The Book of 1 Timothy - Step In!, Part 2

How do you become a good leader? I mean, a mom, a dad, that's a good leader in your home. How do you become a good leader at work? How do you lead where God has you? Because we all have influence, and that's what leadership is. Today we're going to talk about what the Apostle Paul teaches Timothy about how to be a good leader.

Stay with me. Thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Living on the Edge is an international discipleship ministry focused on helping Christians live like Christians. I'm Dave Druey, and we're in the middle of Chip's new series based in the book of 1 Timothy. For the past several programs, we've learned two of the six vital lessons Paul shared with Timothy. So if you missed any of those messages, catch up at livingontheedge.org or through the Chip Ingram app. Today he wraps up his talk on the importance of integrity, especially in church leadership, and he begins by reminding us what Christ-like behavior looks like.

So turn in your Bibles to 1 Timothy chapter 3, and let's hear part two of Chip's message, Step In. Everyone on this planet has this, maybe it's not real clear in your mind, but you have this invisible picture of what success looks like, and if you could ever hit it, then you'd be a somebody, and you'd be a somebody. You just need to understand, the games that people play, it's just all relative. You've got to ask yourself, what and who do you really want to be, and make sure, as the old illustration goes, that your ladder is really leaning on the right wall, because you can be a successful failure. And when you have lots of money, it's really hard to raise good kids. Insurance companies have done demographic studies.

The only people that have worse problems with their kids, as measured by times in rehab and all the rest, is the absolute lowest of the poor of the poor, and the richest executives. Be careful what you set your heart to be. And what's great is, if you set your heart to be a godly man, it's a fine work you desire to do. And you become then, you know how to act in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth, and beyond measure, great is the mystery of, circle the word, godliness.

Great is the mystery, I don't understand. I know it means renewing your mind, I know it has to do with being in his word, I understand it has to do with repenting of my sin, I understand I need the fellowship of men that I can really be me with, I understand I have to take risks and challenges, I have to receive forgiveness, there's all kinds of things, but great is the mystery of godliness. And then, there's this mantra, this code, that they wanted to summarize the work of Jesus in the church, and so it went like this, he who was revealed in the flesh, incarnation, was vindicated by the spirit at his baptism, seen by angels in temptation, remember? After he defeated Satan, the text says, and he was ministered to by angels. Proclaimed among the nations, the discipleship process went forward, believed on the world, taken up into glory, ascension.

And he gives us this picture. The coaching nuggets that I have for you is that I write to you so that you'll know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God. And what I would ask you is how are you conducting yourself in the household of God?

And by the way, that's, again, don't just picture the building, I'm talking about the living stones, the relationship, the reality of the church of God, the pillar in support of the truth. And then our response, if any man aspires, and let me encourage you to underline, sets his heart on the office of overseer, or I think just being a godly man, it's a fine work he desires to do, and here's, I think, the ultimate criteria. Honestly, his first line must be above reproach. The way you're above reproach is you take all the other things and you go on a journey to become like that. And then you end up above reproach. So, okay, thank you, Paul.

If I was in Ephesus and my name was Timothy, I would kind of know what I was supposed to do, right? Who I'm supposed to look for, here's the profile, I need to develop these kind of leaders, here's my question. What's this got to do with us?

What's the application in the 21st century? And I'm gonna suggest that the subject here is leadership in the church because all scripture, right, is profitable. It's inspired by God.

So this passage, like the last chapter and every other passage, is here to equip us and encourage us and help us to be men of God who will be equipped and adequate for the good work God has for us. The underlying issue here, I think, is integrity. And when I say the word integrity, I mean beyond honesty. We tend to think of integrity as, well, I'm honest.

Integrity, it's actually a numerical word, it's integration. It's the integration of your faith in every area of life and relationships. The way I think about it is you live the same way Monday afternoon at 4 as Sunday morning at 11 a.m.

Same way at 2 a.m. watching TV with no one around, same way in front of your computer, same way when someone comes on to you at work, same way when you have a couple of beers with the guys. It's just that your faith is integrated in every relationship with everyone. That's basically what it means to be a godly man, isn't it? It sounds like just someone who's taken the instruction of the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ and is loving others with a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith. And so I think the underlying question is, am I willing to set my heart to become a godly man and fulfill God's purpose for my life?

Could I pause just a minute? Man, that is a huge question. This is what I'll tell you for sure. Everyone is pursuing becoming someone. In fact, if we could do an inventory, and I don't know you all, you don't know me, but I can just tell you that the person sitting in your seat, if we could back up a camera five years or ten years, and I could have someone just pour out of your brain, here's all the things you've read, all the things you've studied, all the places you've been, all the decisions you've made, all the relationships you have, it would produce the person sitting in your chair right now. And here's the deal. Five years from now, you will not be who you long to be, hope to be, dream to be.

