There are many things in life that we do not control at all. There are other things in life that we have some control and influence on. However, there are very few things that we have total control over and one of them is being faithful. We control our faithfulness to God, but we do not control anyone else’s faithfulness to God. We control our faithfulness to our spouse and/or family, but we do not control their faithfulness to us. We control our faithfulness to God’s Word in our life, but we do not control anyone else being faithful to the truth of God’s Word. We control our faithfulness to God’s house and worship which does allow us to influence our church being faithful to God and His Word, but we do not control that completely. We do not control our government, but we do control our role in and influence on government and government servants. We do not control other people even though some people desperately try to do so. However, we do control our influence on them from our actions, words, and behaviors; but we do not control how they choose to benefit from our influence. We do not control the choices of others in any part of life, including following God in their life, but we do fully control how we follow God in order to be a godly witness and testimony to them in their life. We not only choose to trust in Jesus as our Saviour, but we also choose to follow Him as His disciple and to be faithful to Him in our lives. We do not have the capacity to choose to be perfect and live perfectly this side of Heaven because our flesh is constantly messing the potential for that up for us. We do, however, have full control over our choices regarding sin. We can continue living in the mess our flesh has made in sinning or confess it and turn away from it and seek to be faithful to God once again because of His grace and mercy. Being a true disciple of Christ is about being faithful to the Lord in our lives. Being an effective discipler in the lives of others will help them grow in their faithfulness to the Lord, and we accomplish this by being faithful to the Lord in our own life first. We cannot effectively help others do in their life what we are not doing in our own life. Today we are beginning a journey of study in the books that God had Paul pen to Timothy. These two epistles in the New Testament are all about continuing. They are home to our ministry theme and theme verse for this year. I pray you will join me in this journey to continue.