The Vigilance of a Guard

0:10 If I could encourage you in any way, it's just, man, trust the faithfulness of God. Trust the power of the Word. That is precisely what Paul is urging his young protege, Timothy. At the end of his first epistle that bears Timothy's name, In chapter 6, after instructing him in so many things about how to minister in the church of God, Paul wraps it up in the final verses of chapter 6. In verse 20 he says, Oh Timothy. Guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge. For by it, for by professing it, some have swerved from the faith.

1:17 Grace be with you. You know, the pastor's vigilance is proven not by how educated he sounds, but by what he does with what has been entrusted to him when the temptation to be sophisticated comes knocking. But he guards it. He turns from what threatens it. And he takes seriously that real men have lost their footing exactly where he now stands. Now, I wish we had time to walk through all of this epistle because Paul ends it here really as he began it. It's his final word to Timothy, but it circles all the way back to his opening charge to Timothy in chapter 1 in verse 18, where he mentions two men by name, Hymenaeus and Alexander.

2:12 And he calls them out. He says they've already made shipwreck of their faith. so at the very end, you know, like a good parent, you save those, your most important words for the last, the last instruction to give your kids when you're sending them off to camp or to someone else's house or to school for the first day, you know, you tell them those final instructions, hey, be nice, use your manners, say please, thank you, flush, all those things, you want your final words to be ringing in their ears as they they go off into what's coming and this is what Paul says oh oh Timothy I mean he reaches for the same direct personal address with which he opened the letter Timothy my child I charge you this is the last thing Paul wants ringing in Timothy's ears before he signs off. You know, this O, O, think about it. That transcends every language and culture. And still today, 2,000 years later, that simple interjection lands with great emotion and impact even across cultures and millennia. And we know this O, don't we?

3:37 oh Israel here the Lord your God is one God oh Absalom my son my son Absalom oh Jerusalem Jerusalem oh you foolish Galatians I mean it's the same in our day oh oh darling do, do, do, do. Oh, pretty woman. I mean, we know this. Oh, it's calling attention. It's saying, listen, what I'm about to say is important. You know, yesterday we saw that a pastor's truest colors show up in his hidden life. What he does with the flock that when no one's watching him 10. Today's text asks the same question of the mind. What do you do with the truth when no one is necessarily watching you or encouraging you to defend it?

4:41 Now, Paul is writing to Timothy, who has served in Ephesus. Ephesus thick with mystery religion and magical practice and immense wealth, public theater, all of the signs of great culture. And Paul is writing to him, don't be distracted. This is not an abstract warning. He's already named casualties that have fallen. And he's telling that vigilance is proven by what our pastor does with what has been entrusted to him. Guard it. Turn from what threatens it. And take the warning personally because sophistication and the desire to be liked or loved has already claimed real men who face the same temptation you now face. So he says, guard the deposit. I like that. He says, it's not yours to revise. He doesn't say revise it or advance it or add to it or change it in any way. He just says, guard it. It's a banking and legal term, that word deposit. It's property entrusted to a trustee for safekeeping.

6:04 doesn't imply any rights of ownership, and it's liable to return it exactly as received. The gospel is not yours to revise, to modernize, to improve. It's yours to keep intact and to hand it on to the next trustee. He says, guard it. That verb is an aorist imperative. It's got the same decisive force that we saw yesterday in that word shepherd in 1 Peter 5 2. Paul repeats this exact command in 2 Timothy chapter 1 and verse 14 when he tells him there again guard the good deposit entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit. It's not even Paul who entrusted it to him. It's the Spirit of God himself and whatever else might change across a ministry this charge doesn't. You know, a minister of the gospel is entrusted with two things that are not his own.

7:08 A flock to tend and a deposit to guard. And he's to protect both the same way. Not by seizing control of the flock or trying to sound impressive with the deposit, but by staying humble enough that grace, not ambition, governs everything he does. A few years ago, a young man that I'd had in class at Southern Seminary came into my office, and he showed me a document. It was a letter, handwritten. Actually, it was a bit of homework. On one side of it was a fundraising letter that was printed up in 1874, I want to say. On the other side was the handwriting of John Broadus, who had used this letter from the previous year's fundraising campaign to write the homework assignment to one of his students on.

8:15 And Broadus wrote in English what he wanted the student to then write to translate into Greek. Now, if you really want to learn Greek, you do Greek composition. It's one thing to translate from Greek into English. It's another thing entirely to be able to take English and put it into Greek. And Broadus wanted his students to be able to do that. So he had written sort of parts of Scripture, sort of a Scripture mash-up, so the student couldn't simply memorize it. And he told him, here's the English, now you translate it into Greek. And so Broadus' writing was in pen, with a nice fountain pen, and the student's writing was in pencil. So he could erase it and correct it. And this former student of mine showed me this document. He said, look what I found. I said, where did you find that?

9:08 He said, I found it on eBay. I said, how much did you pay for it? He said, $8. I said, you got an original Broadus document? Southern Seminary homework from the 19th century for $8? He said, yeah. I said, I'll give you $300 for it right now. I said, that belongs in the office of the Dean of the School of Theology at Southern Seminary. And he looked at me and he said, you're right, it does. He said, but I would rather be your friend than your merchant. So I give it to you. I thanked him. I took it. but when on July the 31st of this year I stopped being the dean of the school of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary you know what I did with that document I left it in the office for Dr. Andrew Walker the new dean of the school of theology to guard it because that shouldn't belong to any one person.

10:27 It belongs at the place that John Broadus devoted his life to training young men for the gospel. It's a trust. It's not a possession. That's precisely what Paul's telling Timothy. It's not yours. You don't get to do with it what you want. You can't use it in any haphazard way. it's entrusted to you. Now guard it. Faithful ministry means keeping something.

11:00 The implications of that is that you're keeping that which is committed. It implies, first of all, divine initiation and action. It's the Holy Spirit who took the initiation to give the gospel and then to entrust it to you. But it also does imply human responsibility. Now you have a job, you have a task, and that task is not to be clever, it's not to innovate, it's not to create, it's not to attract, it's to guard it. And that implies the possibility of failure. When Paul, you hear the emotion in his voice, oh, Timothy, guard it. I'm giving you this as my last words in this epistle. I may never say anything to you again. I want to leave this with you, that you guard it. You have been entrusted with this, and the stakes are high. You can fail at this. Others I've mentioned have failed at it.

12:09 He mentioned Hymenaeus and Alexander and 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy. He'll mention Hymenaeus by name again and add Philetus to it. In 2 Timothy he'll mention Phygelus and Hermogenes and Demas who loved his present world and forsook him. He talks about Alexander the coppersmith who did me great harm and strongly opposed our message. Paul wants Timothy to know the stakes are real and there are people that you know, you've seen them, you've eaten meals with them, you've heard them preach you've traveled with them and they're gone now they're no longer considered among us john says they went out from us but they weren't of us man have we not seen this in our day i mean it's easy to talk about guys like rob bell joshua harris who so famously deconstructed but you know we've also seen it from those who didn't just abandon the concept of Christianity entirely.

13:14 They just abandon its demands. They want an incrementalist Jesus who only asks for small things. They don't want the absolutist Jesus. I mentioned last night one of my favorite authors, J. Sidlow Baxter, who was like our dear friend Scottish, I think he was actually born in Australia and then moved to Scotland very young. But he wrote a book on the pastoral ministry called Rethinking Our Priorities. It's one of my favorite books on pastoral ministry. And in it he describes the heartache of on his travels meeting Protestant ministers who mocked the idea of being actually converted or born again. And he says their sarcasm shows that they're spiritually dead themselves.

14:12 Imagine that. Getting up in the pulpit week after week and preaching a word from a book you don't actually believe about a Savior you don't think is truly necessary, that there are other ways to have a good life and maybe go to heaven if it exists. Paul says they've swerved from the faith. even while still holding office. Years ago, Tony and I went on a cruise. I think it was the very first cruise we ever went on. And it went from New York up the coast and then through the Canadian Maritimes down to St. Lawrence. And it stopped at Cape Breton Island. I got off the ship and right there off the dock on the front street there by the waterfront, there was a Baptist church.

15:07 First Baptist Church, Cape Breton Island. And it was a quaint building, beautiful little building. And there was a gardener outside working. I took pictures of the building. He noticed me taking pictures. And he stopped and he said, hey, would you like to meet the pastor? I said, well, you know, I hate to bother him. He said, look, he's my dad. And I can, I guarantee you he would love to meet you. So he took me in to his dad's study. And the first thing I noticed, he was wearing the clerical collar. Now for a Southern Baptist, that looks weird. But, you know, he was wearing the clerical collar. And I sat down at his desk, and he had a copy of the previous Sunday sermon right there on the edge of the desk. And I remember I read the first line, and it said, I remember it, verbatim, there are many parts of the New Testament that are displeasing to Jesus Christ.

16:09 Well, that was an interesting opening. I looked at the books behind him, and they were the standard fare of who you would think someone who has deconstructed the Bible and thinks that they're competent to judge which parts are acceptable and which parts are not, would be reading. and we began to talk. I tried to be as gracious as I could. I thought, you know, I'm a guest here. He's being kind enough to interrupt his day to talk to me. I'm not going to get into this. But he said, so are you a Baptist? I said, yes. And he said, are you a preacher? I said, yes. He said, well, what kind of Baptist are you? I said, well, I'm a Southern Baptist. He got a look of horror on his face. He said, you're not one of those inerrantists, are you? I said, well, actually I am. He said, I, he said, I just find that intellectually untenable.

17:11 And he, he, I thought, well, I wasn't going to get into it, but he seems to want to. So I listened to his spiel, and then I said this. I said, hey, I don't mean to pry, but can I just ask you, how's your church doing?

17:34 He said, what do you mean? I said, attendance-wise. Are you growing? Are you reaching more people? What's happening in your church? He said, well, we've been in pretty steady decline for a long time. I said, can I tell you about my church? He said, yeah. I said, we're bursting at the seams. We've bought property to relocate. We're in three services right now. We don't have parking enough. We don't have seats enough. The Lord's really blessing our church. And I said, can I just give you a piece of advice? He said, sure. I said, you know, if I were a liberal, I'd lie and tell people I'm a conservative. because only conservative churches are growing. I said, if you're offering something to someone that even you don't think can really change their lives, why should they get up on a Sunday morning and come here? You tell them that. Where's the motive in that? I said, I'm preaching a Jesus who's the only way of salvation to people who are desperately broken in sin, and I'm offering them a real and present hope.

18:53 So this morning, I hadn't thought about that church for years. I literally looked it up. It no longer exists. It merged with two other liberal churches, and today it's known in that building it's the United Heritage Church. Whatever that means. I don't know what heritage it is. But I took this off of the website this morning. This is the pastor's self-description. I bring years of dedicated service and a deep passion for fostering spiritual growth within our community. My journey has been marked by a commitment to inclusive and compassionate leadership guiding individuals through life's joys and challenges with faith and understanding. I warmly welcome you to our church, where we strive to create a supportive and inspiring environment for all who seek connection and meaning.

19:51 What a lovely job he's doing, making the world a better place to go to hell from. And that's all. I'm so glad that the Holy Spirit has entrusted us with a gospel that changes lives, that gives hope.

20:19 And if you change it, you'll only mess it up. see look at the look at the implications of keeping that which is committed the word faithfully preach the ministry faithfully fulfilled the church faithfully served the home faithfully led pastors that's what god has called you to every one of those the gospel impacts them all. Please shepherd your children and walk with them relentlessly and faithfully and love them passionately because God has given you a gospel. You've been entrusted with it. It should influence and affect your home and your church and the way you do your job if you're bivocational, the way you do your secular tasks. Everything about us should be influenced and affected by this treasure that has been entrusted to us. I watched a documentary about the USS Nimitz, the aircraft carrier. Some of you may have served on an aircraft carrier. And every day, it doesn't matter what your rank, it doesn't matter what your job, everybody takes part in what they call the FOD walk. The FOD. The FOD walk is, I think it's foreign object discovery or something like that. And they all get on that airstrip and they walk side by side, shoulder to shoulder. They just walk down the airstrip with their eyes on the deck.

22:03 And they're looking for any small little thing that might get sucked into an airplane engine and destroy it or puncture a tire and cause the airplane to not be able to take off or land. They know that the smallest little things can destroy a multi-million dollar aircraft and take human lives and cost so much foreign objects like rocks and tools and boats and trash or plastic pieces. The fod walk is a picture of sailors guarding the deck against tiny, easily ignored threats. That's what Paul is telling Timothy, that he's to have the vigilance of a guard and more pastors lose their ministries or at the very least their joy through neglected little things than through some spectacular sins.

23:03 I think that's why he uses this verb. So he says that by professing it, some have swerved from the faith. Now that verb that he uses literally means have missed the mark. Have missed the mark.

