The power of God's word lies in the fact that God can say so much with so few words in little space. One verse that stands out as a good example of this is 2 Timothy 1.9. In the preceding verses Paul encourages Timothy not to be discouraged by the things that were happening. Paul states, "Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God; Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began..." (2 Tim 1.8-9). In the life of the Christian there are things that may happen around us, things that may happen to us, or to others that we know or care about, which escape our understanding. It is at those times that perhaps we begin to wonder, as Timothy may have, if we God is with us. Taking a look at the statements made in verse 9 tells us much to answer these questions.
"Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling....". God is the one who has called us. That call comes through the Gospel message which we hear and have the ability to accept or reject. As Christians we have accepted this call and thus Paul reminds us that in answering that plea to come we have been placed in the ranks of those who are God's children, having the promise of eternal life if we remain faithful (Rev 2.10). Paul states that this call is "holy" and in this sets the Christians life, not just our identity separate from the world in which we live. We should therefore realize that our true home is not here on this Earth, it is with God in Heaven (Col 3.1-2). This may at times lead to a feeling of being lost in this world. What we need to hold onto is the knowledge and contentment of being found with God.
"...not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace..." We need to stop trying to make sense out of everything that happens in this world. Some things just happen, not because we are good or evil, but because we are just at the wrong place at the wrong time (Luke 13. 4). Other things happen because we, our friends, family and loved ones, live in physical bodies that are subject to the physical maladies and other dangers that come with the fact that we are human, mortal and vulnerable. We need to realize the sole purpose that God has had as revealed in the scriptures is to redeem as many of us as will listen to Him from the consequences of being swallowed up by the physical world. We need to realize that the great purpose of all time has been set in motion, fulfilled and explained in the scriptures in all of the detail that we need to have to be saved (2 Pet 1.3). We need to realize that there are a great many things outside the realm of our own control and this makes the need for God even greater in our lives (Matt 6.25-30). We also need to remind ourselves that it was the sin that each of us have been guilty of that created the need for Christ to die as the sacrifice for sin. That fact alone should cause us to be content with the blessings that we have and try to figure out what we need to be doing to serve God better.
"...which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began...". We have trouble many times planning out the next week. God in his wisdom determined that Christ was to be the sacrifice for sin before the world was created (Titus 1.2). Once the world was created, and sin was introduced God went to work to bring the salvation of all mankind into being. Working through countless generations, succeeding in spite of human weakness, indifference and evil, God brought that plan to it's maturity in the coming of Christ into the world. Christ then was willing to come into the world and lay down his life for us so that we would not be lost in the fires of eternal torment (Phil 2.5-8).
After all of that we find that we sometimes sit and wonder why we don't have all that we want or why things are not going better than we think that they should. We wonder with realizing that Christ sacrificed himself for us, not so that we could argue with His word, whine or complain, but so that we would know just what to do to escape the coming destruction. Having done all that is it really to hard to understand why Christ's return will be with flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and who obey not the truth? (2 Thess 1.7-8). We need to stop resisting, complaining and fighting the truth and just obey it. Things really get better once we do.
TLC