Lawn on FIRE!!!

^8-13Fix this picture firmly in your mind: Jesus, descended from the line of David, raised from the dead. It's what you've heard from me all along. It's what I'm sitting in jail for right now—but God's Word isn't in jail! That's why I stick it out here—so that everyone God calls will get in on the salvation of Christ in all its glory. This is a sure thing:

If we die with him, we'll live with him;
If we stick it out with him, we'll rule with him;
If we turn our backs on him, he'll turn his back on us;
If we give up on him, he does not give up—
for there's no way he can be false to himself.

^14-18Repeat these basic essentials over and over to God's people. Warn them before God against pious nitpicking, which chips away at the faith. It just wears everyone out. Concentrate on doing your best for God, work you won't be ashamed of, laying out the truth plain and simple. Stay clear of pious talk that is only talk. Words are not mere words, you know. If they're not backed by a godly life, they accumulate as poison in the soul.(2 Timothy 2:8-16, The Message)

The first year that we lived in Kentucky I worked on the grounds crew for Asbury Theological Seminary. It's one of only two times that I've worked a job that wasn't in the church and it was one of the worst years of my working life. I was TERRIBLE at the job. I couldn't seem to get it right for the life of me. Over the course of the year I almost blew up a lawnmower, killed a pond full of fish, knocked over a gas lamppost, and in my crowning moment, I set the lawn on fire. I almost started a large fire and eventually was able to put the whole thing out based on my running buckets of water back and forth from my house to the burning lawn. I burned a giant ring of fire in the front yard of the President's Home at Asbury Seminary. Not great. Not great at all.

One of the hard things about that job was that I couldn't do much to improve on my skills. I couldn't really read about it or learn about or go to classes about it...being an amateur groundskeeper was just something that was expected. Thankfully, being a Christian isn't the same. We can learn and study and grow in our Christian life. We can watch the examples of mature believers and pattern our lives after them. We can read about Jesus and enter into a personal relationship with Jesus that allow us to integrate them into our lives. When I learned today's Scripture passage I learned "Study to show your approved unto God, a workman *or workwoman* who rightly divides the Word of Truth." In our study of God's Word, we are learning more and more what it means to study our work. We realize that we don't simply have to be an amateur Christian, but that we can learn and grow through our study of God's Word.

Are you willing to do the work? Are you willing to study God's Word? One of the cool things about the book of Timothy is that it was written to a young man, probably not much older than most of you. Paul challenges Timothy to do the work to go beyond being an amateur Christian in order to set an example for the church as a whole. Are you willing to do the same?