We have all heard the Paul’s words to Timothy, “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young.” We like that don’t we? Because Paul is saying that we can do things even when we are young, and if anyone has a problem with the fact we are college age or in our 20’s we can just point them to Paul’s words and make them quiet down.

But do you know the rest of that verse? The other half of 1 Timothy 4:12 reads... “but set an example for all believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity.” I was reading this the other day and I will admit, I had forgotten this part of the verse and it stopped me in my tracks. This seems to be a pretty tall order when you really think about it. Timothy was young, I do not know how young, but we can see from Paul’s 2 letters to Timothy, that Paul expected a lot out of him. And here he expects him to be an example to ALL of the believers, young and old alike. Reading this verse again really made me question whether I was modeling Paul’s words to Timothy in my own life. Are the words that I choose to speak an example to all believers, whether they are older, younger, mature, or immature? Is the way that I conduct myself an example? Is the love that I have for God and other people an example? Is the faith and trust that I have in God an example? Is the purity in my life an example? Or is there too much immaturity in those areas in my life? Even though I am young, I want to strive to be able to say to another person, “follow after me as I follow Christ” and be confident that they will see this example that Paul is talking about. What about you?

This weekend I was spending some time thinking about my life and I started to think about something that had been on my mind since the beginning of the semester. The thinking began in the form of a question, what is my focus? Since the beginning of the semester, I had noticed something in me that wasn’t quite right. And so I took some time to think through the things I had done and tried to figure out what that thing that wasn’t right was. As I went through that list, I began to notice that the focus of my life had shifted from serving God to serving myself. I hadn’t become this super worldly hedonist, but I realized that the motivation to do things had changed. it went from how can I serve God by doing this thing or what can I do to serve God where I’m at to trying to see how I can do things that I would enjoy or want or “needed” to get done.

There was a gradual change of my focus last semester from serving God to serving my own interests. The change is rarely quick and radical. It is usually a gradual change. It starts with little things that you do in your daily life. I know that it was a gradual change with me. I slowly began to skip reading the Bible or postponing my time to pray, justifying it by saying to myself, “I’ll do that later tonight when I have more time.” I skipped those things in favor of watching more TV or trying to beat the next level on Halo Reach on Heroic.

So, in light of my own discovery of my misguided focus, I would like to urge all readers of this blog to think about what your focus is on and make sure that focus is on God not on yourself.