How to Persevere

1 Timothy 6:11–21

By Pastor John Thompson

The Christian life is not an easy one, though it is certainly a joyous one. Jesus calls us to die to ourselves and our own desires, to take up our cross, and to follow Him. Yet if we are honest, there are times when we feel the desire to put that cross down and pick our old selves back up. We know where we want to go, but we also know how easily our hearts can wander.

One of my favorite hymns is Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, and there is a line in that hymn that expresses something I often feel: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O, take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.” Those words capture the tension of the Christian life so well. I love Christ. I want to follow Him. I want to be with Him. Yet I can also feel the constant pull of the world and the temptation to wander away from the One I love.

That raises an important question: How do we stay on track? How do we continue fighting the good fight when we grow tired? How do we resist the pull of the world and persevere until the end?

As Paul brings his first letter to Timothy to a close, he gives Timothy instructions for doing exactly that. Throughout the letter, Timothy has been charged with confronting false teaching, leading the church faithfully, pursuing godliness, and guarding the gospel entrusted to him. Now Paul gives him three actions that will help him remain faithful to that calling. These same actions can help us persevere as well.

Pursue

Paul begins with several powerful commands: flee, pursue, fight, and take hold. While each deserves our attention, they all describe a life that is actively pursuing Christ.

Perseverance is not passive.

Paul tells Timothy to flee from the sinful desires and temptations he has just warned him about, particularly the love of money and the pursuit of worldly gain. But fleeing from something is only part of the Christian life. Timothy is also told to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness. He is to fight the good fight of faith and take hold of the eternal life to which he has been called.

The Christian life is a pursuit.

I think about the way I pursued my wife when we were dating. Pursuit requires intentionality. You make time for someone because you want to be with them. You learn about them because you want to know them. You arrange your priorities around the relationship because that person matters to you. You don't accidentally pursue someone.

Our pursuit of Christ should have that same intentionality.

We flee the things that pull us away from Him, and we pursue the things that make us more like Him. We fight against sin because we desire Christ more than the temporary satisfaction sin promises. We take hold of eternal life because we know where our true hope is found.

When we see someone who once appeared to follow Christ but has wandered far away, somewhere along the way they stopped pursuing Him. The Christian life was never intended to be lived on spiritual autopilot.

Our pursuit of Christ is part of our sanctification. As we seek Him through His Word, prayer, worship, obedience, and fellowship with His people, the Holy Spirit continues shaping us into His likeness. The more we pursue Christ, the more our lives begin to resemble the One we are pursuing.

If we want to persevere, we cannot stop pursuing.

Keep

Paul's next instruction is for Timothy to keep the commandment.

What is this commandment? In the context of the letter, Paul has repeatedly charged Timothy to faithfully hold to and proclaim the truth that has been entrusted to him. Timothy is not free to alter the message, soften it, or replace it with something more appealing. He is to keep God's revealed Word faithfully until the appearing of Jesus Christ.

There are several ways we must keep God's Word.

First, we keep it by knowing it. We cannot faithfully hold onto something we do not know. If God's Word is going to guide our lives, we must spend time reading it, studying it, hearing it preached, and allowing it to shape our thinking.

Second, we keep it unstained. God's Word does not need us to improve it. We should resist the temptation to change Scripture to make it fit the values of the culture around us or even our own preferences. We receive it as God has given it.

Third, we keep it free from reproach by living lives consistent with what we claim to believe. Our lives should not give others reason to dismiss the truth we proclaim. We are not going to live perfectly, but there should be an increasing consistency between the Word we profess and the lives we live.

As Paul thinks about this truth and the Christ whose appearing Timothy awaits, he cannot help but break into praise. He speaks of the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light.

That is not a distraction from Paul's argument. It is the reason keeping God's Word matters so much.

We are not guarding the words of an ordinary teacher. We are holding tightly to the revelation of the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Those who persevere in the faith keep God's Word with reverence, awe, praise, and joy.

Store

Finally, Paul turns again to the subject of wealth and tells Timothy to instruct the rich not to place their hope in uncertain riches. Instead, they are to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, “thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future.”

To store something means to gather it together and preserve it because we know it will be valuable later.

We see a picture of this in the life of Joseph. When God revealed that a famine was coming, Joseph oversaw the storing of grain during the years of abundance. The grain was gathered when it was available so that it would be there when it was desperately needed.

There is a spiritual principle there for us. We should be storing God's truth in our hearts before the difficult seasons arrive. There will be moments when our faith is tested, when temptation feels especially strong, when suffering makes us question what God is doing, or when we simply feel spiritually exhausted. Those are the moments when the truth we have stored becomes especially precious.

We also store up treasure for the day you stand before the Lord and give an account. You want to be able to tell the Lord that you took the gospel given to you and multiplied it for the advancement of the Kingdom of God.

What a blessing it would be to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

We persevere knowing we are storing up treasure that lasts for eternity.

Conclusion

Paul ends his letter with one final charge to Timothy: “Guard the deposit entrusted to you.”

Timothy had been entrusted with something infinitely valuable. He had received the truth of the gospel and the faith that leads to salvation, and Paul wanted him to guard it faithfully until the end.

We have been entrusted with that same gospel.

The Christian life will not always be easy. There will be seasons when the world pulls strongly at our hearts and when we feel those familiar words: “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.” There will be times when we wonder whether we have the strength to keep going.

Our hope, however, is not in the strength of our grip on Christ but in Christ's grip on us.

So keep going.

Pursue Christ and His likeness.

Keep His Word faithfully.

Store up eternal treasure.

And by God's grace, persevere in the faith.

If you recognize today that you have begun to wander, call out to the Lord. He is able to meet you where you are, restore your heart, and continue the work He has begun in you.