23:25 You know, nobody sets out to miss the mark. But sometimes when someone misses the mark, they simply just draw the bullseye around where they shot. they move the target to accommodate what they've done. Paul says to Timothy, no. Some have swerved from the faith. Some have departed from the truth. But you guard the deposit. But guarding a deposit is not passive custody. It requires an active, ongoing turning away from whatever threatens it. And that's why Paul lists for Timothy some of the common things. Notice, they're not the big things. He says, avoid irreverent babble and contradictions to what is falsely called knowledge. Boy, he uses some interesting words here.

24:27 He's telling Timothy, you need to turn away from the pseudo-knowledge that is dressed as depth. turning away. This is a present participle. So Paul's saying this is a continual posture. It's not something you can do just once. It's constantly, over and over, every day, we're turning away from these things. And he speaks of profane, empty-sounding chatter. Listen, pastors, guard your mouth. Paul in Ephesians 4 talks about saying only that which is for edification, only that which is good for building up. You need to make sure that what is coming out of your mouth is consistent with the gospel, that is encouraging, that is edifying.

25:22 avoid profane, empty sounding chatter. And then Paul uses a word here that apparently he coined. It occurs only here and in 2 Timothy 2. This word for empty sounding chatter. It's noise mistaken for substance. A voice with nothing behind it. An empty voice literally. And he says, it can be what sounds like knowledge. It's knowledge falsely named knowledge. understand knowledge itself was never the problem it's knowledge wearing a name it hasn't earned it's knowledge that makes us think like we know something but it's still missing the mark it's a step away from the gospel he says this contradiction contradictions this is the word literally even though this only occurs one time in the New Testament, it's a word that has come into our language. It's the word antithesis. It is the opposite. Clever intellectual sparring that produces controversy, not clarity. The morbid craving for controversy. Man, I just have learned I've got to stay off the Internet and see all these tribal disputes in our evangelical tribe.

27:01 Somebody called out, someone recently wrote a book on their repentance, and someone called on the author of the book on repentance to repent for publishing the book. And then I literally saw another group, they called on the guy that wrote that post and called on him to repent, because he was discounting the guy's repentance. And, boy, here we go. Everything in me wanted to post, you're both idiots. But... I was studying for this sermon and I knew better.

27:36 It's like, no, avoid these kinds of contradictions. These things that sound like you're actually contributing when you're not contributing. That's not preaching the gospel. We can get so caught up in all the little distinctions of whether or not you can do this and go there and associate with this person and be on the program with that guy and whether or not someone has done this right. And what we just post on this and we fill our time with it. While a lost world is going to hell and the people in our pews don't give a rip about that stuff, they need to know how do I deal with my teenage daughter who says she's same-sex attracted? How do I deal with my son who feels like he's a girl? How do I handle the people at work that want me to put the pride flag on my desk?

28:29 in June. They need to know how to apply the gospel in those situations while we're arguing about stuff that just won't matter in eternity. We're judging things that is not ours to judge. It belongs to the Holy Spirit. You're not in a position of authority over those people. You just need to stay out of it. It sounds like knowledge. It sounds like we're being spiritual, calling on people to do this and repent and go here and give up that.

29:03 No. Guard what's been entrusted to you. You know, the danger is rarely a man who stands up and denies the gospel outright. It's usually a man who sounds sophisticated while quietly hollowing it out. It's cutting the heart out of the gospel. vigilance means being suspicious of the chatter that sounds deep but produces no fruit including and especially when that chatter is our own the stakes of getting this wrong are not academic paul doesn't leave it hypothetical he names real casualties and he's telling timothy you need to take this warning personally some have actually missed the Mark, some have swerved from the faith.

29:57 Some professing to be believers, professing to be ministers of the gospel, have completely missed it. This is the same verb he uses of Hymenaeus and Philetus in 2 Timothy 2.18. And he says they profess this. They announce certain things, but they're not amateurs stumbling in the dark. They're confident men who believe they found something better than the plain deposit that was entrusted to them. They thought that for a modern world, we can improve this. We can make this more palatable. We can make this more appropriate. You know, the gospel is inherently offensive. Trust me on this. If you feel like you've got to make what the Bible says about sexuality more palatable to your audience? What are you going to do with the gospel itself?

