1 Timothy 4:7-8 “ Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives’ tales. Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” Today's verse reminds us that we need to train for godliness. It is not something that we will just happen upon. We need to be intentional in our journey. We need to care more about our spiritual well being than we do about our physical well being. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Train for Godliness
1 Timothy 4:7-8 “ Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives’ tales. Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”
I just want to take a moment, before going into this verse, to tell you how much I am enjoying exploring the Bible. If you do not spend much time in the Bible, I would urge you to change that. Even if you just spend 5 minutes in God’s word, it would change you life. Currently I am not spending a ton of time in the Bible. In my class we go over several scriptures that support our lessons. I am doing these episodes each day, so I am in God’s word daily, however, the past two years I was doing the Bible podcast with Father Mike and I am not this year, so I am not in the Word as much as I have been in the past. However, I still find it so fascinating. There is so much wisdom and common sense in the Bible.
We tend to think, or at least I think the Bible is a bunch of stories that we can really learn a lot from. I forget that the letters to the people of that time, the ones from the early church fathers, are full of wisdom and are full of instructions for how to live our lives. They are instructing the early church and we can learn so much from them. I forget that we are not the only ones trying to figure out how to live a Godly life. I forget we are not the first people to encounter problems hearing God’s voice, following God’s ways. I so easily forget that there are generations upon generations of people who have been right where I am and they can shine a light onto my situation.
Sometimes I can think of the Bible as something I am supposed to read because that is what a “good Christian” does. I can think of it as just another task to get me one step closer to heaven. I can check off the box on my too do list of things I need to do in order to impress God. And yet I have times, like this morning when I remember how much I love to read God’s word, not for any other reason except that I love it. This morning I was looking for a scripture for this episode. I was looking at ones I had saved for another time. I looked up 1 Timothy 4:17 and decided to read the whole chapter. That is how I stumbled upon today’s scripture. Just in case you were wondering how I came up with the verses for the day, sometimes it is just random and other times it is from my prayer group or my class, or the scripture of the day.
I love today’s verse though and I had no idea it was even in the Bible. I can’t remember ever hearing it before. I love it because it is so easy to understand and so relatable. I love it because it points out something that we should all know and yet probably has never crossed our minds. Let me give you the verse again, “Have nothing to do with profane myths and old wives’ tales. Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” The first sentence is something that can be hard to do. It can be easy to get caught up in old wives’ tales and myths sometimes. Especially if those around us believe in them. It is a good reminder though that we should avoid them, have nothing to do with them. If we focus on old wives’ tales or myths we could get all caught up in superstition and that is not a good thing. It is best to avoid that and rely on the Word of God and what we know to be true instead.
The next line is great! It is something we don’t think about enough. It says, “Train yourself in godliness, for, while physical training is of some value, godliness is valuable in every way, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” Wow, isn’t that so good! It is easy to go about our days in this life forgetting that their is another life to come. It is easy to get caught up in the here and now. It is easy to think about what we want to do now, how we want to feel now, what we want to eat now and forget that we have another life, an eternal life, and that our here and now decisions will affect that life. Our next life will be much longer than this life. It may feel like this life is long, but eternity is longer, trust me. Yet, we focus so much more of our time on this life. We give in to our every whim and desire because “YOLO”, you only live once, right? Nope, there is another life and how you live this one matters.
I am not saying you can’t have fun in this life. I am not saying you shouldn’t strive to be happy in this life, you definitely should. I am saying, we should do as the verse tells us to do and we should train ourselves in godliness. Many of us participate in some sort of physical training. We try to take care of ourselves physically with what we eat and how we exercise. Even if we are not taking care of ourselves physically we are aware that we should and we are consciously choosing not to. Are you aware that you need to train yourself in Godliness? I am not sure it is something we think about. I am not sure it even crosses our mind. This is why I find this scripture so fascinating. It is such a simple concept. It even seems like it would be common sense and yet it seemed completely new to me. It seems like it is the first time I am hearing it.
Maybe it is not new to you. Maybe you are familiar with this verse, or this idea of training ourselves in Godliness. If so, that is awesome! I would love to hear from you on how you are training yourself in Godliness. How are you accomplishing this? For those of you, who like me, are hearing this either for the first time, or in a new light, how can you train achieve this, how can you train yourself in godliness? When I take a minute to think about it, what comes to my mind is to read the scriptures. When I am training physically, for a race for instance, I will read what others have done to prepare for the race and then I will decide how I want to train. It can be the same for godliness. I can read scripture and see how those who have come before me have trained. I can read about the Saints and how they trained, I can read about anyone else that has achieved what I want to achieve, godliness, holiness, intimate communion with the Father, and I can decide how I want to train.
The first step in changing anything is becoming aware you need to change. Reading this verse this morning has shown me that I need to change. I don’t need to change everything I am doing as some things I am already doing can be part of my training process. It is not so much that I need to change what I am doing as much as my outlook on it. I am now aware that training for godliness is a thing and is something I should be doing so I can set up a plan to do that. I can examine the things in my life, my priorities and make sure they are in the correct order. I can ask myself questions like, I am spending more time on my physical well being than my spiritual well being? Is this thing I want to do going to be good for me not only in this life but for my next life as well? I can stop and ask myself before I make big decisions, “Is this something my future self will thank me for?”
You may have other questions that come up for you when you think about training for godliness. I feel the prompting to mention that we don’t need to make a big to do list of all the things we need to do to train for godliness. It doesn’t have to be a lot of pressure to live up to certain expectations. I feel the point of this scripture is just to remind us or make us aware that our decisions and actions in this life matter. I think the point of it is just to bring an awareness into our lives so we aren’t just going on autopilot as that is so easy to do. Maybe just take a moment to evaluate your life and see if you are training for godliness and if not, what could you do start training. Start slow, maybe add one thing to your day that can help you grow closer to God. If you aren’t sure where you to start, you could start with adding scripture, or adding time to talk to God. It doesn’t matter where you start, it just matters that you start.
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless each person listening to this episode today. Lord, help us to train for godliness. Help us to care more about our spiritual well being than our physical well being. Help bring an awareness into our lives of where our priorities might need to be realigned. Help us put you first Lord! We love you and we are grateful for all you do for us! We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk Boldly with Jesus. I look forward to meeting you here again tomorrow. Remember Jesus loves you, and so do I. Have a blessed day!