Your Calling is to Proclaim the Word

Near the end of Paul’s life, he wrote the following words to Timothy:

As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Tim 4:5-8)

Don’t you want to be able to get to the end of your life and speak with such confidence? I’ve done all that the Lord has called me to do.

Be encouraged by the fact that you don’t have to meet a souls-saved quota. You have only to “fulfill your ministry” (verse 5). You’re free from comparing your ministry to others’. You’re free to simply trust God and obey his calling.

What is My Calling?

Still, that may leave you with the question of what your calling is. David Platt can answer you from Scripture: your calling is to proclaim the Word. The Word is able to make people wise for salvation (2 Tim 3:15), it is breathed out by God (2 Tim 3:16)… and it is therefore exactly what a dark world needs to hear. Platt elaborates:

Proclaiming this Word in this world will never be easy. On any level. But here’s the deal: whether it involves going to our neighbor next door, or to a nation on the other side of the world, or both… let’s speak this Word with a reckless abandon, doing all that God calls us to do in this world, knowing that it will be costly, but believing that it will be worth it. Or maybe better stated, knowing the he will be worth it.

Proclaiming the Word

While we cannot spell out the specifics of how you are to fulfill your ministry, we can give you a sure way not to fulfill your ministry: don’t proclaim the Word. If we were given the Word so “that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work,” then we can’t teach disciples from all nations to observe all that Jesus has commanded without it (2 Tim 3:16-17, Matt 28:20).

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You can hear David Platt’s entire sermon on 2 Timothy 3:10-4:8 by listening to the latest episode of the Radical Together Podcast. Additionally, you can use these message notes to follow along.