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Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to invite you to
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com for locations and service times in your area. Please visit us this weekend.
Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I welcome you to day four of our look through chapter
one of First Timothy.

We're talking together about motivation for living and for leading in the life
of faith. And as we've begun to walk through this week, we've talked about how
you start with grace, mercy, and peace. You want motivation for living the life
of faith, you got to have grace, mercy, and peace in your daily life.

And then we took a look at the fact that you need to focus on living the main
thing instead of arguing about the little things. It's easy to get caught up in
little arguments, but you focus on living the main thing, doing the work of God.
That's key for a motivated life of faith.

A third thing that you and I need to do if we're going to live a life of faith
in a daily way, if we're going to sense the passion and motivation we need for
living that life of faith, is you need to never forget where you came from. You
want to live the life of faith today, never forget where you came from. Paul
didn't.

Listen to what he said in verse 12. "I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has given
me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me in his service. "
Never forget where you came from.

You thank God that he uses you. That's one of the ways that you never forget
where you came from. Do you do that throughout the day?

I find myself sometimes forgetting. I am grateful, and when I take the time to
remember, I remember that I'm grateful, but I don't take the moment, just the
moment that it would take to personally express that to God. In your mind, do
that right now.

Throughout the day, do that. God, thank you. Thank you that you consider me
faithful.

Thank you that you use me, that you make a difference through my life and other
people's lives. When I take the time to remember that God loves me and to thank
him, when I take the time to remember that God uses me and to thank him, it
gives me strength throughout the day, and I need strength throughout the day. I
would guess that you do too, throughout the day.

You thank God that he uses you, and then you do a second thing in remembering
where you came from. Well, let me put this in quotes, "even though. " Even
though what?

Well, for Paul it was this in verses 13 and 14. He writes, "God uses me," he
said in verse 12, and then in verse 13 he says, "even though I was once a
blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted
in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me
abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

" Never forget that God loves you even though. Never forget that you were shown
mercy. That's the third thing to never forget, never forgetting where you came
from.

Now, many of you remember the story of Paul. He was a blasphemer. He spoke out
against Christ.

He had grown up in the Jewish tradition. He was a strong leader in the Jewish
synagogue, and he spoke against Christ again and again and again, saying that it
was a lie that Jesus died on the cross. So Paul says, "I'm a blasphemer.

I told a lie about Christ. " He says, "I was a persecutor. " He worked hard to
stop churches from meeting.

He drug Christians out of their homes to persecute them for their faith. He
says, "I was a violent man," and he was. He was.

He participated in the death of the first martyr, Stephen. He wouldn't get his
own hands dirty, but he stood and watched and held the coats of everybody else
who were stoning him to death. He was a violent man.

And Paul writes, "Because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. " Now, as he writes
that, that's the truth of every person who does not know Christ. That's not an
excuse, ignorance and unbelief.

That is a fact of life. Now, you are responsible for your ignorance. You are
responsible for your unbelief.

It's not an excuse. You're responsible to get to know God. You're responsible to
look to God and decide to have faith in Him because He's drawing you.

So Paul's not making an excuse here. He's just saying, "This is what happens. I
ignored God because I was ignorant of God, and I chose to be ignorant.

I didn't believe in God because I chose not to believe in God. That's why I had
unbelief. " This brief testimony of Paul, he's just telling the truth of his
life.

I want you just to notice some things, just a little aside here about how he
tells this story of his life. Notice three things. First, he talks openly about
his sins.

Secondly, he doesn't glorify his sins. And third, he focuses on Jesus, on the
grace and mercy and faith and love. Those are the words that he uses.

The grace and mercy and faith and love that are in Jesus Christ. That's a great
way to tell the story. Talk openly about your sins.

Don't be a fake. Don't be a phony. Talk openly about what you were before you
came to know Christ.

And even as a child, you can talk openly about the fact that you were separated
from God, and you know that now. You didn't have a relationship with Him. But he
didn't glorify his sins.

He just said, "This is it. This is it. This is it.

" He would have had some stories to tell. Some stories about dragging people out
of houses. Some stories about standing there when Stephen was killed, but he
didn't tell those stories.

He was just honest about his sins without glorifying his sins. Because the third
thing is he wanted the focus to be on Jesus. Not on some glorified sin in his
life, but on the glorified Jesus who forgave the sin in his life.

So he focused on the grace and the mercy and the faith and the love that are in
Jesus Christ. That should be the focus of every testimony. Every testimony that
doesn't say more about Jesus than about you, there's something wrong with it
somewhere.

