2 Timothy 4:1-2 ESV
A few words quite powerfully stand out: CHARGE, PREACH, and BE READY.
This was once read to a young man perhaps in his twenties trying to make sense out of his ministry and calling. It was an impassioned letter from his long-time mentor, teacher, and friend who was at that very time held in prison and facing trial unto death.
I cannot imagine how Timothy must have felt reading the very last words of his Discipler, Paul. Perhaps he read it with tears in his eyes brushed off, knowing the impending murder of this particular beloved suffering Apostle.
After having read such a charge as this, he must have felt a deep pain in his heart for the trials and tragedies that lie ahead--he has had several troubling moments himself--and the fact still remains that he has to stand firm to the end.
His guts wrench at the thought of his confusing circumstances, his heart beats to the beat of unknown traps that wait to entangle him, his mind sometimes drifts off to better times that he has had only to signal back to what is currently facing him, his very body is consumed with the daily toilsome work and in the very depths of his own soul, where none have ventured--not even himself--therein lies an unquenchable passion.
An ardor so unexplained that it is hard to describe; a zeal that is often too much to handle; a state of constant vigor resonates within him that he cannot contain; a surge of fervor that seemingly becomes more and more unquenchable. It yearns to break out as a fire shut up in his bones. It longs to be spewed outwardly.
Deep within himself, that is the very stuff that the man is made of.
It explodes unto the very fiber of his being and he knows that he has been foreknown, fashioned, favored, and ferociously loved to face the very destiny of his life: to preach the Word to the World.
He is after all charged in the very PRESENCE of the Father most High, the Son in Christ, and the most Holy Spirit of which will never leave him nor forsake him.
He knows he has the only MANUAL by which he must teach: the Holy Scriptures as his acclamation to reprove, rebuke, and exhort. It is to his soul's delight to preach the truest of all words.
Although infinitely beyond these is the great EMMANUEL,God with us, that promises the Lord to be with him by his very side, all of his days, in every thick and thin of a situation, through any season. With this immovable truth, he is set free to set others free. He is readied by his Redeemer.
What shall he fear? How shall he contend? Whom shall he triumph for?
Is he the man for the calling and the ministry to which he is situated?
Is this the fate to which he is bound? Where is such a one to be found?
The Tub-Thumper is such.