You will be the person, depending on what you put into your mind, who your friends are, the decisions that you make. But it all starts with something very, very simple. Unconsciously, we all set our heart on something.

And Christians, we're like liars. I mean, don't verbalize what your dream for your life is. Just sit down. I've asked a lot of guys to do this. Let's have a small group Bible study. See if you can get anyone to do this. I'm coming up with goose eggs, maybe one person privately.

Let's really become men of God. You bring your tax return, and I'll bring my tax return, and let's put on the table where all of our money came in, where we spent it, where we saved it, and where we gave it. I'll bring my credit card statements and my computer. Next, here's my browser. Go real fast. I want you to see everywhere I've been on the internet and everything I've checked out, every site I've ever been in in the last year.

By the way, here's my... I mean, you show me where your time goes, where your finances go, and where your mind goes, and your energy goes, I'm telling you, that's where you're headed. But we have this amazing ability, and I think the enemy works much... We live in this denial, like, I verbalize, so I believe my own lies. I want to be this kind of man. I want to be this kind of husband.

I want to be this kind of Christian. And my behavior says, I'm becoming this kind of man, this kind of husband, this kind of Christian. And there's conflict. See, a good conscience is they're integrated.

Perfect, absolutely not. In fact, one of the marks, I think, of a godly man is you hear them repent a lot. I find in my deep relationships with them, we're telling one another, man, I messed up last night. I was critical of my wife, or I was way too hard on one of my kids, or...

Right? Or for some of you, man, I'm not a big drinker personally, but, man, I had a few too many beers, or that third glass of wine kind of... I said some things I shouldn't. That doesn't mean you're a bad person. It means you're probably pretty authentic. But instead, we've got this culture where people...

I think most Christians spend more energy trying to project and pretend that we're better than we are than actually working it, becoming who God wants us to be. So here's the action, is step in. I want to encourage you to revisit your life goals. If you don't have any, it's a great time.

You can revisit them. And then I would think, how does God measure success? Would you think like the God of heaven, the living God, the hope of the church that's the pillar and the support of truth that would look and say, oh, Gabriel, come here. See that guy? Man. Oh, yeah, he's got his issues. They all do.

They're fallen creatures, but, man. Oh, I love his heart. He set his heart to become like my son. He brings me such... Do you hear the rise the Bible says Proverbs talks about?

God finds great delight in the prayers of his godly ones. That he sings over you, that because of what Jesus has done, his arms are not crossed, his toes not tapping, and the God that you serve doesn't have a bony figure going step up, step up, step up. But he's really saying, come on up. Come on up. Come on up.

I love you. We can do this together. Surrender unto me. Let my power flow through you.

Realign your life and your goals and let me make you like my son. The unspoken need is to develop character. And I, over the years, I call it the pathway to spiritual maturity.

And Jesus came, remember John 10, 10? I came that they might have life and life abundantly. Bio is life, right? Biometrics, biochemistry, biotechn...

There's all kind... And so I took that little acronym bio. That means come before God daily. Come before God daily.

Off your body is a living sacrifice every day. Seek first the kingdom of God daily. Get into the scriptures daily. Talk to God daily.

Listen to good podcasts daily. Memorize a verse and set your heart daily. Come, the B was before God. And then when you come before God daily, what you'll find is there's lots of commands that you can't keep.

In fact, they're impossible. They're in the second person plural in English. In other words, it's you all love one another. You all honor one another. You all. And so the I was for in community.

In community weekly. And in community, not just a small group, I mean from the heart. Go deep, be honest, be real, get authentic. Let the real you meet real needs for the right reason and the right way. Let your love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love.

That's Romans 12. Nine and 10 or so. And then finally is would you be willing to be on mission 24 seven?

I mean from the moment that you get up before you walk out the door. If you're married, these are my kids. Here's my wife. I'm on mission. I'm gonna serve. I'm on mission. I'm on mission.

I'm gonna drive like I'm on mission. But you're on mission because you're a servant. And then when you show up, you're a servant leader. And when you repair the plumbing here and the electrical here and when you build the house over there, you're a servant. And then you're a servant in the church. You discover what your spiritual gifts are. And you're not just like hey I sat, I listened, we ate lunch, I thought it was pretty good. What do you think?

There's a ball game. That Christianity got us nowhere. It's your act if you participate. Will you own your own spiritual growth?

