How did I ever get a job this difficult and this good?

The Man of God's Readiness to Serve the Word

(2 Timothy 4:2)

1 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

be ready

The man of God, the New Testament preacher of Christ, the cross, and the resurrection, must be ready to preach the Word. The best way to be ready is to be preaching the Word regularly. Preach through the whole Bible. You will not do that if your preaching is limited to once per week.

When I started in Exeter, I asked our prayer supporters to pray that the Lord would give me hundreds of opportunities to preach. God has answered that prayer far beyond what I would have expected. Anyone else may have his own way to be ready. Mine is to work out of a Spirit of devotion to the Lord on a daily basis. Always be in the Word, hearing what the Lord is pressing upon you, with a readiness to bring that Word to others. Do whatever is necessary to have a good conscience about your readiness, but don't forget to actually preach. When you can't find anyone to listen to your preaching, post or publish what you have to say, so that you are maintaining your time in the Word. But keep looking for opportunities to preach face to face, no matter how few people may be there.

in season and out of season;

Be ready at an opportune moment and at an inopportune moment. Every man of God should ask for and cultivate the gift of speaking from any text in the Bible at any time. To do that, you have to be in the Bible, and you have to have a good sense of each book and how it fits into the whole of the Lord's revelation to us in the Scriptures. Also, we must take the Word we preach to heart for our own lives or it will be stale both for us and for others. This is a spiritual exercise, and we will miss the mark if we do not ask for and receive the help of the Spirit of the Lord.

reprove, rebuke, and exhort,

God uses the personality and history of each man he raises up to this task, but preaching is not all about me and my pet doctrines or my well-worn way of approaching others. Some people hate to correct others. Others find it hard to be positive at all in an evil age. The man of God must let the text lead, and do the deconstructive work of reproof and rebuke without neglecting the good work of reconstruction in the Resurrection Man. That second part means coming alongside the hearer with the true sympathy of an exhortation that points to Jesus and His heaven, and shows people how you take the next step in the right direction along the King's highway here below.

with complete patience and teaching.

Why should anyone expect this to be easy work? We serve a King who won a great victory by dying on a cross, bodily inhabiting a borrowed tomb for a brief time, and then rising again to resurrection life. We need courage and perseverance. And we need to give the whole counsel of God, all the teaching of the Scriptures. This is the only way that people will have theirs minds and their lives shaped into the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ.