In 2 Timothy 1:1-18, the message centers on fan into flame the gift of god. Explore 2 Timothy 1 and Paul’s call to fan into flame the gift of God, reject fear, guard the gospel, and live with courage and faithful purpose. Rather than treating the passage as abstract theology, the sermon traces what these truths reveal about God, the gospel, and the way followers of Jesus are called to live.
The teaching brings biblical truth into the places where faith becomes deeply personal: fear, uncertainty, suffering, desire, and the questions we carry about what comes next. It invites listeners to let Scripture shape their perspective instead of allowing circumstances, emotions, or cultural assumptions to have the final word. The emphasis is on a durable hope that changes how we think, pray, endure, and respond in the present.
Along the way, the message engages themes including 2 Timothy 1:1-18, fan into flame the gift of god, reject fear, guard gospel. These ideas help place the primary passage within the larger story of Scripture and show how its theology speaks to real spiritual formation. At its heart, the sermon helps answer questions such as: What does 2 Timothy 1:1-18 teach about fan into flame the gift of god? It also considers how should fan into flame the gift of god shape the way Christians live?
For someone studying this passage, exploring the Christian faith, or looking for practical biblical teaching, this sermon offers a clear path from the text to everyday discipleship. The invitation is to hear what Scripture says, receive it with humility, and take the next faithful step in following Jesus.
What does 2 Timothy 1:1-18 teach about fan into flame the gift of god? | How should fan into flame the gift of god shape the way Christians live? | How can believers apply 2 Timothy 1:1-18 in everyday life?
2 Timothy 1:1-18, fan into flame the gift of God, reject fear, guard gospel, live courage faithful purpose
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It's it's really funny because I when I started thinking about doing second Timothy, I had this little voice in my head going, "Why aren't you starting in first Timothy?" Right? You know, you'd think like there's two letters. Like, let's start with the first one. What I like about second Timothy is it is the last letter that Paul ever wrote before he died. There's something powerful about the final words of someone before they go to be with the Lord. It carries weight. And I just want to start off by saying before I even get into the scripture because I think this is going to help frame it. We have so many reasons as a people, as a as a body to give God glory. We have so many reasons to give God praise. Whether you feel blessed or you feel stressed, it's from God that all blessings in our life come from. The Bible says that God gives good gifts to his children. And there is way more blessing in your life than burdens. Do you do you agree with me today? >> Can I get an amen for that? Cuz some of y'all are starting to assess in your head. Do I have more blessing in my life or do I have more burden in my life? Is it really that great following Jesus? >> Here's the thing. If if all you look at is the negative, if all you magnify are the the burdens in your life, it's going to feel like there's no blessing. >> You take a microscope onto the small thing and expands it and now it's massive in your eyes. Like you can be looking in the mirror and some of you did this this morning. You woke up and you were looking good. You were looking real good. Your skin was glowing. Your mustache looks great. Not the ladies. You don't have mustaches, right? >> Hey. Hey, that's all right. I love you so much. That was just perfect. You know, you're looking in the mirror like, "Man, did I lose weight last night in my sleep? I'm having a good hair day." I always have a good hair day, >> right? >> But here's the thing. You look in the mirror and you look good. But then you see one pimple on your face and your whole day is ruined. Everything else, you're feeling good, you're looking good, but it's just one little thing, right, that it's going to mess with you the rest of the day. The rest of your body is fine. Your whole body can be healthy, but when something hurts or when something one small thing feels like it's not right or out of place, this annoyance in your life, it's all you can think of. the sickness, the pain point, but again, the rest of your body is fine. And and and church, I'm I'm framing this before we get into this because I think it's so powerful. That is how we need to think about our life with the Lord. There's so much good in your life if you'll stop fixating on the negative. If you'll begin to see God in everything and his goodness, where gratitude begins to become our response to God, to the church, the word, the mission of the kingdom. Again, it's not a spiritual gift to be critical. It's not a spiritual gift to be able to point out the negative. I think it's a spiritual gift to be able to see where you're broken and humble yourself. Again, I want us to be in a place as we start this where we're praising God for what we do have instead of just complaining and worrying about all the other stuff that we don't. And you may be thinking, pastor, you do not know my life. Or, man, I really could use some more blessing in my life. And again, I'm not sure where you're going through with the your walk or with the Lord. But the God that we sung about today is very aware of what's happening in your life. I say all this because Paul is writing to Timothy again, his final letter ever recorded historically. And if you were here during our Philippians series or you or you've read the book of Philippians before, you know that he's in prison. And at this point in writing the letter, he's on death row. He knows that his life is about to end. And yet he still begins to speak with a heart of gratitude. This soldout apostle has been in and out of jail since he became a believer in Jesus. He was tortured. He was shipwrecked. He was ran out of town. This all happened to Paul because he was sharing the gospel and planting churches. And yet he still has a heart full of gratitude, full of resolve. Even as his court hearing is approaching, his death is imminent. He still calls Jesus Lord. He still holds fast to the promises of God. And I I'll just be honest with you. I don't know many people in America who have been tortured and imprisoned because of their faith and still have a grateful relationship with Jesus. A lot of the time when stuff bad happens to us in our life, what do we do? We blame God. God, WHY WOULD YOU LET THIS HAPPEN TO ME? And then that negative thing becomes a wall between you and the Lord. It's so important that we have this attitude of gratitude. And again, I know plenty of former believers who had one bad experience in a church or one bad experience in their faith or with another believer and they've deconstructed, they've tucktailed and they've ran out of the church because of one moment, because of one word, because of one thing. And some of y'all are here in the room and you made it back. Praise the Lord. But I want us to carry this weight as we look at this scripture in 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse one. Paul says, "Paul, I Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus." This is powerful. Paul had a life that was found in Christ. Do we have a life found in Christ today? Paul had a promise from God. And so everything that he did in this life is because he believed that Jesus loved him. Loves him. And that no matter what was going to happen, even if his death was on the horizon, he was still going to follow that purpose and follow that promise. That nothing was going to shake him. from being who Jesus saved him to be. And church, I want to tell you the life that Jesus has promised for you, for me today is way better than any life that we could have apart from him. And he could say like I was talking to somebody about this the other day. This is a very this is a very weird conversation, so I'm not going to give you all the context. So just understand. He said, "Man, I'd love to be in jail because then I can just read my Bible all day long and have no other responsibilities, right? Like, if I have no other responsibilities and I can just be with the Lord, like that would be great." It sounds like Paul being in prison was a great thing. It sounds a whole lot easier to be imprisoned, but the reality is every single one of us are imprisoned. either imprisoned by the patterns of this world or we are a prisoner of Christ as Paul likes to call himself captivated by the love of God or captivated by vanity and pride. There's a promise for us to walk in and it's not living in the lies and the deceptions of culture and our feelings. It's a life found radically changed by Christ. We have so much to be grateful for if we'll just shift our hearts to Jesus. Verse two, he says to Timothy, "My beloved child," again, this is a spiritual son, not his real son. And he says, "Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father in Christ Jesus our Lord." This part of the letter really captures my heart because I really wish that we talked more like this as a people because Paul takes a moment to pronounce blessing over Timothy. Timothy is the pastor of a network of churches in Ephesus. Ephesus is a bustling city, a commerce port city, and the Ephesian culture is very, very pagan. It's very self-centered. And Paul had planted this set of churches in Ephesus. And he handed the churches over to the leadership of Timothy, his spiritual son. Much of the Ephesian culture, if we would try to draw comparative lines today, looks a lot like modern America, very self-centered. And so for Timothy, this is hard ground to try to grow the church and reach more people in Christ. So Paul, he's written this to inspire, direct, challenge Timothy and all the churches that he's pastoring. But notice how he he starts the letter. He's he's saying to my son, to my to my spiritual son, I think it's so important, my dad talked about this last week. I think it's so important that every single one of us have sons and daughters in our lives, people that we're pouring into. And it's so important as well that we would have spiritual fathers and mothers that pour into us. people that have no agenda other than I want this daughter, I want this son to be blessed. Look at this blessing from Paul. What I want for you most of all is grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our father and through Christ. Can you imagine going to work tomorrow and your boss begins to declare grace and peace over your life? Can you can you imagine getting a phone call from somebody you haven't talked to in a long time and they just begin to say grace and peace and mercy over you today? Because again, it's grace is not forgiveness. We've talked about this before. We often hear that grace, you know, I'm giving somebody grace or I'm I'm giving them some mercy. I'm giving them some leeway. But grace is not mercy and it's not forgiveness. Grace is the power of God to help you live for God >> according to scripture. Mercy is the pleasure of God to forgive you of sin and to help you live worthy of the gospel. And the peace peace is the presence of God where you find joy and rest in the presence of God. So when you begin to