If Jesus said he came to give you life and life abundantly, would you own the discipline and the pattern of coming before God daily, doing life in community weekly, and being on mission 24-7? And what I'm telling you is that will change the course of your life. Everybody's on a path. And I used to do this all the time, but I'm going through Proverbs, through Proverbs, through Proverbs, then I go through Proverbs, then after that I go through Proverbs. And I'm just seeing the path, the path, the way, the path, the path, the highway, the path. There's a path that goes this way, a path that goes this, path of the righteous, path of the evil.

Bio is a pathway to godliness. I was 28 years old. I've got three kids. I'm going to school full time. I'm working full time now in a little church, and I'm stretched from end to end. There's not enough time.

I barely can pay my bills, and sometimes I can't pay my bills. And I had the privilege of being in a brown bag lunch with one of my mentors, a guy named Howard Hendricks. He was a professor. And he got up on the board, and he wrote four words.

And the first one was priority. And he said, who do you really want to be? And then he wrote another word a little bit later that said schedule.

If that's really important, where is it in your schedule? And then he wrote another word, discipline. He said, are you willing to pay the price to become that kind of person? And then he said, guys, you know, we're all a bunch of workaholics, overachievers. You know, that's who this seminary tends to attract.

He said, I want you to write something down. God will never love you any more or any less than he loves you right now, period. When you pray, he loves you. If you get to pray, he loves you. You read your Bible this morning, he loves you. You don't read your Bible, he loves you. His love isn't earned.

It's not a performance. Christ died for all your sins before you were even born and committed any of them. Now, it doesn't mean that there's lacks, but you can't earn his love. He said, so then life really is, rather than trying to prove something to others, in my case, to my dad, if you really would believe you're really loved, then the way you say thanks to God is by who you want to become.

Dallas Willard had a great line. He said, the greatest gift you'll give to anyone, and especially to the world, is nothing that you accomplish but who you become. And I was tired. I was just applying all my workaholic tendencies to my faith.

And it was 32 miles from downtown where the seminary was out to where this little community where I was pastoring this little church, and I'll never forget, I pulled off at the Grand Old Dairy Queen, and I just couldn't shake. If I really believe God loves me, who do I want to become? And I'm famous for not having a lot of paper with me, so I started taking DQ napkins, and I wrote down, I want to become a man of God. I want to become a great husband. I want to become a great father. I want to become a great friend. I want to become a great pastor one day.

And I don't know why I said this, but maybe it was because where I was and I was struggling, and I want to stay in shape until the day I die. And then I remember what Prof said about my schedule, and I got out a sheet of paper, and I met Dairy Queen. I said, okay, I'm going to spend this block of hours every morning, a minimum of an hour with God every day. And then I put a block where every Friday morning for four hours I'm going to have a date with my wife. And then I put in these five out of seven nights where we're going to eat dinner as a family. And then I had a couple buddies, and they liked to play hoop like I did, and I thought, okay, I'm going to plug into my schedule. I'm going to work out with these guys and share my heart about where I'm really at instead of who I wish I was. And then I put all my kids on my calendar so I'd meet with them individually at least every other week along with what we did. And every Friday night this is what we're going to do as a family. And did I do it perfectly?

No. But I will tell you what. From age 28 until all my kids were grown and some of those things I'm still just pressing ahead, I set my heart to be a man after God's own heart. I set my heart. And we've had lots of struggles because of our alcoholic family past, both hers and mine. Lots of struggles in our marriage, but we've got 42 years under our belt. I've got four grown kids that have had their ups and downs, but they walk with God.

Okay? I'm not promising that everything comes out your way, and it's been extraordinarily hard. Set your heart to be a godly man and get it from some general idealized something someday some way into a schedule where you come before God, do life in community, and get on mission 24-7. And early on, building the new habits, deciding to not watch TV at night. A weird thing happened. I went to bed an hour earlier, ended up didn't need an alarm.

God woke me up usually by five or a little before. I added two hours to my day. Life changed. You have certain things that you unconsciously do that are a sheer waste of time and distraction, taking you to places to become the man you don't want to be. Substitute them, and then be very gracious with yourself because you're going to mess up a lot because God is very gracious with you. And then find a band of brothers. Find a couple, three guys that say, come hell or high water, we're going to be this kind of man. We're going to be this kind of man.

And when you blow it, and you will, with tears streaming down your face, you shoot straight, and I went to a place that I hadn't been in a long time, and it wasn't good. And you repent, and you're accepted, and you get loved, and you get back up. It's the Christian life. Chip will be right back with his application for this message Step In from his series The Book of First Timothy, Life Coaching from the Apostle Paul. Now, if you look up that word coach in the dictionary, you might see phrases like one who teaches, gives instruction, or provides special training.

