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(upbeat music) - Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to
invite you to one of our weekend services. Visit us online at saddleback.

com for locations and service times in your area. Please visit us this weekend.
- I'm glad you're here with us for the last day looking at First Timothy,
chapter six, day five, getting through the whole book today.

As we look at these last few verses, we're going to look at verses 20 and 21 today.
We're going to let them be a reminder to us of all that we've learned in the book
of First Timothy about how to live a motivated life of faith. I want to just go
back through these chapters of this book, using these verses as a jumping off
place, just to remind ourselves of what God has done.

In verses 20 and 21, Paul ends this book by saying, "Timothy, guard what has
been entrusted to your care. "Turn away from godless chatter "and the opposing
ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, "which some have professed and in so
doing "have wandered from the faith. "Grace be with you.

" Those last four words, grace be with you. In many ways, that's a theme of this
book, grace. And looking back through First Timothy, it's how to live the life
of grace.

How do you live a motivated life of faith? Well, let's just walk back through
eight specific things that we have looked at in the book of First Timothy,
beginning in chapter one. Motivation for living and leading this life of faith.

Principle number one, I am motivated in the life of faith by how I start. And as
we started, we started with grace and peace. Grace and peace be to you.

And we reminded ourselves, those aren't just a greeting of Paul. Those are a
foundation in the life of Paul. And if I want to live a life of faith, I need to
have God's grace and God's peace in my life and recognize that they are there on
a daily basis.

If you've gone through this book and you've not yet begun a faith relationship
with Jesus Christ because of his grace, that is his grace, his gift, he's given
to you. You don't yet have peace with God in your heart. Start there, start
there.

Say, Jesus Christ, I want to begin a relationship with you right now. Sometimes
people wait until the very end, the last thing that we do in a study through a
book to say, I'm going to listen to it all and then maybe I'll make a faith
decision. If you thought about that earlier, right now is the time.

Cross the line and say to Jesus Christ, I want to begin a relationship with you.
Grace and peace. Thank you for your forgiveness bought on the cross, your
sacrifice for me.

And thank you for the life that you want to give me day to day. Show me how to
live your life, Jesus Christ. And then once you have that grace and peace, those
of you that are living that life right now, you know you have to hold onto it
each day of life.

You can focus on this world or you can focus on God. You can focus on your
worries and anxieties or you can focus on grace and peace. I am motivated by how
I start.

Do I start each day by thinking about the grace of God and the peace of God?
Number two in chapter one, I am motivated by how I think. And we talked about
focusing on living the main thing instead of arguing about the little things.

Verse five says, the goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart
and a good conscience and a sincere faith. In the church of Ephesus where
Timothy was serving, there were a lot of little arguments about little things.
We don't even know what they all were today.

That's how meaningless they really are. We don't even know what a lot of the
arguments were. Those didn't last, but love lasts.

The love that Timothy had for this church, it lasted. The love that Paul had for
Timothy in writing to him, it lasts. And the love that God has for us in Jesus
Christ, that lasts forever.

So you focus on living the main thing instead of arguing about the little
things. That's one of the keys to a motivated life of faith. I'm motivated,
number one, by how I start.

I'm motivated by how I think. Number three, I'm motivated by how I see myself.
And in chapter one, Paul reminds us that I must never forget where I came from.

He talks about himself being the greatest of all sinners, but also a sinner
saved by grace. That's who I am. And that is a great sorrow in my life, that
there has been sin in my life, because I know sin hurts the heart of God.

But it's also a great truth in my life, that I am a sinner. But it's also a
great joy in my life, because it doesn't end there. I am a sinner saved by
grace.

Now, the joy comes not from me and what I've done to make myself right with God.
The joy comes from God and what he's done to restore the relationship that I
have with him. I'm motivated by how I see myself.

If I see myself as someone having to make myself right before God, pull myself
up by my own spiritual bootstraps, I am never going to live a life of faith
motivated. I'm always going to be worn out or filled with arrogance and pride, one
of those two things. How do you see yourself?

Do you see yourself as a sinner saved by grace? Not just one half of that, but
both halves, kept in balance, a sinner, but saved by grace. Then we go on to
chapter two.

And chapter two has a fourth part of being, of living this motivated life of
faith. We are motivated by how we worship. And this chapter talked about keeping
the focus on Christ in worship.

Personally, I keep the focus on Christ as I pray for everyone and the needs that
are around me. And as a body, I keep the focus on Christ as I ask the question,
am I trying to bring attention to me in worship, what I'm doing, how people see
me, what people think of me, or am I thinking about the attention being on God?
Where is it?

Motivated by how we worship. And then in chapter three, we talked about that
we're motivated by how we live, that we are to live a life of integrity before
God. And we looked at the leaders of the church and the way they were to live,
but reminded ourselves that that's a pattern for all of our lives.

If I think I'm going to live a life of faith, but I'm going to live opposite to that
life of faith in the way that I treat other people, the words that I say, the
things that I allow into my mind, the way that I handle my finances, if I think
that my character can go in a different direction than my faith, I am fooling
myself. I'm not going to live a life of faith that way. So I'm motivated by how I
live.

Chapter four, a sixth way of motivation, I'm motivated by how I believe. Let me
just go through. Chapter one, number one, motivated by how I start, motivated by
how I think, I'm motivated by how I see myself.

Chapter two, I'm motivated by how I worship. Chapter three, motivated by how I
live. Chapter four, motivated by how I believe.

I gotta focus on God's truth. Focus on training and truth instead of getting
caught up in false arguments. That steals the motivation of faith in my life.

I want to win the argument. I want to show that person that they were wrong, but
sometimes in letting that become my sole focus and not letting God's truth
continue to be poured into my life, I might even win the argument, but I lose
the battle of faith in my life. So I'm motivated by how I believe, focusing on
God's truth, realizing that God's truth is what feeds my faith.

Chapter five talked to us about the fact that we're motivated by how we relate.
And it focused on relationships and how we handle our relationships specifically
in the church. It's discouraging to your life of faith when your relationships
go bad, especially with other believers.

So we have to ask ourselves, what can I do to encourage a life of faith by
handling those relationships right? And Paul gave a lot of practical words of
advice in that chapter about how to handle our relationships right. Chapter six,
we see an eighth principle.

I am motivated by how I give. I focus on giving, not getting, on enjoying what
God has given, not getting more things to try to get more hope. And then I focus
on giving out of what God has given.

So those eight again, I am motivated by how I start. If I want to live a motivated
life of faith, number two, I'm motivated by how I think. Number three, I'm
motivated in a life of faith by how I see myself.

Number four, I'm motivated by how I worship. Number five, I'm motivated by how I
live, my character. Number six, I'm motivated by how I believe.

Number seven, I'm motivated by how I relate. And number eight, I'm motivated by
how I give. And there is a theme.

There is a theme that goes through all eight of these. And that is the theme of
focus. Is the focus on me or is the focus on God?

Am I living a life of pride or am I living a life of praise? If the focus is on
me, the motivation to live a life of faith is failing. If the focus is on God,
the motivation to live a life of faith, it is growing day by day.

If I'm living for me, then I'm just growing my pride. If I'm living for God, I'm
growing my praise for him. I want to live a life of faith.

I believe you do too. That's why you made it all the way to the end of our look
through the book of 1 Timothy. I want to pray for you and me both as we end this
look at 1 Timothy, asking God to help us to live out this life of faith by his
strength and power within us.

Would you join me in this prayer? Our Father, we know that by your grace and
peace, you have put into us by the love of Jesus Christ, a life of faith that we
can live out for you. And we don't want to live a bland life of faith.

We want to live a passionate, motivated life before you because of our love for
you. We want to live a life of faith that our family can see and our fellow
workers can see. They can see Jesus in us.

They can see Jesus that you're making a difference. Lord, if we've given up on
that life ever happening, I pray now that you would reignite that hope in our
lives. If we're struggling with that life that is happening, I pray that you'd
help us to recognize that we're part of the human race and we all struggle, but
help us to struggle our way to faith, to continue to pursue, to fight, to take
hold of, to not give up because God, you're never going to give up on us.

Thank you for the faith that you put into us. Help us to live it out by your
grace, by your power, for your glory, God. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. And I want to thank you, thank you for joining us for this study of 1
Timothy. You might want to go on from this to our study of 2 Timothy, or you might
want to join us for one of the other studies that we've done.

You can just go to drivetimedevotions. com, drivetimedevotions. com, one word,
drivetimedevotions.

com, and there you'll find all the studies that we've already done. You might
pick another one of those just to keep you growing in your life of faith. I am
so grateful for your love for God's word.

We'll see you for the next study.