“I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy's proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me, and I trust in the Lord that shortly I myself will come also.” (Philippians 2:19-24 ESV)
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just need encouragement. And by encouragement I don’t mean false words of flattery or praise. I want honest heartfelt words, but words spoken in genuine biblical (agape) love which prefer what God prefers, which is what is holy and righteous and morally pure and upright and godly and honest and faithful and obedient to our Lord and to his commandments under the New Covenant. But even if the words coming from a non-believer in Christ are honest and loving, I will take them.
But I don’t want someone faking being nice to me. That is not helpful. And I am not looking for feel-good messages just to get me over the hump. Charm is deceitful, so I am not wanting someone to try to charm me, either. Sometimes I just need someone in my life like a Timothy who will be genuinely concerned for my welfare who can see who the true me is deep down in my heart and who will have compassion for me and who will offer me sincere words of comfort and who will treat me with respect.
And I am not saying that I have none of that. I do have encouragers in my life, and I am very thankful for them, though few they are. But sometimes things just pile up and other people just add to that pile. And rather than trying to understand me and what I am going through, they crash down on me, instead, or they just plain ignore me and walk away. And then sometimes I do feel abandoned and alone, but I am never alone. My Lord is always with me encouraging and strengthening me in my walk of faith.
We need more Timothys in this world, who are not offering false words of comfort and praise, but who are genuinely concerned for the welfare of others in the same way that God – Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and Holy Spirit – is concerned for us. We need more people like him who are not afraid to speak the truth in love, but who make certain it is the truth and that it is spoken in love and who are not too quick to cast judgments on others without knowledge and without compassion.
The problem we have today, though, is that we have so many false professers of faith in Jesus Christ who are teaching the people lies and who are altering the character, gospel, and church of God/Christ to make them more acceptable and appealing to human flesh and to the ungodly. And so they are also altering the biblical meaning of encouragement to where it is coddling the ungodly in their sin while often coming against those who are teaching the truth, in love. And so they end up encouraging the sinners.
And not only that, but they are also treating true biblical encouragement as though it is the lie and as though it is mean and hateful and negative and as something to be avoided. And so they end up vilifying those who are truly walking in love and who are loving the people with agape love while they are raising up those who are just saying what people want to hear out of pure selfishness and greed, and who are not truly loving the people at all. So, if you speak true words of encouragement, you are often vilified for it.
So we end up with this whole twisted concept of love and encouragement and faith and the gospel, etc., which is coming from those who are seeking their own interests, and not the interests of Christ, and not the true needs of the people. For they are telling the people what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. And they are feeding them lies to ease their consciences. And they are comforting the sinner while often they are raised up against the truly righteous who are walking in faithful obedience to the Lord.
And so those who are staying the course, and who are walking in obedience to the Lord, and who are speaking the truth in love to the people, and thus who are also refuting the lies of the enemy, are often being regarded as the enemy to be attacked while the evil ones who are sinning against God and other humans are being coddled in their sins. And this is all backwards! For we live in this present Christian culture when the sinners are the good guys and those who are speaking the truth in love are becoming the enemy.
But that is exactly how they treated Jesus, isn’t it? And what did he tell us? He said that if we are his followers that we will be treated like he was. But even when we are, and we realize that this is what is taking place, and we accept that is par for the course and what we should expect, we are still flesh and blood humans who love other people and who have tender hearts and who bleed, not just physically, but emotionally, too. We are not heartless! We feel it deeply when we are abandoned and treated as nothing!
But thank the Lord Jesus that we do have some Timothys still in the world who love the Lord Jesus with all their hearts, mind, soul, and strength, and who love the people of this world, and the body of Christ, who are willing to lay down their lives to share with the people what they really need to hear, not necessarily what they want to hear, because they know that it is the truth that sets the captives free, not the lies which coddle them in their sins. But we need more truth tellers who will courageously speak the truth in love.
Nonetheless, we cannot be dependent on other humans to be our supporters or to love us as they ought and to encourage us like a Timothy would. Our dependency has to be in the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our encourager, and who will speak the truth in love to us that we need to hear. For other human beings, because we live in flesh bodies, are not God, and so they are apt to let us down and even to sin against us and to betray us and desert us, perhaps even in our time of most critical need, because they don’t get it.
And we, as well, are apt to be neglectful and absent minded and to not be sensitive to other people’s needs, sometimes, because we are human. But this is something we should be conscious of and that we should be working on in absolute sincerity of heart and in genuine concern for the needs of others, and not in fakery and flattery and in being political and saying what we think people want to hear. For may we all become Timothys and not those who seek only their own interests and not those of Jesus Christ.
Now, the following song is a secular song, but if we replace “Sun” with “Son,” I think we can find encouragement in these lyrics that, even when we are lonely, and we feel abandoned, and it seems as though the hits keep coming, and the Son is not in sight, He is still there for us if we are for him. We just have to look to the Light and believe the Lord and his words of comfort and encouragement, and then we will have hope and healing in our times of sorrow and suffering.
Here Comes the Sun
By George Harrison
Here comes the sun, doo-doo-doo-doo
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's alright
Little darlin', it's been a long, cold, lonely winter
Little darlin', it feels like years since it's been here
Little darlin', the smile's returning to their faces
Little darlin', it seems like years since it's been here
Little darlin', I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darlin', it seems like years since it's been clear
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