The question is, who's coaching you, and who are you coaching? In this new 12-part series, Chip dives into one of the most well-known mentor-mentee relationships in the Bible. He'll unpack what we can learn from Paul and Timothy's bond, and how to apply these lessons to our lives and pass them on to others.

If you've missed any part of this series, the Chip Ingram app is a great way to catch up any time. Well, now here's Chip to share a quick word. Thanks, Dave. I'll be right back in just a minute with some final thoughts from today's message. But I just want to take a moment and share with you something very exciting that's happening in my life. I go to a church where the people are super young, and most of them have very little experience to the gospel, the Bible. And Teresa and I opened our home and said, would you just want to explore the faith? And some are believers, and some are seekers, and we're just having a fabulous time. And the one thing that I keep hearing, I mean, these are 22, 23, 24-year-olds, and they just are asking, is there any real purpose in life, and how do you discover God's purpose for your life? And I'm reminding them that God has a mission, that they are His workmanship. They're His tapestry. They're His work of art, that God has a good work from the foundations of the earth, according to Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10, that He's prepared for them.

And what I want you to know is that He's got that for you as well. I want you to think about maybe a young person or maybe even yourself, and do you know your purpose? Do you know your mission? Do you know how you're wired? Do you know your gifts? Do you know how you fit on a team?

Well, I want you to know if those are questions that you're asking, Living on the Edge right now has some answers. We've created a brand new resource called The Real You. It's an online questionnaire designed to provide insight into how God wired you. This is more than spiritual gift test. You'll identify the patterns in which you think, what motivates you, and why teams need someone just like you.

It'll take about 20 minutes to complete, and it won't cost you a thing. Then based on your responses, The Real You will offer suggestions about how you can practically live out God's purpose for your life, whether that's at home, in the office, at church, or in your community. As a Living on the Edge partner, we want you to be the first to access this resource. Head over to therealyou.org to learn more. That's therealyou.org.

Most Christians don't know how to leverage their God-given wiring and experiences for the kingdom. We want to change that. Thanks, Chip. Well, as you can tell, we are really excited about this new resource. We hope The Real You will help you not only discover who God made you to be, but how he made you to think, act, and live. As Chip said, you can sign up for this free assessment by going to therealyou.org. Or if it's easier, text the word REAL to 74141. That's the word REAL, R-E-A-L, to 74141.

App listeners tap Special Offers. Well, Chip, towards the end of the message, you mentioned the acronym BIO, which we use a lot here at Living on the Edge, which stands for Before God, In Community, and On Mission. Explain how prioritizing those three ideas also helps us develop Godly character. Well, that is the point, isn't it, David, this whole passage? You know, we talk about leadership, and the secular research is the number one thing about being a great leader is integrity.

And we live in a world of false information and all the rest, but if you can't trust what a person says, their character, everything else becomes literally unimportant. And I ask, as I was teaching this, I really gave the people in the room time to revisit their goals and how they were going to measure success and to do a personal inventory. And then I wanted to give them a pathway, and so I want to talk to you right now about that. And BIO for us is just, it's a rhythm of life. It's a pathway to become a Godly, righteous person with integrity. It's not some legalistic thing, but you just can't become like Jesus unless you spend time with Him. And so just coming before God every day, making knowing Christ the number one important thing in your life, and practicing that. And then the second is, as you come before God and you're in His Word, you realize, I can't live this life. Only the Spirit of God can, but I can't do it by myself. And I think about that weekly.

I have to have some face-to-face, heart-to-heart. I need to do life where I can share my hurt, share my struggles, share my victories, and do life with other people. And whether that's a small group or whether that's three guys at work that are all believers or three women in a Bible study or a couple study, but you have to do life in community. And then you realize that just as Jesus was a servant, we're a servant. And so from the moment that you get up to how you drive your car to how you spend your money to where you order your coffee or what you do at work or on the job site or what comes out of your mouth, you're on mission. And Jesus' mission was to seek and to save that which was lost. Paul's mission was to present every person complete, mature in Christ.

And they have entrusted us with that mission. And so BIO just gives me some kind of railroad tracks to ask myself on my journey, am I coming before God, am I doing life in community, and am I on mission 24-7? I hope that helps.

It does, Chip. Thanks. As we wrap up, let me take just a second and thank the generous people who make monthly donations to support the ministry of Living on the Edge. Your faithful gifts help us inspire Christians to live like Christians. If you haven't partnered with us yet, would you prayerfully consider joining the Living on the Edge team? You can set up a recurring donation by going to livingontheedge.org or texting the word DONATE to 74141.

It's that easy. Text the word DONATE to 74141 or visit livingontheedge.org. App listeners tap donate. Join us next time as Chip continues his newest series based in the book of 1 Timothy. Until then, this is Dave Druey thanking you for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge.