During my freshman, sophomore and junior years I had a great group of friends that I did life with. They became people that I was being shaped by and with. My life was going great, school was easy, social life was solid, and everything seemed like it was going well. And then in my senior year a party was busted, people turned on each other, decisions were made, things were said, and what I thought was the most solid thing in my life was instantly gone. People who were my friends, were no longer my friends. Community was shattered. Trust was gone. I felt like I was on the outside looking in, I felt discarded and left alone. I spent 6 months of my year lost, wandering what went wrong, and more importantly questioning if there was a future where goodness existed. Looking back, I had a moment of crisis where what I was building my life on got exposed. I had been building my life on friends, popularity, and selfish motives. My life seemingly fell apart when the what I was building my life on, suddenly was gone. I remember days of frustration, hopelessness, loneliness, self-questioning, and insecurity. I felt like I had been dropped off in the middle of the ocean to survive by dog paddling with no end in site.
The last 3 years has exposed the foundation that many of us in our culture have built our foundation on and many of us have realized that our foundation is weak and has been compromised. Most of us have been quick to try to stabilize our foundation by adding in”good” things. More investment into family. More making experiences with our families. More doing what we want to do, because you never know when you won’t be able to do it. Those things helped many of us survive, but they are beginning to show signs of cracking under the weight of post pandemic life.
Paul had lived through an incredible amount of change, persecution, and hardship. Paul knew what it was like to have your world swept. Paul also knew that Timothy was stepping into a season of life where he would be tested like never before. Paul didn’t start equipping Timothy in this moment, instead he reminded him of the training and learning that Timothy had already experienced. Paul reminded Timothy where his foundation really was and that he would need to cling to that in the days ahead.
2 Tim 3:10 But you, Timothy, certainly know what I teach, and how I live, and what my purpose in life is. You know my faith, my patience, my love, and my endurance. 11 You know how much persecution and suffering I have endured. You know all about how I was persecuted in Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra—but the Lord rescued me from all of it. 12 Yes, and everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. 13 But evil people and impostors will flourish. They will deceive others and will themselves be deceived.
14 But you must remain faithful to the things you have been taught. You know they are true, for you know you can trust those who taught you. 15 You have been taught the holy Scriptures from childhood, and they have given you the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. 17 God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.
If we read these verses through the lens of understanding discipleship, I think we can gain a renewed perspective of how to build our future on Truth that will stand the weight and pressure of 2022 culture and set us up to thrive. Paul explains to Timothy why he is ready for whatever is going to come next. Paul reminds Timothy that, he had not only learned knowledge from Paul, but that he had watched Paul live, respond to hardships, and endure persecution. Paul not only told Timothy Truth, he invited Timothy in to his life to show him how it looks to live it out. Paul is very specific with Timothy – you know my faith, my patience, my love, my endurance, my suffering, and my unfair treatment. Paul unveiled to Timothy the reality that not only was Timothy intellectually aware of Truth, but that he had the reinforcement of seeing it play out in someone’s life. Paul invited Timothy into his life, to walk with him, so that Timothy could experience what it would look like to build his life on the foundation of Truth that would not buckle under the pressure to loneliness, persecution, challenge.
To thrive in 2022, we must examine what we are building our foundation on. Many of us will discover that we have not built our foundation on things that can withstand the weight of insecurity, disagreement, inconvenience. Many of us will discover we have built our foundation on things that have allowed us to get by but not be sufficient to build the life that we want to live. Foundations of people’s lives are cracking and becoming compromised all around us and part of the solution is to begin building our lives on something more solid – the Truth that will never change, that will never be weak, that will never disappear. Some of us have come to that conclusion and like a good New Year’s resolution are committing to reading the Bible more, getting back to church, spending more time focusing on quiet time, but unconsciously have given it 30 days to make a difference so that we can move on to the next thing in our busy future plans. The reality is that building a strong foundation takes time and continuously needs to be reinforced. Paul spent years and years with Timothy, investing in him so that when it was time, Timothy would have the foundation built on Truth (not Paul). In our fast paced, quick fix culture this is not good news. Many people when faced with the reality of the time it will take to build a solid foundation will choose to return to a life of running from one self-motivated thing to the next.
Paul gives us a road map on how to thrive, but the reality is that many of us will not thrive in 2022, but if we want to thrive in 2023, 2024, and beyond we must start intentionally building our life on Truth, we must position ourselves to not only hear Truth from the Bible, but experience that Truth lived out through Christian community, being vulnerable with a trusted Christian friend/mentor, and submitting our plan to the possibility of God redirecting us. As we enter the next chapter of culture, we have reached a perilous moment where the foundation of what we have build our lives on is being exposed and we must be willing to humble ourselves to admit where we are at and then submit ourselves to the process of building our life on what will last and what matters.