Never forget where you came from, Paul is saying. And in doing that, you thank
God that He uses you. You thank God that He uses you even though you have this
past.

You never forget that you were shown mercy. And the fourth thing you do is you
never forget that grace was poured out on you abundantly. God's grace has been
poured out on you.

Someone on our research team wrote this question. What exactly does grace mean?
I struggle with understanding and believing that it applies to me.

Even though God reaches out to me countless times per day, I still live in fear
that one day He'll run out of patience with me. Grace may apply to Paul, but how
could it apply to me? How do I know that He's not going to give up on me and
walk away?

That is a good question. That is an honest question. How do I know that I have
God's grace?

Because they have been poured out, not sought out. This grace, faith, and love
were poured out by God upon Paul. They weren't discovered in some way by Paul.

It wasn't something that He did, it is something that Christ did. They weren't
worked up by Paul, they were poured out by God. How do I know that I have God's
grace?

Trust. Trust. By trusting in what He's done, not in what I can do.

And then by seeing what He's doing in my life as a result of my trust in what
He's done. But it begins with that trust in what He's done. I trust in what He's
done, not in what I can do.

That's how I know God's grace is poured out in my life. It's a gift. And when
somebody says, "I want to give a gift to you," and you say yes to that gift,
that's when the moment happens.

That's when it's poured out. That's how I know. But I also know by seeing then
what God is doing in my life as a result in my trust in what He's done.

It's not what I'm doing. It's what He's done. It's what He's doing in my life
because of what He's done.

That is the great joy of living out His grace. So don't try to earn God's grace.
And if you look at your life and you feel like, "Wow, I see so many sins in my
life.

I see so many places in my life where I am not following Christ, where I have a
selfishness or a jealousy or a lust or an envy in my life. " Let me ask you
this. Do you also see the fruit of the Spirit?

Do you also see God's grace at work in your life where you're beginning to let
go of that jealousy or you're beginning to have a purity of heart or you're
beginning to love people that you never would have loved before? Look at those
as evidences of what God is doing in your life and you trust in Him and not in
you. Now, Paul's continuing to give his testimony of his life and in verses 15
to 16 he says, "Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. But
for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners,
Christ Jesus might display His unlimited patience as an example for those who
would believe on Him and receive eternal life. " Never forget.

Never forget to thank God that He uses you even though. Never forget that you
were shown mercy. Never forget that grace was poured out abundantly.

And never forget that you are a saved sinner. Paul writes here and he says,
"Christ came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. " I have
not to say with Paul, "I am the worst sinner.

" This is not a competition. I think every one of us, as we look in our own
hearts, we see the evil that's in our own hearts. We see how selfish we are.

We see how often we follow something in order to get what we want instead of in
order to follow what Christ wants in our lives. And because we see our own
hearts, we all look at ourselves and say, "No, I'm the worst. No, I'm the worst.

No, I'm the worst. " The truth of the matter is Jesus Christ came to die for the
worst of sinners. And it was for that very reason Paul says in verse 16 that you
were shown mercy, you the worst of sinners, me the worst of sinners, so that in
you and I Christ Jesus might display His unlimited patience as an example to
other people who would believe in Him.

Always remember one final thing. Always remember that you are an example of
God's patience. You're not an example of perfection.

You're an example of God's patience. You believe and receive, Paul says. You're
an example of God's patience so that others would believe and receive.

What does it mean to believe? Does it mean to have no doubts? No, it means that
I trust God, even with my doubts.

This is not an intellectual belief in facts. This is a willful belief in a
person. I trust you.

I'm going to follow you, Jesus Christ. Maybe you need to believe. Maybe you're
not sure, as we walk through this chapter, that you've ever had that kind of
experience that Paul talks about here, where he recognized that he was the worst
of sinners, that he needed God's grace, mercy, and peace.

Right now, I encourage you to believe and receive. Receive eternal life. That's
God's gift.

Believe by saying, "Jesus Christ, I trust you. I trust you to forgive me. I
trust you to lead me.

I trust you to show me the kind of life that you have for me, and I trust you to
empower me to live that kind of life. I've got a lot to learn, Jesus. There's a
lot of things I don't know, but I know that I'm trusting you right now.

I know that you love me, and I want to spend the rest of my life loving you.
Thank you for your gift of life, Jesus. In your name, I trust you.

Amen. " You've already prayed that kind of a prayer. You might right now in the
back of your mind want to pray a prayer saying, "Jesus, I thank you for your
gift of salvation.

" Tomorrow, we're going to look together to the last part of this chapter and
talk about how you and I can live out the life of faith in a motivating way to
other people.