that happening to them over there, but I'm your favorite Lord. Why me? We question God's love for us. We question God's faithfulness, but in even the most difficult of situations, God's hand is at work. And every time you decide to not lean on your own feelings, because feelings are deceptive, feelings do not dictate truth. Every time we decide to not lean on our own feelings, we actually avoid being led by our emotions to a place where we are sinning and rebelling against God. Jeremiah said this in chapter 17, verse nine, the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it? Sometimes things come out of our lives or out of our mouths and we're like, where did that come from? I don't even know where that came from. It's the sinful nature. So I'm able to be watchful. I am able to be aware. I'm able to remain calm, collected, sober-minded when I stay focused on the Lord. And often I have found in my own life that that will usually involve me not opening my mouth. You remember when Job went through all of his difficulties and his wife said, why don't you just curse God and die? That's an option for all of us. When the heat gets turned up, you know that Satan is in your ear saying, why don't you just forget your relationship with God? Why don't you just curse God and die? Why don't you just be angry at God for these difficult things that you've had to go through? Why don't you just throw the towel in? You know, it's interesting, if you've ever studied the book of Job, Job lost all of his children, lost all of his possessions, but he didn't lose his wife. Satan, Job's wife is still there. I know, curse God and die. How could God who loves you allow this to happen? In Proverbs 17, 27, it says, he who has knowledge spares his words and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. We sin when we are led astray by our own desires. It's been my own experience that if the devil is going to attack me, he's gonna do so when I'm the most vulnerable. And if you feel like you're in a place where you're exhausted or you're worn out or you've been beaten down, that's when the enemy likes to come and take cheap shots. That's when he wants you to get in an argument with your wife or your husband or to lose your temper with your children or to misrepresent Christ or to be in a place where now you'll be under the control of the lust of the flesh instead of the power of the Holy Spirit. And it's often the case when we give in to sin or when we are not walking in the spirit that we'll get to a point where we push through that and now we're in a stronger spiritual state and we'll look back at that situation and we'll think to ourselves, what was I thinking? Or I was so off. Or I'm so sorry. What I was so misguided as I mentioned, Satan wants us to fight in the emotional, the physical, the mental realm, but he doesn't want us to walk according to the spirit because he knows that if we walk in the spirit we shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. So how are we now to endure all things? You just don't quit. Can I ask you a very serious question? And that was a rhetorical question because I'm gonna ask it even if you don't want me to ask you, sorry. Are any of you quitters? Are you the type of people that quit when things get difficult? I remember my dad asking me that. Oh, so you're a quitter. You don't like what you're having to go through or what you're doing right now. You committed to something and you're gonna quit. That's who you are, you're a quitter. You quitters. Things get a little difficult. Oh, I'm out of here. Some spiritual attack comes your way. Oh, peace out. How are you to endure? You don't quit when it gets hard. All Christians, yes, need to be watchful. All Christians need to endure difficulties, not just the pastor or the leaders in the church because we will be in places where we feel as was described by Paul where he says I'm hard-pressed, I'm perplexed, I'm persecuted, and I'm struck down. What do you do then? I'll read it for you. It's 2 Corinthians 4 verses eight through nine. Paul writes, we are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed. We are perplexed but not in despair. We are persecuted but not forsaken. We are struck down but not destroyed. How can you, as a follower of Jesus, living in the wicked world that we live in today, how can you be hard-pressed but not crushed? How can you be perplexed but not in despair? How can you be persecuted but not feel absolutely alone? How can you be struck down but not destroyed? I like to share with you a famous quote and it's from Rocky Balboa. And I quote, you, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done, end of quote. And that resonated with me. And I think it probably would have resonated with Timothy if he lived in this day and age because he was always addressed by Paul as an athlete or as a soldier. And in this life, you get hit hard. This world chews people up and spits them out. You wrestle against a very powerful foe. The most powerful evil force in this world is the prince of the power of this air who controls governments, who controls disobedient ways of living, who controls the minds of this age that are not under the covering of the Holy Spirit and the blood of Jesus Christ. And we get beat down and we get knocked back. But the Bible tells us that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can remain calm and not become frantic, not become psycho, not lose our composure. We can endure problems like a champion. We can take our lumps. We can get our clock cleaned. But we still look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith who is even the buffer for those things that we've experienced, who gave us the grace to get through it in the first place. The same one who said, we're going to the other side, we'll get you to the other side. And there is such a powerful testimony to be found in God's faithfulness to you. Because I have seen things in my own life that were meant to destroy me. And that if it were not for God, I would have been destroyed. But I look back on those things that I agonized over, that I wept over, that I was broken by, that I was devastated because of. And I see that God's hand of mercy walked me through each of those painful experiences. He was with me. He never left me. He never forsook me. The Lord stood with me and he strengthened me even as he stands with you and he strengthens you. There are a lot of hurting people out there, especially nowadays. Our