1 TIMOTHY 4:12 - TENACIOUS FAITHFULNESS

1 TIMOTHY 4:12

TENACIOUS FAITHFULNESS

Let no man despise thy youth; 

but be thou an example of the believers,

 in word, in conversation, in charity, 

in spirit, in faith⁴¹⁰², in purity.

One of the definitions for the Greek word for “faith” in The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible is as follows:

Reliance upon Christ for salvation. Constancy in such profession.

Timothy was a young man who faced a situation in which false teachers were contradicting what he preached, and many people had been drawn away to follow after those false teachers. As a young minister, he may have felt he did not have the respect he would have if he were older. However, Paul encouraged Timothy to steadfastly trust the Lord Jesus and to be unwavering in his witness to the Gospel truth of salvation through Christ alone. Paul assured Timothy that he could exemplify being unmovable as related to his profession of faith in Jesus.

This kind of faithfulness brings Gladys Alward to mind. She was completely rejected by missionary training societies as being “too slow” to learn Chinese but was stalwart in her belief that she was to minister the gospel in China. She paid her own passage on a train that traveled through Russia during wartime in 1932 when she was only thirty years old. In Chinese culture, that is barely a teenager as far as their perception of a person of wisdom. She worked alongside an established missionary named Jeannie Lawson, until Ms. Lawson’s death. At that point, Gladys continued operating an inn they had established and telling Bible stories to the travelers. Unable to maintain the inn financially, she accepted a job as a “foot inspector” making sure young girls feet were no longer bound. Throughout her travels, she took in orphaned baby girls who were thought to be worthless in that society. She faithfully testified to the grace and power of God in many perilous situations and eventually became famous for leading 100 children to safety during war through mountains and across a river over a period of 12 days. She placed her trust completely in the Lord Jesus and continued to faithfully present the gospel no matter what.

We need to be faithful to the Lord both fearlessly and tenaciously. In order to do this, we must constantly, consistently, conscientiously rely on, place our trust in the Source from which true faith comes, the Lord Jesus Christ and Him only.