Title: Faith and Family (2 Timothy 01:3-8)
Goethe, a German scholar, poet, and Christian, said, 'Whether a person becomes a king or a general who commands the world, he who cannot find happiness in his family is the most unfortunate.' That's right. No matter how powerful you are to rule the world, you are unhappy if you do not enjoy comfortable rest and happiness at home.
In our church, May is celebrated as Cornelius Family Month. Cornelius was a Roman officer who colonized Israel. However, this man was devout and led all his family members to believe in God. When he saw poor Jews, he gave and loved them and prayed all the time. So he was praised by the Jews. He preached the gospel to his family and relatives and was faithful to his neighbors. He was a good husband, good father, and good father who was especially faithful to his relationship with God.
What, then, is a healthy and a strong family? Goethe said that a healthy family must have two elements. The first is that a couple should work together to create a resting place for the spirit and body, and the second is to make it a cradle where children can grow up brightly and vigorously.
The root of the family is faith. Just as the tree does not shake when its roots are strong, the faith of a family does not waver when its roots are strong. The expressions of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and the God of Joseph refer to the importance of the vein of faith and the root of faith. In today's text, three generations of names are mentioned: Lois, Eunice, and Timothy. They are carrying on the line of faith well.
Why do we have to live with unfaltering faith and a pure conscience? The reason is so that we may suffer along with the gospel (verse 8). In order to suffer, you must have faith without lies and a clear conscience. In other words, to live worthy of the gospel of Christ (Philippians 1:27) is to live with the gospel, and to live that way, we are bound to suffer. And when you have power, love, and self-discipline (verse 7), you can endure hardship. Power here refers to the power of God and love. And self-discipline is a sound mind, a clear mind, and a healthy mind. When we have the power of this faith, we can live clean and without lies, and this is a healthy and strong family. When there are many such families, the society becomes a healthy society and a strong society.
How did Timothy become like this? That faith grew from an early age. He said that he knew the Bible from an early age (2 Timothy 3:15). We have inherited this kind of belief from our ancestors, and it is testifying that this holy power was passed down from our parents and grown up at home.
Dear brothers and sisters, are you teaching the Bible to your children? Do you, as children, remember learning the Bible from your parents? ). My parents taught me to rebuke, correct, and educate on righteousness with the words of the Bible. The reason is because they knew that the power of faith comes from the words of the Bible.
Parents, I hope you will read the Bible together with your children in Cornelius Family Month. Through this, the faith lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will come out, and only then will the faith of Lois, Eunice, and Timothy continue. We must lead our children to faith. To do that, our parents must first be armed with faith. We cannot pass on our faith and conscience to our children unless we are prepared with a clean conscience and unfaltering faith.
In this Cornelius Family Month, I hope that our parents will live with a clean conscience and unfaltering faith so that our children and our children will be a home of me and the saints who glorify God without shame in this difficult world.