This post is adapted from a sermon I preached on Philippians 2:19–24 as part of a series through the book of Philippians. It has been lightly edited for reading, but it keeps the spoken style of the original.

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All right, Philippians chapter 2, verses 19 through 24. Let’s read this.

“I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, so that I too may be cheered by news of you. For I have no one like him, who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare. For they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ. But you know Timothy’s proven worth, how as a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel. I hope therefore to send him just as soon as I see how it will go with me”—and Paul’s in prison in Rome at the time; that’s the context—”and I trust in the Lord that shortly I myself will come.”

The immediate challenge I faced when reading this was to not just skip over it, because it seems like it’s just transitional material. Paul has just finished this big thing about humility and service, and he’s given us this example of Jesus and His life and what that means for how we’re supposed to behave, and all of this stuff. And now we have this. It’s a new section of the scripture. And so I can look at this and think it’s just fluff. He’s just using this to get to the next good stuff. Okay? That’s a failure on my part if I read it that way. If you read it that way, that’s a failure on your part. Because it seems like maybe there’s nothing to reflect on here. It seems like maybe there’s nothing of theological significance for us as a church, but there is. There is. I paused long on the scripture and read it over and over again, and there are some things to talk about here.

First, and pretty importantly, we get a glimpse of Paul’s trust and submission to God. He sets up this entire section with the little phrase, “I hope in the Lord.” Hope in the Lord. He wants to go do this; he has a plan. He wants to get out of prison in Rome, he wants to send Timothy, he wants to go with Timothy, he wants to do these things, and all of it is wrapped up in his hope in the Lord. Maybe God wants to do something different than what Paul wants. And when he hopes in the Lord, it’s okay, because his hope is in the Lord. Maybe the only way for Paul to send Timothy and for Paul to go himself is to really lay his plans out in front of God. Either way, there is this expressed trust that Paul has in God and who God is.

And that makes me question my perspective. It makes me question my trust in God. It makes me question how I handle my plans and my hopes and my dreams, because I have those things. I have plans, I have hopes, I have dreams, and how do those connect to God? Am I submitting those to God? I have to believe that if I am consistently serving God and seeking God—I’m praying, I’m reading the Bible, I’m going to church—the Holy Spirit will place things in your heart and in your mind for you to pursue. I have to believe that. That’s scriptural. I also know it’s scriptural that a man’s heart is full of deceit. And so some of the things that you might want and desire are not of God. Right? And then there’s a bunch of stuff in between, where maybe God doesn’t really care what we do; He just wants us to serve Him while we do it. And all of those things are true at the exact same time.

Either way, are we submitting our lives to God? Are we hoping in Him? Are we hoping in Him? Do we make it a practice to submit ourselves and everything we are pursuing to God? Maybe what we are pursuing doesn’t fit God’s plan. Maybe it’s the wrong timing. Maybe the only way we get to where we want is to submit it to God and to hope in Him, even though it doesn’t make any sense. “God, I think you’ve called me here. How am I going to get there?” You hope in God. And you’re happy with whatever happens, so long as you are following God’s will and serving Him—even in the waiting, even when it seems like your dreams are fading away. I hope in the Lord.

In Paul’s own life, we see this hope unfold in an interesting way in his letters and in the book of Acts. He clearly has designs and plans for his life. He wants to meet people, he wants to go places, he wants to go back to this church, he wants to go plant a church here, he wants to go to Spain, he wants to go back to Ephesus, right? He wants to do all these things, and he plans for it. He gathers support for it, right? He goes to this church, that church, and asks for money. “Do you have any money? Do you have food? Do you know somebody who can transport me here?” Right? So he’s planning. He’s using his wisdom; he’s using his ability. But at the end of the day, it’s his hope in the Lord that all of this stuff is funneled into.

It’s the same thing for our lives. You will have dreams from God, you will have ideas from God, you will make logical plans based on wisdom, based on information. Even if you don’t hear an audible voice of God, even if you don’t have some sort of clear picture of what God wants you to do, you’re going to try your best to do the right thing, the smart thing, the intelligent thing. And all of that is funneled into your hope and trust in the Lord. Are you submitting yourself to God? Do we do that? Right? Submit to Him.

Second, we can draw attention to who Paul is sending. He’s sending Timothy. Timothy. We see him in Acts. He has two books of the Bible named after him. What does Paul say about Timothy outside the book of Philippians? What do we know about Timothy? I think there’s a lot we could break down, but the thing that stood out to me—because it’s also connected to this father-son connection for Paul—is that when you look at Timothy’s life and go back to the book of Acts, Paul finds him in a place being raised by two Christian women. He has a father, but they don’t really talk about the father, because his father is a Gentile and maybe not a believer, but his mother and his grandmother are. And so he is raised by two faithful women, his grandmother and his mother. Bonus points if you can name them. Lois and Eunice, the grandmother and mother of Timothy. Right? And they raise Timothy. And in 2 Timothy, Paul mentions their names, which is a pretty big deal. They’re mentioned, basically saying, don’t forget what your grandmother and mother did for you. Part of who Timothy is as a man of God—his anointing, his calling, his steadfastness, his faithfulness—is found in the faithfulness of his grandmother and mother teaching him the right way to do things, the right way to follow God, even though we have no idea what his father believed. They were faithful.

Moms, you are divinely appointed to raise up godly children. It is your unique calling, it is your unique position, it is your anointing. Before you do anything else for the church, as a mother, your calling is to your children. And listen, I know it’s a team effort—moms and dads both. We’ll get to dads in a second. But we all know who spends the most time with children at their most fundamental level. It’s moms. It’s women. It’s women who take care of children. It’s women who mostly teach children when they’re younger. Moms and women have a divine calling to raise up Timothys—people who are ready to serve God, no matter the context they are in. We don’t know Timothy’s context. We just know that his dad perhaps was not a believer. And that’s a very complex situation to grow up in, and yet Timothy serves. Serves. You have a holy obligation to raise up men and women who love God. It’s not easy, but it is a calling and an anointing on your life that supersedes anything else we might do in ministry.

Next—and it’s connected to what we just talked about—Paul expresses his belief in Timothy, in particular a belief that he will have the correct attitude in his dealings with the Philippian church. Right? He trusts Timothy is going to do the right thing. Paul trusts that Timothy is essentially going to mirror who Paul is to the Philippian church. Timothy is an extension of who Paul is. Paul is his spiritual father.

And ultimately—and this is something I get more and more aware of every single day—as a father, your children are an extension of you. They are an extension of you. There’s a sense in ancient cultures and Middle Eastern cultures that we sometimes miss in modern Western society. In ancient cultures and in Middle Eastern cultures, sometimes the father and son are legally and technically indistinguishable from one another. They’re the same. So when a son shows up in his father’s name, he has the authority of the father to do what the father can do. Does that make sense? And so, for example, we hear the term “Son of God,” and we know that’s Jesus, and we think, okay, Son of God. Well, there’s significance to that term, because when you show up in the name of your father, you also show up in his authority. So He’s the Son of God, meaning that He is the same as God. That’s the significance of that term.

Timothy is a spiritual son of Paul. He’s an extension of Paul, and he shows up with the same humility and heart of a servant that Paul has been preaching about. As a matter of fact, Paul uses this as another example to continue this talk. How he describes Timothy is basically the exact opposite of how the leaders in the church at Philippi are acting and behaving. So Timothy is this example of how you should be doing things, and Paul brings that out. Timothy walks out his salvation in a way that mirrors Paul, and because of that, Paul has extreme confidence that when Timothy arrives, he’s going to express the things that need to be expressed. He’s going to lead the way things need to be led, as opposed to others.

The challenge here—between thinking about Timothy and his mom and his grandmother, and thinking about Paul’s spiritual fatherhood of Timothy—is that there is a challenge for both biological parents and spiritual parents to produce Timothys. Or Timothy-ettas, whatever, if you’re a girl. Right. My family legitimately did this joke. They took my grandfather’s name and just added “etta” to the end of it for my mom. Mom and Grandma, if you listen to this, just laugh about it. It’s okay.

