A Hunger for the Gospel - John 6:35-51

This morning we’re wrapping up our series on heart hunger by reflecting on hungering for the gospel. We celebrated the good news in the Lord’s Supper as we celebrate Jesus and how he’s made us right with God. All through history, people have searched for good news, for hope, and a reason to keep on going when things feel dark. The majority of the news today feels bad; our hearts hunger for good news to counter the bad and fill us with hope. In Greek, gospel is euangelion, which means good news meant to be shared.

In our passage, I hear the echoes of the doctrines of comfort found in the Canons of Dordt. Jesus invites the crowd to come to him, while our doctrines lead us into a deeper relationship with Jesus. Jesus tells us his gospel news through telling us who he is, and the story of Israel. Just before this, John tells us Jesus feeds 5,000 people with only 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish. After feeding the people, Jesus goes off by himself while the disciples jump into a boat to go to the other side of the lake. In the night, Jesus joins his disciples by walking to them on the water. Jesus, as the creator, controls the elements of creation from bread, to fish, to the water he walks on, echoing the beginning of John’s gospel where we’re reminded that all things were created through Jesus. 

The next day, on the other side of the lake, the crowd finds Jesus again. The people want more bread and it’s easier to ask Jesus for it than work for it themselves. They’re looking for Jesus to provide for them like God did with manna for 40 years while wandering in the wilderness. Jesus reminds them that the bread they ate didn’t come from Moses, it came from God. Now the true bread from heaven that gives life to the world is here. 

Jesus declares, “I am the bread of life;” those who come to him will never go hungry, and whoever believes in him will never be thirsty. This is life nourishing language, God providing language. Jesus gives life and nourishes life because he’s the “I Am,” echoing back to Moses and the burning bush. This is gospel news for those who hunger and thirst. We hear echoes to Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well where he offers her living water, pointing to the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out on God’s people. Jesus reveals himself to her as the promised Messiah who has come to save his people. 

Jesus tells the people in the crowd, “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” Jesus is declaring that he’s more than the promised Messiah, he’s the Son of God! 

Jesus comes down from heaven because after he and the Father created everything very good, then sin happened when Adam and Eve listened to the serpent. Sin impacts every part of creation, total depravity. They aren’t wise enough to realize the very good they have in God, and they fall for the serpent’s slippery words, bringing the curse of death. God had warned them, “Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” God doesn’t reject Adam and Eve; he gives them clothes to cover their nakedness but allows the consequences of their sin play out. God also promises them a Messiah who will come and crush the head of the serpent. He’ll save his people, renewing and restoring creation again; gospel news! The crowd hears Jesus, but they have a hard time accepting it, “At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?” 

As Jesus challenges the crowd, we hear the comfort of what we call the doctrine of unconditional election. Jesus talks about how he’ll lose none of the ones his Father gives him, the ones the Father chooses to save. We know through the story of Scripture that the Lord chooses us not, because we deserve it, but out of his own gracious will. In choosing us, God’s revealing his amazing grace and good will. In Jesus’ words, we also hear the doctrine of perseverance of the saints. The perseverance isn’t by us, it’s God’s perseverance in not giving up on us; he refuses to let go of us, reassuring us that we cannot lose our faith because it’s a gift from him. It’s not our perseverance that leads to our salvation; it’s Jesus’ perseverance that leads to our salvation and eternal life with him. 

Jesus acknowledges that not everyone’s going to be saved, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day.” Those God chooses cannot resist his amazing grace, his grace is irresistible, but there are those the Father’s not sending to Jesus. This can be hard to hear. In our compassion for others, we wonder how can it be that a God of love wouldn’t send everyone to Jesus to be saved. 

Jesus helps us understand this in parables like the one in Luke 13, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’ “But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’ “Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’ “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth.” We read this as the people on the outside weeping in sorrow, but Jesus is giving us a different picture. 

In the Old Testament, gnashing of teeth was an expression of anger used for the wicked and their enemies. In the New Testament, gnashing of teeth is connected to future punishment and the wicked people’s refusal to repent and admit the justness of God’s judgment. James puts it this way in his letter, “but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.” 

We read in Revelation 16, “They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him…. and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done.” They refused a relationship with God and Jesus and kept choosing themselves and their heart desires. This is about God’s justice. Having walked with those who been abused or persecuted, part of their healing was the reassurance that their abusers would have to stand before God’s justice, especially if they managed to escape justice here. Jesus rescues his people from Satan, punishing Satan and his people with hell.

Jesus’ atonement for our sin is great enough for all sinners, but is only given to those chosen by God and who accept Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, this is limited atonement. In Acts 10:43, Peter, when he goes to Cornelius’ house, tells them, “All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” Paul says something very similar in Romans 10:9, “If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Salvation comes through having a relationship with Jesus. Jesus talks about raising his people up on the last day when Jesus comes down from heaven again to renew all creation. 

When we allow the gospel story to shape our minds and hearts, we understand the world more deeply, giving us a strong foundation to walk through life with strength, knowing we’re given what we need to move through each day. We’re reminded of the gospel of Jesus. This is worldview stuff, shaping what we value and how we live with each other. In a culture used to criticizing others harshly, often anonymously, hurting relationships, we live face to face as a supportive family shaped by the Spirit, Galatians 5:22–26, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” We become more Christ-like, allowing the gospel to shape us: we love God more; we love our neighbour so much we have to share the gospel with them so they’ll know the love of Jesus too. 

A Hunger for Freedom - 2 Corinthians 3:7-18

Paul is writing to the church in the city of Corinth because he’s heard there’s a group of Jewish believers who are emphasizing strict obedience to all the laws of Moses to the Gentile believers. There’s an aspect of trusting in your obedience to earn your salvation in this thinking. Paul shows us the difference between the old covenant grounded in the laws of Moses, the ones engraved in letters in stone that brought condemnation and still came with glory, and the new covenant in Jesus and what he accomplished that’s even more glorious. The glory found in the old covenant is muted, Paul uses the example of Moses wearing a veil when he came down from Mount Sinai after spending time in the presence of God, his face shining with God’s glory, frightens the people. Now in new covenant times, the glory shines bright as it’s unveiled, bringing righteousness. Paul writes, “For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory.” God gave Israel the law to shape his people and point them to the coming Messiah, and now Jesus has come. Paul writes, “And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!” Paul keeps our focus on Jesus, not Moses. 

Paul’s mission is to point people to Jesus, “whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Paul is talking about freedom from the power of sin, freedom Jesus has accomplished for us in his death and resurrection. The glory revealed as Jesus takes away the chains of sin that bind our hearts and souls to the curse that comes with sin: separation from God and death. We experience freedom from trying to earn our salvation through perfect obedience to the law, which as Scripture clearly shows us, is impossible for us. This is why Paul keeps calling us to turn to Jesus who has completely fulfilled the law. When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, when we believe in him and place all our faith and trust in Jesus, his perfect obedience covers us and we’re made righteous in and through Jesus. Jesus gives us his Spirit which is transforming us more and more into his image, filling us with his glory!

The Law is a gift from God, but it reveals our sin and brokenness and need for a Messiah. We know that sin creates brokenness, it points us away from God and Jesus, and silences the voice of the Holy Spirit within us. Sin wraps us in powerful chains. These chains can wrap us tightly in hopelessness and despair. These chains look differently for each of us; they can look like deliberate sin choices, like addiction, destructive and spiritually unhealthy ways of thinking, the actions of others towards us, or our past of brokenness and/or abuse. We don’t choose these chains, often they slowly and silently wrap themselves around our hearts and souls, weaving their ways around us tighter and tighter until it feels like we’ll never escape them, that all hope is lost.

Addiction is a powerful chain, and in my personal birth family, we’ve wrestled with the chains of addiction. As one family member says, “You don’t begin something thinking that it’s more powerful than I am and it’s going to make me submit to its will rather than me controlling it.” Everyone has their own story of that road into addiction. Our youth group in Allendale served regularly at a homeless shelter serving dinner. We would sit with some of those who came and ask them how we could pray for them. One man shared how he had been a successful doctor, but the stress of trying to save people’s lives every day got to him and he began using prescription drugs to handle the stress. He became addicted and this affected both his marriage and his job and he lost both, as well as his house and belongings. This led him to the streets and the shelter in order to survive. Drugs were the only way he felt he could survive each day and his inability to say no to the drugs took away all his hope. His addiction was rooted in the inability to defeat death and illness, in his own realization that he wasn’t God. The chains of addiction were painfully wrapped tightly around his mind and heart.

In another situation, I walked alongside a person who struggled with unhealthy ways of thinking that impacted her relationships with others. There were feelings of entitlement and yet feeling that she wasn’t respected. This created conflict within the church and her family. People were afraid of her, which created more hurt and brokenness. Yet when you asked people how they saw her, they all commented about how much they appreciated all she did, even while being afraid of her anger. Over time, as conflict grew, she would go to another church where the same patterns happened and she would end up back in our church again. This created depression, pain, and more striking out. At the heart of her struggle was the inability to trust others, which lead her to push against the church leadership, revealing a lack of trust in God. The chains of her unhealthy ways of thinking were so strong!

My call into ministry came through walking alongside people who were living rough lives caught in these types of chains and ended up at a Christian community center that reached out to those on the streets and in hard situations. Satan is creative in how he can trap us. The majority of those we walked alongside with wanted nothing more than to be free of their addictions or destructive relationships. They were all looking for happiness, peace, or hope and when it proved hard to find or keep, they turned to other behaviors and substances to take away the pain, taking those chains back on again. Slavery can become normal. We see this in the wilderness when Israel’s discouraged at how hard things are and complain how back in Egypt they had watermelon to eat and water to drink; slavery is easier in some ways than freedom.

Yet there are always those who hunger deeply for freedom, and in my experience, at some point end up turning to Jesus to see if freedom is possible. Often, they are drawn to the law parts, hoping that obedience will make them free; it’s not until they hear Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light,” that they learn  to rest in Jesus, to trust that he’s done the law for them, calling them to rest in him, to lean on his strength rather than their own.

In John 8:31–36 Jesus talks to the Jews who had believed him, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?” Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” When we believe in Jesus, we’re set free from our sin and made righteous before God, but that doesn’t mean we’re fully healed, that our addictions, ways of thinking and behaving, our bitterness and consequences of our past disappear. It does mean that we’re at the beginning of a journey of renewal, trusting that Jesus places people with skills of healing, counselling, encouragement, and equipping in our lives. There are those in our church family to help pick us up again when we stumble, reminding us that we’re deeply loved and forgiven by Jesus. Our chains are heavy and not easy to carry, especially when they’re placed there by others. Freedom is hard, which is why we’re called as the family of God to be there for and with each other, working with the Holy Spirit to be transformed.

Paul writes in Galatians 5:13–15; 22–23, “You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other…. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” True freedom leads us to freedom that begins to shape us into a new person shaped by the Holy Spirit. This will happen over time; hope and the experience of Jesus’ love will come, bringing trust in Jesus, which brings strength. Even though we may fall again and again, we know that we can overcome the chains that hold us down because our strength and freedom is found in Jesus. 

A Hunger for the Truth - John 14:1-14

Jesus has just finished eating the Passover meal with his disciples. Passover remembers the exodus out of Egypt when God brought his people out of slavery to the Egyptians. John’s setting the stage to show how Jesus’ upcoming death will save us from our slavery to sin. Judas has left and Jesus tells the remaining disciples that his time with them is short. Jesus leaves them with a new command, John 13:34–35, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” 

Jesus now encourages his disciples to believe in him as they believe in God. He reassures them that even though he’s leaving, that he’s going to make a place ready for them and will come back to take them home to his Father’s house when their place is ready. Now Thomas speaks up, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” My first thought is always, “Thomas, Jesus just said that he’s coming back to take us, all we need to do is trust in Jesus that he knows the way, we’re fine.” 

Jesus is more reassuring, he tells Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” We’re so used to hearing these “I Am” statements from Jesus that we often miss the impact of what Jesus is saying. Each of the statements Jesus makes here is weighty enough to stagger the disciples by what he's claiming here. When talking to Martha at Lazarus’ death, Jesus calls himself “the life,” while to the Pharisees he refers to himself as “the door” and “the light of the world,” a way of saying he’s the way. In Mark 12:14, the Pharisees tell Jesus, “You teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.” 

This morning we’re narrowing in on Jesus saying “I am the truth.” Truth is often seen as a slippery idea today. Some say that we each create our own truth. It wasn’t much different in Jesus’ time. There were different Jewish traditions, and it was hard for the Jewish person in Jesus’ time to determine which tradition, or truth, was really Yahweh’s will. For the Jews, truth is understood in terms of faithfulness and reliability, especially as it relates to Yahweh. The New Testament also picks up on the Greek idea of truth as reality, along with as the Jewish concepts of faithfulness and reliability. Jesus Christ is shown as “the Truth” and the apostles present the gospel as “truth.” In Scripture, truth is understood as part of God’s character: God is truth, truth is found in God. 

Michael Goheen, a former professor at Redeemer University, writes, “In the Western story, ultimately reliable truth is found in eternal ideas that transcend history. In the Bible, ultimately reliable truth is found in God’s mighty acts in history, especially in Jesus Christ” …. “One of my university professors, a Jewish rabbi, said to me something like the following: “The difference between Jews and Christians is a different understanding of truth. We Jews believe truth resides in historical events that give meaning to a story and shape a community to live into that story. You Christians believe truth resides in theological ideas around which a community forms by believing those ideas.” 

In many ways, Pilate’s question to Jesus at his trial is still being asked today, “What is truth?” Today, many people hunger to know what truth really is. In our church tradition, we tend to lean more towards the Greek and modern approach to understanding truth as reality, while under-valuing the Jewish approach of finding truth in relationship. Post-modernity leans towards creating our own truth, and the newest cultural movement is being called meta-modernism where people hold competing and even opposite truths together without seeing any tension in doing so. 

The Bible reveals and teaches truth with both Jewish and Greek understanding. Truth is about facts and rationality, it’s about faithfulness, firmness, and reliability. Truth is about what’s real and genuine and opposite to falsehood, truth is about being complete rather than incomplete. In Jesus we get a very distinctive image of God; in Matthew 3 at Jesus’ baptism, we see God in heaven loving his Son Jesus who is God with us, and with the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we experience God with us and in us. God is complete in himself. God often locates truth in himself, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Truth and mercy are often placed together in Scripture and shows God’s loyalty and love to his people, creating trust in God.

John writes in his first letter, 1 John 5:20, “We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” John tells us the Holy Spirit shows us what truth is, John 14:16–17, “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” The Holy Spirit points us to Jesus as the truth found in the center of the Biblical story. Jesus is God and the Son of God, part of the Trinity, a relationship. We are children of God in a relationship with God creating a deeper trust in God and his words of wisdom and truth about the world around us and our place in it.

Most of us, when we’re looking for truth, are looking for facts. Scripture calls us to look to a person, to Jesus for truth, to listen to what he teaches about how the world’s supposed to be. Jesus is truth; he’s trustworthy and reliable, teaching and showing us the reality of life: that we’re sinners and need forgiveness, and this forgiveness is found in him. Our true identity is rooted in Jesus. Jesus reveals that the world belongs to the Father and so do we and that he alone can give us a full life; that the world’s promises to fill us with all our desires is a lie and false. 

We know truth through our relationship with Jesus. Truth is knowledge of who Jesus is, and a faith filled relationship with Jesus. In John 8:31–32, we’re reminded of this, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” When we look for truth, we’re looking for God; Jesus tells Phillip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” If we want to see the truth of all things, the reality of what life is, where meaning and purpose are found, we look to God, and we find God in Jesus. Jesus reveals to us that God loves us so much he comes into a world broken by sin and shaped by lies because of Adam. God’s truth in Scripture is that we are sinners, redeemed sinners when we accept Jesus as our Lord. As the second Adam, Jesus takes our sin on himself, washes it away through his sacrificial death, bringing renewed life and the promise of a renewed creation again; filling us with hope and excitement as we join in Jesus’ work of sharing the gospel of truth found in Jesus and giving our communities a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven through our lives together.

Knowing truth leads to acting on that truth and living that truth out in our lives: John writes in 1 John 3:18, “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” John’s likely remembering Jesus’ words at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into action is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” That rock is Jesus and the truth of his teaching. We see how Jesus interprets the law in terms of relationship; lust is adultery, anger is murder, both breaking our relationships with God and others. 

When we accept Jesus as truth, this empowers us to recognize and stand up against evil and wrong by evaluating the structures, cultural values, and idolatries prevalent today to Jesus’ teachings and life so we can shape our lives, values, and actions on Jesus; critiquing wisely the cultural influences impacting each of us. This helps us to be free from the falsehoods our culture has embraced, and living in the truth that is Jesus, which sets us free to lead others into the truth and kingdom of heaven as we build on the rock of truth that is Jesus.

Lead the Way – Cadet Sunday - 1 Timothy 4:1-16

Timothy is a young pastor in the church in the city of Ephesus. Ephesus was the third largest city in the Roman empire. Around 250,000 during Paul’s time there. From Ephesus, people could travel by road to many parts of the empire and this made it a popular city for business people, artists, and followers of other religions to live in. Because of all the people from different nations and religions living there, a lot of their ideas and teachings began to get mixed into the church there. When Paul heard about this starting to happen, he begins to get worried about the church there, so he writes this letter to Timothy to encourage him to be a strong leader in the church and lead the people to follow Jesus as Jesus taught them to be. 

Because Timothy is young, Paul tells him, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.” This is the theme for Cadets this year. As your counsellors, we want you to grow into being leaders for Jesus. I see some of you already becoming leaders in our Bible lessons on Cadet evenings and in different cadet events. All the things that Timothy faced are still around today and this means we need you all to grow into leaders that show people, including adults, the kind of people Jesus teaches us to be. 

Timothy lived in challenging times as a follower of Jesus, but it’s not any different today. That’s why we need good leaders who love Jesus and are able to recognize when things are happening that make it harder to follow Jesus and be who Jesus teaches us to be. In Timothy’s time there were people who were making up all kinds of rules to follow that made it seem as if the world that God created wasn’t good enough. They told people that there were things they shouldn’t eat. I know that our moms and dads tell us that we shouldn’t eat too much candy or junk food, but our parents don’t say we can’t eat it. My mom told us not to eat dirt, but that’s more common sense!

Now I know that most of you aren’t that interested in girls yet. Now you might find this hard to believe right now, but there’s something really special about when a boy and a girl get older and find out they love each other and want to spend their lives together and have a family. There were people who said that it was bad to get married. If your mom and dad would have listened to those people, you wouldn’t be here today! Paul reminds Timothy that everything God makes is good and that we shouldn’t reject something if we receive it with thanksgiving as a gift from God. God used to have rules about food for his people, but after Jesus came and died for our sin, rose from the dead, and then went back to heaven, God sends the apostle Peter a dream to let him know that those rules were now ended for his people and they could eat the same food as the gentiles. 

Paul tells Timothy to teach the people in his church what God really teaches and to make sure they don’t listen to those people who are making up rules that make them trust God less. You might believe that you’re too young to lead or teach, and there’s many people in the Bible who thought the same thing when God called them to be leaders; Jeremiah tells God in 1:6 “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.” God then tells Jeremiah, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.” 

God will help you to be the leader he calls you to be. In his next letter to Timothy, Paul reminds Timothy, “I am reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also. 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 the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner.” Timothy was taught by his mom and grandmother about God and God has given you parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts to teach you about God and Jesus so you can be more Christ-like in all areas of life. God gives us the Holy Spirit to remind us of what Jesus taught through older people in your lives. 

You’re still learning to be leaders. Part of becoming leaders is to learn from those who are leading right now; people like your counsellors, from teachers, coaches, our faith formation coordinator, counsellors, and teachers but the most important people you learn from are your parents and then your grandparents. When God calls you to leadership, he will give you people to encourage you and help you learn how to be the leader God is calling you to be. 

God tells older men to be involved with young men and youth, to teach and mentor them, and he does the same thing with older women, to teach and mentor the younger women. King David tells us in Psalm 78, “My people, hear my teaching; listen to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth with a parable; I will utter hidden things, things from of old—things we have heard and known, things our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their descendants; we will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done.” Moses taught Joshua, Eli taught Samuel, Elijah trained Elisha, Barnabas mentored John Mark, and now Paul is mentoring Timothy. We also have the Bible to guide us, this is why we study the Bible at Cadets.

Paul warns us to stay away from godless myths and old wives’ tales. There’s a lot of people saying things about Jesus that aren’t true and make Jesus look like he’s just pretending to be God. They change things in the Bible to fit what they believe instead of believing what the Bible actually says. I’ve learned that lots of people like gossiping and talking a lot about other people, even when they have no idea if what they’re saying is even true. Today way too many people trust what they read on the internet, Instagram, Facebook, or whatever other site is popular right now. It’s like eating: you can either eat good healthy food or you can fill yourself with junk food that over time will make you weaker and sicker and godless myths and old wives’ tales will make you sick in your soul and mind.

God wants us to learn how to think well and listen to the Bible and the Holy Spirit; this is why Paul tells us to train ourselves to be godly. Lots us of want to be in shape for hockey, basketball, rugby, and volleyball, but it’s more important to have healthy souls and hearts if you’re going to be a leader. So how do you become spiritually fit? We build good habits in reading the Bible, especially together as a family, praying to God regularly, and worshipping together as a family and at church helps you get in shape. Serving and helping out other people by yourself and as a family, and thanking God for everything helps you to be strong in all the important ways, to be an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.

How we live is important because people are always watching to see if we really believe what we’re saying or teaching. They’ll follow you if they see you really care about them and are living the way Jesus calls us to live. Focus on building these good habits and learning from your parents and teachers and cadet counsellors. This will help you to become good leaders for Jesus, something that pleases Jesus and helps us all to become stronger in our faith too. You’re never too young to lead, whether it’s at school, cadets, or wherever you are. As Paul tells you, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young,” it’s your faith, not your age, that makes godly leaders.