31:03 I mean, there's nothing more offensive than telling people they're lost and going to hell. I mean, whatever the sins are, are pretty irrelevant. When you tell people that they're lost and going to hell, and there's only one way to be saved. I mean, people don't like this. I was on a plane one time. A lady sat down by me. And you know, I do everything in the world to avoid telling them what I do for a living. They'll ask questions. And I, you know, I said, well, I'm a teacher. And what do you teach? Well, you know, and because the minute we get to the part that I'm a Southern Baptist preacher, the reaction is something. And this lady sat by me and she started asking questions. I was talking to her and sure enough, it came out, you know, I'm a Southern Baptist preacher. And boy, she said, you're not one of those who believe that women need to submit to men, are you? I said, well, no, I don't believe that at all. Oh, she said, good, that's a relief. She said, you know, some of these Baptists believe women have to submit to men. I said, well, they're wrong. The Bible never says that. She said, it doesn't. I said, no, the Bible says a wife has to submit to her husband. It's a very different thing.

32:13 I said, you don't have to submit to me. She said, but your wife does? I said, no, my wife gets to submit to me. The big difference. And she's like, now, she said, I don't get this. I said, well, can I just tell you something? If you could be a fly on the wall in my house, can I tell you what you'd hear? You'd hear two people who are so desperately in love with each other, who enjoy each other. You wouldn't hear me telling her, get in your place and submit to me. You'd hear a woman who trusts me so completely because she knows every single day I get up, my goal is to make her happy. my goal is to please her and honor her and serve her and I said when I do have to make a tough call she trusts me and it's not it's not like there's a big fuss or fight between us over this and she said I just I just can't believe that there's anybody that there's any man out there that I could trust I said well there's one She said, you?

33:28 I said, oh, no, not me. it's the one I serve it's Jesus and she said you really believe there's only one way for a person to be saved I said well not only do I believe it uh the Bible says it and she said that just seems so arrogant to me just so arrogant that you think you have the one way of salvation. And I said, well, tell me, how do you think people go to heaven? She said, well, I think there are many ways. And she told me her thing. I said, I need you to explain something to me. I said, here I am telling you I don't have enough sense to know what the right thing is. I have to completely surrender and submit myself to an external source because left to myself, I am spiritually blind and could never know the truth.

34:33 And so I've submitted myself completely to the Bible, the Word of God. I said, you, on the other hand, feel completely competent to judge which parts of the Bible you accept or not. And yet you call me the arrogant one. she said I've never thought of it that way I said you know here's what the Bible teaches about salvation and I got to share with her the good news and I said this is available to anyone anywhere anytime if you'll just believe just take God at his word there's nothing arrogant about that. It's the most humble thing you'll ever do because you've got to admit you don't have anything of value to God and he's giving everything of value to you. I wish I could tell you she trusted the Lord. She didn't. But it encapsulated for me, this is the very reason why It's so easy for pastors to want to give in.

35:43 We hear the judgment of those people going, ah, that seems so arrogant. And we cave. Paul warns Timothy, no, don't miss the mark. Hold on to it. The truth that was entrusted to you is the truth you must guard and hold on to. It's worth it. And every man who's lost his footing here was certain at the time that he was advancing. He was certain that he was actually doing God a favor. But Paul says, no, Timothy, guard it. Don't depart from it. And he does not close this warning with a threat. He closes, as he closes the whole letter, with grace. Well, Timothy, grace be with you. It's going to take grace for you to keep this that has been entrusted to you.

36:39 It's going to be grace for you to not miss the mark like others have. It's going to take grace for you to stand firm when others have departed. Grace be with you. You know, yesterday's text ended on Proverbs 3.34. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. And today's ends the same way. it's unstated but unmistakable that pride is the root cause of both diseases. The elder who lords it over the flock and the pastor who is talked out of the gospel by something that sounds clever have both in the end trusted themselves more than they trusted what was given to them.

37:27 It's going to require humility. perseverance and grace a minister is entrusted with two things that are not his own a flock to tend and a deposit to guard and he protects both the same way not by seizing control not by sounding impressive but by staying humble enough that grace does the governing vigilance is not a fortress a pastor builds with his own cleverness it's a gift he keeps a gift that fills him and transforms him from the inside out an indelible grace by which he leaves a roadmap and a challenge for those coming behind him to follow years ago when i was first few years i was at southern seminary i was asked to preach at a large Baptist church in Mobile, Alabama.

38:25 And I went down and I preached in the church and I spoke at a deacon banquet. At the end of the banquet, they were thanking different people who helped with the banquet and giving them each a little gift. And even though, you know, I assumed they were going to give me some kind of an honorarium check, they brought me up and gave me a gift. I said, well, how nice. little white box. I never know when someone publicly gives you a gift wrapped like that. Do you open it? Or you just take it back to your seat? You know, well, I just took it back to the seat. And I thought, I'll open this later. Thank them. Well, I was in the car. The staff member that was driving from the church to my hotel said to me, well, what'd you get? Now I could tell by the way he asked, he knew what was in that box. But I didn't know. I said, I don't know. He said, well, open it up, see what you got. So I ripped that white bow off and the white paper and opened it up. And I heard him go, wow, that's an S.T. DuPont. I said, what's an S.T. DuPont? He said, oh, that's one of the finest fountain pens ever made. And this was in there. He said, oh man, that's an incredible pin. He said that's the Orfeo. That's real black Chinese lacquer and that's actual gold. The trim there is made of gold. He said take that cap off and listen, put it back on, listen to the click.

40:01 He said, that pneumatic click, that's really something. He said, look at the nib. He said, that's a 14-karat gold nib. He said, now, 14-karat gold is a soft metal, and so it's designed to conform to the angle of your hand. He said, don't ever let anybody else write with that pen. It'll mess up the nib. It's made to be for one person. I said, wow, that's incredible. I said, okay, I'm going to be tacky here. How much are we talking? This was like 2001. He said, that's about an $800 pin. Does it have an engine?

40:55 He said, look, that pen will last you a lifetime. He said, that's an incredible pen. Well, thanks. Man, that became my pen. I would take it with me on Sundays. You know, when I got back, I remember I flew back to Louisville the next day. I called Dr. Moeller from the airport. I said, hey, I just got back from this church in Mobile, and they gave me a pen. It's an S.D. DuPont. Moeller, who knows these things, he said, oh, that's incredible. He said, come over to the house right now. So I drove over to Mohler's study. He said, let me see it. He said, oh, that's the Orfeo. Yeah, I know. He said, that's black Chinese lacquer. Yeah, I know. He said, that's real gold trim. Yeah. He said, oh, that's a gold nib. Yeah.

41:46 He said, don't let anybody else write with that. It conforms to the angle of your hand. I said, okay, I'll do it. He gave me some ink for it. Showed me sort of how to use it, ink it up. all kinds of neat stuff. So then I drove home. I showed it to Tanya. She said, wow, that's an incredible pen. I said, yeah it is. It's an Orfeo. Real gold trim and gold nymph. She said, wow, that's some pen. She said, let me write with it. I said, no. This is a sanctified pen. It is set apart for my special use. And I explained to her why. She said, okay. Well, I began to take this pen with me, you know, especially on Sundays, my Sunday pen. Back then, you know, you preach in a suit and tie.

42:41 And so I was, Kevin Easell was pastor in Hy-Vee Baptist Church, and he had me preach the 11 o'clock service there for three years. And I was preaching the 11 o'clock service and it was during the worship time I had one of those last minute preacher thoughts that, you know, I need to write that down in my notes. And so I'm sitting in the front row singing the last hymn. I've got to write this real quick. I pull out my Orfeo S.D. DuPont and I go to write my note to myself and nothing happens. I shake it. I try to write the note, nothing happens. So I open it up, and I look at the cartridge, and there's no ink in it. Man, I turn around, there's this like 9, 10-year-old boy sitting behind me, and I can see in his pocket, he's got one of those cheap plastic BICs. I said, hey, let me borrow your pen.

43:37 Can I borrow your pen? Oh, yeah. He hands it to me. It's got teeth marks. Oh, yeah. Here, I take it, hold it lightly, write my note to myself, hand it back to him. Something occurred to me. That 25 cent Bic is better than an $800 S.T. DuPont if it's empty inside. Your ministry is to be filled with one thing. it's what has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit. It's not yours to mess with. It's not yours to change.

44:32 But if you have that at the core of who you are and what you preach, you'll write a legacy that others can follow. But without it, you're empty inside. Oh God. we want to leave this place filled with commitment to keep that which has been entrusted to us. Others have missed the mark. They've swerved. We see the bodies along the trail. We know the possibility that we can fail. And it won't be because we weren't smart enough. or polished enough, but because we did not stay true to what you entrusted.

45:33 So, Father, I'm begging you, may your Holy Spirit keep us close to the heart of your Son, that we will not swerve from the faith, that we'll be faithful. and keep that which you've entrusted to us. Until the end of our lives, we lay it down to step into your presence, to hear you say, well done, good and faithful servant. In Jesus' name, amen.