Anyway, there’s a challenge. There’s a challenge for spiritual fatherhood, biological fatherhood, spiritual motherhood, biological motherhood. Are we pouring into the next generation? Are we being intentional? My wife talks about being intentional all the time. I’m very proud of her for doing that. I know many of you have the exact same mindset. Are we being intentional? Now, that’s not a guarantee. Right? There’s that proverb that says—I’m not going to do the exact translation—if you raise up a child in the ways of the Lord, they won’t forget it. Right? That’s not a promise. That’s a principle, okay? It’s not a prophecy. But it is a good principle. Are we doing it? Are we doing it?

Finally, Timothy was qualified. Everybody say “qualified.” He was qualified by testimony and experience to do what Paul was calling him to do. In other words, his character had been proven. Over time, he had proven himself to Paul and to others in the church world as somebody who could get the job done, somebody who was going to do the right thing, somebody who was dedicated to the gospel and only the gospel—not this or that, these little issues that crop up here and there. Paul is confident enough to send Timothy to do important work based on experience, in community, and over time.

We get things out of order sometimes. We rush things. And we can get to a place where, because of passion and even because of necessity, we throw prudence aside. What do I mean by that? Well, we know God can use anyone. We know that, right? We believe God can use anyone. If you are saved, whether you have been saved a hundred years or one day, you have access to be used in the kingdom of heaven. Right? You have access to the Holy Spirit. You have access to the fruit of the Spirit. You have access to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Now, your gifts might be different from somebody else’s, but being used in the kingdom of heaven, though it might look different for each person, is possible for every person. It’s democratized. It’s democratized. Everybody can be used, really based solely on your willingness to say yes to God and your obedience. That’s an astounding and beautiful thing in a church, I think.

Here’s the problem: there’s still order. And while somebody can be used immediately, it might not be appropriate for them to teach a Sunday school class if they’ve only been saved a week. Does that make sense? We’ve got to understand that Paul, in several places, including this one, lays out qualifications and wisdom for somebody to serve in particular roles and leadership positions in churches—and above and beyond that, just to do certain important work in the church. And there’s no way to ignore them. He talks about them several times in 1 Timothy and in Titus. We see in Acts, interestingly enough, when the disciples are gathering and they have a problem, they’re figuring out who they’re going to use to go do this important thing of taking care of the widows, right? They do it based on time and based on character and based on integrity—people who were reputable in character. So whether you’re talking about eldership, deacons, bishops, all the nomenclature, or even people just going out and doing ministry, there is order and pragmatism involved. Right?

As a matter of fact, also in Timothy, we have this little phrase that says, “Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands.” And that’s not talking about when we lay hands on people to pray for them. That’s talking about the act we see several times in the book of Acts, where a church would gather around Paul or Barnabas, or Paul and Silas, lay hands on them, and send them out. So when it says that, it’s saying: before you send somebody out, don’t be hasty in that process. You’ve got to know somebody. That has to be done in community and over time.

These qualifications aren’t complex. In fact, I would say they are all rather common sense; they’re pragmatic. And Timothy has proven himself over time, in a congregation, in a community setting, so that Paul and others know that he is trustworthy—his character aligns with the calling he’s been given. This is wisdom. This is common sense. There’s a tempering here of the passion that we see.

A few years ago, during one of my ADHD-fueled fixations, I got into this show on the History Channel, Forged in Fire. They make knives, blades. Anyone know what I’m talking about? No one? Forged in Fire. Yes, it’s great. Love it. What I didn’t know when I watched it: there’s this interesting process as they’re making these blades. It looks like a blade at one point. They’re done. They’ve hammered it, they’ve cut it, they even start shaping it, and it’s probably even sharp. It could do some damage if you swung it at somebody. But it’s not really a blade capable and trustworthy to do what blades really should do until you quench it and temper it. It looks like a blade; it functions like a blade. It is a blade; it’s the same material as a finished blade. But it’s not ready for work until you take that hot blade and quench it in water or oil, or sometimes sand. And then you cool it down and you repeat that process. And in that quenching and in that tempering, it becomes hardened. It becomes useful. It becomes something that’s not going to shatter or bend or break; it’s going to hold its edge longer. It was a blade before, but it wasn’t ready for work.

In the same way, we have to practice patience and wisdom when we raise up leaders. When we raise up our own children, we’ve got to recognize, even with them, that they might not be ready for certain responsibilities, and we’ve got to get over our own arrogance of thinking, “Oh, they’re definitely ready. They’ve got to do this,” because we think, right, they’ve got to have the best, we’ve got to push them to do this. Sometimes you just have to step back and let God do the work of discipleship that you’ve started.

I’ve seen it too many times in churches—all kinds of churches. I grew up in a large church. I’ve been around small churches, I’ve worked in small churches, and I have seen this over and over again. I’ve seen it in Christian organizations, at Lee University, in my experience. What happens is that a church gets desperate. A new family comes in, right? And they are energetic, they seem well-adjusted, they seem bright. And you want to use families to serve in a church, and you definitely do, right? You want to involve families if they want to be involved. But what happens sometimes, out of desperation—because a small church is so excited—is they give these responsibilities to people they just met. And a week goes by, two weeks go by, a month goes by, even a year goes by, and something happens, and you realize they were not ready for that. They didn’t have the spiritual backing to be leading a small group. They didn’t have the spiritual organization or understanding of scripture to be leading this discipleship group or this Sunday school class or whatever it might be. And it ends up causing more damage than good—not just for the people they were leading or trying to help, but also for the couple themselves.

I’ve seen it with young people, being a youth pastor. They’ll go off to a retreat, right? And they come back and they are energized. They are on fire. They are great, they are good, but they have not been quenched and tempered, and they are not ready to do some things that God will eventually call them to do. You can’t force them into doing something. We have to be incredibly careful. Really, it’s two sides of the same coin. I don’t want to kill the energy of someone who might be a new convert, right? That’s one thing you don’t want to do. Harness it; use it. At the same time, you’ve got to recognize they are not ready. They’re not ready to lead other people. Now, they might be ready to serve. They might be ready to open a door, they might be ready to greet, they might be ready to get donuts every morning, they might be ready to make coffee every morning, they might be ready to help clean up, they might be ready to do any number of things. And if they’re on fire for God and it is genuine, they will be excited about that opportunity, even though they might want to do more.

There is order and prudence described here with Timothy. Timothy was ready because of his experience in the community that saw him. He had been to the Philippian church before with Paul. He’d been around Paul and others for a long time. He was a young man at one point. Now he’s a little bit older—still much younger than Paul, but enough time had passed that he was known to be trustworthy.

Now, naturally, some people just aren’t going to want to wait. Like I said, they’re passionate, they’re energetic, they’re excited, they’re raring and ready to go. I have seen it, and it’s great. Find healthy and responsible ways to let that energy flow out without putting undue pressure on them or others by putting them in a position they don’t need to be in. It ends up hurting them. I’ve got a couple of people in my head right now, without naming names. I remember the passion and zeal they had when they first started coming to a church I was at. And because of misuse, because of life, because of all sorts of little things that happened, that passion burned up. It was not used. They were not tempered, they were not quenched, and they don’t serve God anymore. We’ve got to do a better job of taking care of that energy. We’ve got to do a better job in that discipleship process. Let people serve, but they might not serve in the exact position they want to be in. It can be frustrating to wait, but in the long run, waiting on God’s timing sets you up for success.

This goes back to Paul’s hoping in the Lord. “I hope in the Lord to come to you.” You could almost say, “I hope to serve in this way.” But you’re submitting yourself to God’s will first, and that timing might be different.

Almost finished. We live in this intersection. Okay, we trust in God. We believe God will help us. We believe God is going to honor us and bless us. We also know that if we trust in God, He’s going to lead us this direction or that direction, sometimes in directions we don’t want to go. But I still have these dreams. I still have these desires. Let me tell you something: in the intersection between all of those things, it’s still okay to hope and believe and have faith that God is going to do exactly what you want Him to do. There’s nothing wrong with that. In the grand scheme of God’s sovereignty, there’s nothing wrong with praying like Paul does here: “I trust in the Lord to do what I want Him to do.” Paul wants to come to the church. Paul wants to get out of jail and make his way back to them. And he says, “I hope in the Lord for this. I trust in the Lord that He will do this for me.” So in the grand scheme of God’s sovereignty, in the grand scheme of your submission, there is a place for you to fully hope and believe and have faith: “I’m praying for this, God, and I believe you will do it for me. I believe you’re going to let me have success in this job. I believe you’re going to lead me to the right relationship. I believe you’re going to do this for this church. I believe you’re going to do this, Lord. Lord, your will be done, but I believe your will is this.” Paul expresses that right here. There’s nothing wrong with it.

Believe for something. Dream for something. Pray for something. Pray for your family. Pray for lost loved ones. Pray for a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit. Pray for a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit in this church. Pray for us to find a building that we don’t deserve, but we get it anyway. Pray for something big and believe that God is faithful to do it. Because He will. He will. Are we submitting, and are we trusting in the Lord—in our discipleship, in our dreams, in our vision for our lives, in the way we raise our children? Believe, and submit it to God.

And all of this just from transitory material that Paul is using to get us to the next part. Isn’t the Word of God great? It’s great. It’s great. Maybe one day we’ll do a series of sermons on all of the begats. We’ll find some preaching material in the begats. If you don’t know what that is, there are several places in Chronicles and in Genesis where it’s “so-and-so begat so-and-so, and so-and-so begat so-and-so.” And you might think there’s nothing there, but it’s God’s Word, and there’s something there.

Trust in God this morning. I don’t know what God has placed in your heart and in your mind. Maybe you’ve been too busy with life and just trying to survive. You’ve given no thought to what God wants for your life. You’re just trying your best. That’s okay too. Trust in God in that. But for some of you in here, I know God has placed things in your heart and in your mind. He’s given you visions for your future. Believe and trust today that He’ll do it. That He’s faithful. He will.

Can we pray together?

Heavenly Father, you are good and you are great. And Lord, first and foremost, I pray that we would have our hope in you. Let our hope be in you. Don’t let my hope be in my material and physical circumstances alone. Let my hope be in you, so that when I’m standing at a crossroads, I’m okay. When I’m standing at a funeral home, I’m okay. When I’m in the hospital room and I see my dad on the gurney, I’m okay. Because my hope is in you—not just in what I see, and not just in what I experience, but in who you are, in your might, in your majesty. Let us be a church that hopes in you in such powerful ways that we are never overcome by any trial or tribulation, Lord, but we thrive in our hope in you, Lord.

Lord, I pray that as biological fathers and mothers and spiritual fathers and mothers in this house, we would be faithful in producing followers of you, Lord. I pray that you would anoint us for it, give us the gifts for it, give us the patience for it, give us the grace for it. And Holy Spirit, I pray that you would step into our meager efforts and multiply the impact we have on our children’s lives, so that when they reach a certain age, they are ready and on fire to be used by you, Lord. And Lord, I pray that as we walk through this life and walk through this as a church, we would responsibly take the energy and the fire and the passion of others and properly place them where they will grow and become more and more mature and more and more ready to do your work. And at the end of the day, all of it for your glory and for your honor. This is your church. We are your people.

And so, Holy Spirit, I pray right now that you would anoint us for the task. Anoint every family and every person in this church. Anoint them in the name of Jesus with your Holy Spirit. Give them an abundance of the fruit of the Spirit that makes a distinction in their everyday lives, Lord. Give them the gifts of the Holy Spirit that serve your church and serve your purpose. Let people prophesy. Let people be given wisdom and understanding. Let people be hospitable. Let people give. Blessed. Blessed in every way possible. Blessed physically. Blessed spiritually. Blessed mentally. Blessed financially. Blessed socially, Lord. Bless us in ways that we could not reproduce on our own. And let every blessing be a sign of your glory. Let every blessing be a moment that we can praise you for, Lord. Let every blessing be a sign of your greatness and your goodness, not just to us, but to the world, God. We love you, Lord. You are good and you are great. And we all said together, Amen.