How to be for our kids | Chapel Hill Church | Gig Harbor
How can we be FOR our kids? To work towards a better future for them and the next generation coming up? In this sermon from Pastor Mark Toone and Pastor Megan Hackman, we learn about how Paul prepared Timothy to be for the next generation, and how Chapel Hill is doing the same!
Discussion Questions:
Read 2 Tim 1:1-2
Identify each of the people who invested into Timothy. As you think about your own life, who was it who poured into you?
Paul speaks tenderly of Timothy as his “beloved child”. How have you personally overcome your frustrations with the next generation and replaced that frustration with love?
Who is one person you are investing in and what’s one way you can encourage them this week?
Transcript:
The other day, Cyndi and I went over to see our son and his family. A smiling Cooper appeared at the door with beautiful Cici, our inaugural grandchild, perched on his shoulders. Wow, did that bring back memories of ME hauling MY two kids around that way. Cici peered down at us from on high….smiled… and promptly threw up all over her daddy’s head! Wow, did THAT bring back memories, too! I tried not to laugh TOO hard as I took her down and helped Cooper clean up his hair…but he was so grossed out, it was pretty hard to keep a straight face. AND to keep from saying, “Dude…what goes around, comes around! Especially when it comes to your kids.”
As parents…and grandparents…we are willing to put up with a lot of mess for the sake of our kids. Because, among the MANY things we are “for” as Christ-followers, we are definitely “FOR” the next generation. That’s what I want to talk about this morning. What does it look like to do the rewarding though sometimes messy work of investing in the next generation? Because that has always been a part of the Chapel Hill DNA.
And it’s important at the outset to say this: to declare we are FOR the next generation does NOT diminish THIS generation. Sometimes we oldsters get our noses bent out of shape because of the church’s focus on kids. But think about it this way: all that matters most deeply to us…the faith and values we treasure…surely we want to pass those on to our children and grandchildren. Don’t we? Statistically, of the kids raised in church who head off to university… 59% of them won’t come back. To the church…or to the faith. I’m not willing to settle for that. Are you? We want to leave a legacy, don’t we? We want to pass on our faith and values and hopes to a new generation.
And so did the Apostle Paul.
Timothy 1: 1-2.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my beloved child: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.…
Paul met thousands of people in his apostolic ministry. He worked with hundreds of leaders and trained many associates to share in that leadership. But only ONE of those trusted associates ended up with two books in the New Testament bearing his name. Timothy.
Paul saw something special in this young man and took him under his wing. Timothy had his issues: he was insecure and anxious; he might have even had an ulcer. But despite these things…and despite his young years…Paul believed in him! At some point, he and other apostolic leaders laid hands on Timothy, prayed the Holy Spirit’s anointing upon him and set him apart for his OWN apostolic ministry. Paul even mentioned him in the letter he wrote from prison to the Philippian church.
…to read more visit chapelhillpc.org/listen.