to say grace and mercy and peace, I declare it over you. That is a blessing worth more than any amount of money or resource because it's literally saying, I I speak the power of God over your life in all that you're doing and all that you're saying. And I don't I don't know about you, but I need more people in my life that speak these words over me. You and I need fathers and mothers in our lives who speak life, who pronounce blessing, who believe the best for us, who see us like God sees us, not as someone to be used, but somebody to be poured into. But church, this requires us to get around people like this because we can say, "My mom and dad don't encourage me." Yeah, your earthly father and mother maybe not be the the best relationship ever, but the New Testament has this pattern of men and women shephering, teaching, leading and directing younger men and women. And this is why we love small groups. This is why we believe in spiritual fathers and and mothers. And listen, many of us in the church today, whether we want to admit it or not, are spiritual orphans. We're saved. God's our father in heaven, but we've not let any other fathers or mothers speak into our lives. We'd rather let social media be our mommy and daddy because the algorithm tells us what we want to hear. Somebody say, "Amen." Come on. You need to shut that down. You need to be the gatekeeper of your eyes and your ears and your heart. We need to seek out godly relationships. Ask God today, would you put spiritual fathers and mothers into my life and help me to identify them around me? Because here's what I do. I find men and women who are e exceptional in different areas in my spiritual walk or in my my physical walk. I used to think that I needed to find like a Master Yoda guru, you know, perfect mentor over my life. If y'all don't know who Master Yoda is, y'all got to go watch Star Wars. No, >> you're not going to do it. All right. I I always knew you were a Treky. That's what it was. I'm just kidding. But sometimes we we make the mistake in thinking that I need to find this perfect leader who's great and perfect and everything to pour into my life. And I'm just here to tell you that person does not exist >> because nobody's perfect. Everybody's got their issues. It's not like it's on on movies and on on TV shows. And so what I do and what I've learned to do over the years is I find different mentors for different areas of my life. I've got people who who I trust them in how they parent. They they may be terrible in other areas, but they didn't screw up their kids and they're really they're they're incredible fathers. They're incredible mothers. I've got guys that I go to that I that I trust what they say when it comes to finances. They may be terrible parents, but I they know their money. >> Y'all hear what I'm saying? There there's people that I that I follow that not not following online, but people that I that I follow in my walk and who lead me and guide me who pray like no one else in my life. And if there's something going on in my in my heart, in my life, and I need somebody to pray on my behalf, they're my first call. I I just want to hear them pray because I want to pray like that. And I've got people who who study the word of God and know know things backwards and forwards and just getting around them is just like wisdom being poured out into my life. And I'm not going to discount or discredit them for areas where they may be lacking. I've got emotional health mentors. I've got mentors who are incredible to their spouse. Mentors that I can pick up the phone and call or I can play around of golf with, grab some coffee with, and they just pour out wisdom and blessing. And here's the thing, they don't have to be some ancient old pastor like my dad. I'm so glad you showed up today, Dad. Come on. Thank you again for filling in for me last week. My gosh, I got a lot to live up to. I heard he cranked it last week. My Lord, Holy Spirit, help me bring the heat here. But it's getting around these people who love you unconditionally and they want you to win. They want you to win. Verse three, I thank God whom I serve as did my ancestors with a clear conscience as I remember you constantly in my prayers day and night. This is the kind of people we need is people that are praying for us, that are longing to see us. He's thanking God for Timothy. He's praying for Timothy. Verse four and 5, as I remember your tears, I long to see you that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, of faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother, Ununice, and now I am sure dwells in you as well. Does anybody in the room have a have a grandma or a mama that's probably going to get recorded in the Bible someday? Somebody in the house? I I know both my grandmas are going to be in the Bible. You know, the Bible that comes after this Bible up in heaven, you know, the story recap of every Maybe that's just my dream. That's my hope that it's up there. But my mama is definitely going to be in the Bible. >> Kim Serbin, come on somebody. Many of us here are in this room because someone in your life and your family was praying for you. >> Someone poured into you. Somebody blessed you. What a blessing in your life to have someone boldly going before the throne of God on your behalf. And what a blessing that you can be as a as a father, as a mother to go to the throne on behalf of your children or on behalf of your spiritual sons and daughters. You may not have children yourself, but but hey, you can have people in your life that you are contending for. And and just a complete side note, I think we need to get better at this as a church and as a people where