suicide rates are so high. And they're grabbing younger and younger children with social media, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all this media that's pointed at our children. Just ramming through anti-God, anti-Christ, perverted messages moment by moment by moment. It is incumbent upon us to fight the good fight, to run our race, to keep the faith, to open our mouths, to live our lives for the glory of God. It's the power, the gospel is the power of God to save. In Romans 10, verses 13 through 14, Paul writes, for whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? How shall they believe in him of whom they've not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher, without a messenger, without someone to share with them the good news? I thought for so long that there was this understood amount of information about who Jesus is, but not anymore. It's not there. People that are living in our communities have no clue and have never heard anything about the gospel of Jesus. That biblical morality over the last 40, 50, 60 years has been corroded. We're second and third, almost fourth generation now of people who are being raised anti-God. But yet there's a remnant that remains, the salt and the light, the church, you and me. And to evangelize, let's just lay this out there, to evangelize does not mean to win converts as it's been said. Doesn't mean to win converts, but to simply announce the good news irrespective of the results. Like they may reject it, they may yell at you, they might curse at you, they might not want anything to do with you, they may get saved on the spot. Your job is not to change a person's heart, your job is to communicate the message that God has given the world. To evangelize. You don't need a microphone. You don't need a stage. Because every single one of you right now, if I were to say, if I were to ask you, who's the person in your life right now that you know that needs Jesus? How quick would your mind have recall? As the Holy Spirit puts this person now right at the forefront of your mind. I know that guy needs Jesus, I know she needs Jesus. And the reason why that's that person that the Lord's put on your heart is so that you can start praying for them and that you can share with them the good news. Listen to what Proverbs 11.30 says, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he who wins souls is wise. Lastly, Paul instructs Timothy to fulfill his ministry. So again in verse five, be watchful or be calm, collected and sober in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist and then this is the unique calling. This is a reminder that there is a unique calling on every Christian. He says, fulfill your ministry. Now I have to be honest, sometimes I've wanted to fulfill somebody else's ministry. Have you ever thought, well I wish I could be called with their calling. Can't I fulfill their ministry? Why is the Lord calling me to this ministry? Ah man, why couldn't I be called to you know some tropical island or something? Like why am I here? When Paul uses this word fulfill and this is where we'll end today as we kind of come in for a landing. It basically means in the Greek language if you were to read this word, you would have this understanding of carrying something to completion, to finish it, carry it out to the end, accomplish it and so you will find that as you're prompted by the Holy Spirit, as you are led by the Holy Spirit that you remain walking in the Holy Spirit, that the Lord will keep you calm and collected in every situation. The Holy Spirit will give you peace which surpasses understanding. So when everyone is topsy turvy, you know who your anger is. When everybody says right is wrong and wrong is right like they are now, you know who Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever and what was against God 10,000 years ago is still against God today and will be against God tomorrow because the word of God endures forever. You will always have your bearing, you will always know where you stand in relationship to God and regardless of what pressures culture wants to place on the church, we don't take our cues from the world, we take our cues from the word of God and you will find that as you remain walking in the Spirit, you stay sober minded and that's also as you walk in the Spirit, it's the key through pressing on when you're experiencing difficulties and you're in over your head and it's also by the way, by walking in the Holy Spirit, it's also the means through which evangelism is conducted. And if you look back on your life, you look at the last two years where everyone got a free pass to not ever go to church. All the financial problems where people lost their jobs, people lost loved ones, look who's still here. Look who's still teaching the word of God. Look who's still reading the word of God. Look who's still obedient to gather together as the body of Christ. Look who's still here. Look around. You're still here. God has called you. He is faithful. His hand is upon you and he's got a great work for you to fulfill and if you look back in your life, you have to realize that everything that you have gone through, everything that you have endured has been part of you actually fulfilling your ministry, fulfilling your calling. Because you're still following the Lord. You're still fighting the good fight, you're still running the race. Now granted it may be slower sometimes and faster at others, but you're still going. And ministry, it's a service in which you help meet the needs of other people and so I hope that if you are not involved in serving or giving of yourself, that you would realize it's not glamorous. Serving's often challenging and it can be inconvenient. But when we continue in doing good, we find that we're stronger in the Lord than we were previous to making that decision to serve. Why do we do this? Well, it was found in verse one that we read and this is where we will close. Paul says, I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom, dot, dot, dot. Basically, because Jesus is coming again and he's coming soon. So you be watchful, you endure afflictions, you evangelize and you fulfill your ministry because Jesus is coming again and he is the ruler of this world and everyone will give an account to him. And what a glorious thing it is that we have to look forward to where we hear our Savior say, well done, you good, you faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord.