The Word To Live By: 8-21-25
Phil Waggoner
Timothy, my son, I am giving you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies previously made about you, so that by them you may strongly engage in battle, having faith and a good conscience. 1 Timothy 1:18
The Word To Live By: The word, prophecies, there means predictions of the future. You have prophecies made about you. The promises of God are what God says your future can be by faith in Him. So many of us use our past to predict our future. Faith in the promises of God changes our future. The Bible is full of examples of men and women who started life at the bottom and ended up on top. Paul was involved in the execution, torture, and jailing of Christians before he became a Christian. His testimony was that of a clean conscience! ??? Where did that come from? King David was the youngest of eight sons. He was thought so little of that he wasn’t even invited to family dinners. His grandmother was Naomi, who wasn’t even a Hebrew with any entitlement to the blessing of God. They both ended up in pretty good shape. How about eleven of the twelve disciples? Their background and personalities weren’t exactly what you would predict to become world changers. Your past doesn’t matter to God. All you need to know about your past is summed up in Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” And Isaiah 65:17, “For behold, I create new heavens and new earth; and the former things will not be remembered or come to mind.” “Maybe God forgets my past, but I can’t seem to get past it.” Look what Paul said to Timothy about that. “Keeping with the prophecies, strongly engage in battle, having faith and a good conscience.” Any thought, any reminder of a past that goes against the promise of God for your life is a shot fired by the devil to stop the future of God for your life, which, according to Jesus, is life and life more abundantly. Proverbs 18:20 says, “From the fruit of his mouth a man’s stomach is satisfied; he is filled with the product of his lips.” If you are starving to death and there is a basket full of fresh, ripe fruit, and a basket of old, moldy, rotten fruit sitting in front of you, which one are you going to choose to put in your stomach? If your life isn’t where you want it to be and there’s a basket of old, moldy, rotten thoughts about your past, and a basket of fresh, powerful, everything pertaining to life and godliness thoughts in front of you, which one do you want to fill your life with?
Read through the Bible in a year: John 4:43-54; 1 Chronicles 17; Zechariah 6;
Read through the New Testament and Proverbs: Proverbs 21, Matthew 26:38-75, 1 Corinthians 8
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160