we stop going to the Lord just to pray for ourselves. And maybe we start interceding on someone else's behalf. Something changes in your heart and life when you YOU'RE NOT JUST PRAYING FOR YOU. you begin to lift others up and it BEGINS TO BRING SO MUCH humility and gratitude into your life. Now, here's the thing, like you could be the one who starts the generational blessing in your family. Cuz here's the thing, like I you can't pray your friends and family into heaven, but we can storm the gates of hell with a water pistol >> and start praying the devil's hands off our kids. How beautiful it is when fathers and mothers are able to lead their children to the Lord. Not through coercion and forcing them to pray this prayer after me, but when they can make that decision freely. Like I I I remember when my daughters started coming to faith and then they would overhear Britney and I praying in our room and they would kind of come in and peek their heads in and they're like, "What's going on in here?" and they began to ask questions, their curiosity would perk up. Again, if you're living that life in the Lord, it should bring on curiosity of others around you. I read this verse a couple couple Sundays ago. A godly man leaves an inheritance for his children and children's children. Let me just encourage you. The greatest inheritance that you could ever leave behind is not money or business acumen or material possessions. The greatest inheritance that we can leave behind is a life fully devoted to Jesus. And we have to model this in front of our kids and in front of those that are around us. My dad mentioned this this past Sunday. I was trying to do the math. Am I am I a fifth generation believer, a sixth generation? going all the way back to my great great-grandfather. I don't even know. I just know I'm a third generation pastor. My dad was a pastor, still a pastor, and both of my grandfathers were pastors. And there's generational anointing that's on my life. But here's the thing, it only takes one generation to stop that. It only takes one generation to drop the baton and all of that stops. And the reverse is also the same. It only takes one generation to stand firm in the faith and begin to start that legacy for those around you. Psalm 22, one of my favorite verses, verse verse 30, posterity will serve him and future generations will be told about the Lord. But how can future generations know unless we tell them? My challenge to you, don't just be a Christian by label and let your kids run crazy. Your children are your first disciples. Guard and protect their faith. You are the one to share Jesus with your family. You are the one to share Jesus with your friends. Let it be evident within your life because it changes the trajectory of those that are around you. My greatest desire is not to pastor some big church. My greatest desire is to see Jesus face to face here. Well done, good and faithful servant, right after I see all of my children come to know Christ. That's the goal. And guess what? There's some days where I screw up, where I miss the mark. But we teach our kids in the process how to forgive, how to repent before Jesus. We don't teach our kids cancel culture. Oh, you screwed up. I'm cutting you off. It's not biblical. Verse six, 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. Fan into flame. It's a challenge to us and even in this series that we're starting, we're calling it fan into flame to take action with the blessing from God in your life. Take action right now. We've received blessings from the Lord. Yes, we've received salvation. We've received the Holy Spirit. But then many times we don't do anything with it. And we need to continue to fan that into flame. Paul says, "No, you need to fan into flame the gift of God that's in you, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gifts and callings from the Lord." Notice he's pushing Timothy to be proactive. He's saying, "Fan that into flame. Build that fire and passion within your life." I remember when when the snowstorms were hitting back in January and the power went out in our house. We we got an older house built in the in the 70s and so we've got a chimney and so I had already gotten a bunch of firewood and I'm I'm I'm building a fire and it was such a an interesting thing. If you you light a match to light the fire and you blow on that match, you fan that match and it's going to go out. But when I start to light some some other things together and I get some oxygen, I get a little bit of wind on it, it breathes the fire to get bigger and bigger. It it seems kind of counterintuitive, but when you begin to blow on the fire, it accelerates the fire. at church today. We My desire in this series, my desire in this teaching is that we would put some wind on the flame to bring it back to life. You may be here today and you feel like, man, where's the passion in my life? And I don't I don't know about you, but I I don't want to be someone who has to get around passionate people in order to find passion in Christ myself. It takes work to keep the fire of God alive in your life. It takes work. It takes effort. It may even cost you time, money, and saying no to some things. But I love that it says in verse 7, "For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and of self-control." So he's saying, "Don't let anything hold you back from reading your Bible. Don't let anything hold you back from spending time in prayer. Don't let anything hold you back from living this life for Jesus. Let nothing, DO NOT BE AFRAID. There's no reason to be afraid because God has given us this power. He's given us this grace. He's given us this love. And he's given you the ability to control yourself from falling into temptation and falling into sin. Don't let this fire die out. Again, this is why we pray. This is why we spend time with God. This is why we come together to worship, to cultivate the presence of God within our lives. We we stoke the fire of the spirit hot into flames in our lives. It's why we choose to direct our attention to the blessings of God with gratitude and not just focus on the negative. These are choices that we make. I'm not trying to catch a fire. I'm trying to build a fire. And and and many times we can hop around from church to church to church or this conference or that conference or this podcast or that speaker on YouTube and all the different things and we can go, "This isn't good enough. This isn't good enough. This isn't lighting my fire. Maybe you need to light the fire. Maybe that preacher was crushing it on that YouTube video you were watching. But you are the problem. We need to stop being a people that run around trying to get fire from other places and begin to fan into flame what God has placed within us. Can I get an amen? I know y'all are hungry, but are you hungry for the Lord today? [clears throat] Some of us have a fire pit of faith again because we've given our lives to Christ, but there's no flame. It's not burning. We're saved, but there's no passion. There's no power. And this is a funny analogy. I I don't know why the Lord showed me this, but too many Christians, they get baptized, and that's the beginning and the end of their faith. But let me just tell you, you can't fire up wet wood unless you get into the presence of God and fire gets called down from heaven like Elijah called it down onto the altar. It's in that continual pursuit of him that we see the fire fall in our lives. Some of the most onfire believers that I know, they're not tick- tock preachers or famous for their faith, but man, they've got calluses on their knees from coming before the Lord in prayer. Don't let fear make you think that you're the exception. Don't let me be a weakness. There's something about stepping up in boldness and beginning to say, "I'm going to live this and I'm going to live this out loud. I'm going to fan this into flame." Not fan the fear in our lives, the anxiety, the worry, the drama, the gossip, the stress, the sin. Those words do not describe the church. They describe the world. I pray that we would live so set apart that it might look weird to some people. Y'all are already a little weird. It's okay. >> That you would start praying for people in parking lots to get healed. That you'd start quoting scripture from memory every time something negative happens around you. that you would raise your family and your children in Christ rather than in fear. That you'd love Jesus more than you hate seed oils. Somebody, y'all know what I'm talking about. That you would fan into flame the white hot fire of God in your life. Does anybody else want that besides me? >> Like, like, don't you want a life that looks like a life with Jesus? >> Yes. that your life would look like a promise. LIKE WHY WHY ARE WE HERE IF NOT TO LIVE THIS out to look different from the world? We get to live a life that is full of blessing from God. But we have to choose to live this way. WE HAVE TO DECIDE EVERY SINGLE DAY. Second Timothy verse 8, therefore, I love this says,"Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace. which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages. DO NOT BE ASHAMED. HE SAID, "DON'T BE ASHAMED." AND WE CAN THINK LIKE, "I'M not ashamed of the gospel." I mean, I feel like every other song on the radio, Christian radio, is like, "I'm not ashamed," right? Of course, we know this. We hear this. Don't be ashamed of the gospel. But here's the thing. Shame can be what keeps many of us hostage when it comes to our faith. We may not say we're ashamed of the gospel, but we're ashamed of ourselves for not measuring up to the gospel. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, shame is the voice that tells us that we're unworthy. That you're tainted goods. You're not good enough. YOU'VE MADE TOO MANY MISTAKES. YOU don't know enough. Your past is still remembered and you're associated with sin. Shame tells you what you should be doing and then when you do it, it's not good enough. You should be doing this. Oh, you should be much further along in your faith. Why aren't you? Oh, you should be reading your Bible. Oh, you shouldn't be doing this. You shouldn't have said that. It's a lot of shoulds and shouldn't, right? Shame will make you sh all over yourself. Shame will put a cap of measurement upon your life that says you cannot do X because you're not measuring up or equaling to X. With shame, the goalpost is always moving. You think you get to the end zone and then realize you're 50 yards away. It's this constant battle within us of the shame of I'm never enough. Here's the thing. This is why the gospel is so counterintuitive. It's so countercultural because in our innate fleshly minds, we make everything into these equations that if this then that. We make these if this then that statements. If you do this, then you get that. If you act this way, then you deserve to be treated that way. If I do or say the right things, then I then I should get this outcome. You you should be here now. And since you're not, maybe you shouldn't even try. Y'all hear me today? You should be at this point, but you're not. So, just quit. Should sounds a lot like shame, but listen and go back to what Paul was saying. Paul is in prison. Let me just paint this picture for you. Paul is in prison. He's been in and out of jail multiple times. And everybody knows. Everyone knows. All of the other apostles and preachers and pastors and church members, everyone knows. And people are believing and starting to believe that maybe maybe Paul is doing something wrong. I'm not If you saw on the news tomorrow that I went to prison, you would assume that I did something wrong, right? You would assume, man, there must be something off. There must be something wrong with Paul that he keeps getting in prison and now he's going to be executed. He's a shame on the church. He's a black spot on what we're doing. He shouldn't be praising and worshiping so loud and so often. He's writing letters of correction when he should be apologizing for making the church look so bad. He's preaching on street corners and he's preaching to Gentiles when he should be preaching to Jews. And we begin to open up and see that all these people are turning away from him. And here's what's fun about this letter is Paul starts name dropping these guys that are turning away from him. We can if we jump down to to verse 15, he says, 'You are aware that all who are in Asia turned away from me. [clears throat] Among whom are, good luck pronouncing that folus and hermagines. Here we go. Paul's name dropping these people and he's going to do it a whole lot more in this letter, which is just so savage. He's letting Timothy know. He's He's letting him know, church, get this. People are ashamed of me and they're leaving me in droves. They're leaving me in droves. Why is it that when why is it when people shame us or we feel shame for our boldness or why is it that we feel shame for our journey with the Lord and we hear all these voices and we actually listen to them? Because in this moment, we need to recognize Paul has all these people that are saying, "Shame on you for doing this to us, for making it harder for us to share the gospel, for being in prison. Surely God is not with you because here you are in prison." Hear this today. So many times we play this game in our mind where we go, "This must this this bad thing is happening in my life right now. It must be that I've done something wrong in the Lord's eyes. But then we look at the life of Job and we realize it doesn't matter what you do, calamity can strike at any time. And Paul says again in verse 10, "And which now has been manifested through the appearing of our savior Christ Jesus who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher which is why I suffer as I do." Then I love this. It says, "But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me." Paul's clapping back. He's like, "All these people are ashamed of me, but I'm not afraid. All these people are coming against me, and they're leaving me, but I'm not ashamed. Do not be ashamed of me because I am not ashamed of the one who I suffer for. I'm not ashamed of the one who I'm laying my life down for. I'm not ashamed of this gospel. NO MATTER WHERE THE GOSPEL TAKES ME, whether it's into calamity, whether it's INTO DIFFICULT SEASONS, WHETHER IT'S INTO PRISON, I'M NOT GOING TO BE ASHAMED of it. I can make my bed in hell and God is with me. And this is the attitude. THIS IS THE FIGHT WE FIGHT in our faith. And we need to realize that this attitude only comes from BEING SO INTIMATELY CLOSE WITH Jesus that you do not care what anyone else thinks. Many times that's where shame begins is we care more about what other people think than the Lord. When you're so in tune with Jesus, you can hear his voice. You can hear his voice in your corner saying, "You got this. I've got you. Live it out, champion. You're crushing it. Yeah, you made a mistake. Guess what? That's why I'm here to forgive. Repent and come back to me. And let's keep fighting. Everyone else is coming against you. Everyone else wants to look at your life and pull all these things apart. They want to look at the zent on your face and not see the goodness of God and everything else that you're doing. He wants you to fight. Jesus wants you to fight for your faith. He wants you to fan into flame the gift that he's given you. He wants you to live boldly. He He wants you to say, "I'm never going to walk in shame again." This past week was really rough for me. If you can hear it in my voice again, pretty sure I had co got better. And of course, the moment that I get healthy, my wife gives me a honeydew list. >> Yeah, I know, right? Fix this, move that. Gave me a list of all these things. And then at the bottom of the list, it says, "Kill the hornets in the hornets nest on the deck." Anybody had to deal with hornets before? Wasps, bees, whatever you want to call it. Some of you may understand where the story is going. I get the spray. It's a foaming spray. Y'all know what I'm talking about. >> That thing, it hits the nest and it foams up and just kills everything inside of it. All right. Now, you have to have accuracy. I've dealt here's the I've dealt with several hornets nest on our deck. At least like 20 or 30 of them, but this one I hadn't dealt with in a while. And so, it had gotten pretty big. If you don't deal with the hornets in your life, it's just going to keep getting bigger. This is going to preach here in a second. All right, just follow me in the story. So, I go outside. I've got my hat on, hat on backwards. I've been sweating all day, so I did not have a shirt on. This was not smart. But at the end of the day, it didn't matter. I I spray the foam at this nest. It hits the nest, but it doesn't foam up all the way. And the hornets getting mad as hornets, right? And they're just buzzing off in different directions. And I'm not like I'm not scared. I'm not seeing them or anything. And so I'm like, "Okay, let me just give them a second to calm down." And
