Welcome back to Tabernacle Tidbits. Today, we are in 2 Timothy 1 and verse 16.
Paul's talking to Timothy. He's encouraging him to continue in the doctrine and practice and faith of the gospel that God has given to Timothy, and he's encouraging him in that way.
He's also letting him know about some of the difficulties and the hard struggles that Paul is currently going through.
And we learned yesterday in verse number 15, he said, You know that all those in the province of Asia have deserted me, including Phagellus and Hermogenes.
Then in verse number 16, he says, May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains.
And Onesiphorus was, his name actually means prophet bringer, basically someone that is a blessing. He is only mentioned in scripture in this one book in 2nd Timothy.
And the only thing that is expressed about him is that he often refreshed Paul and was not ashamed of his chains. And this is the kind of person that we want to be.
We want to be a refreshing person, and we want to be someone that is not ashamed of our friends, not ashamed of the difficult circumstances that they might be in. If you will, we don't care about the implications of being someone's friend.
We just want to be a friend, and to be an encouragement and a blessing to them. I love this word, refreshed.
This would be a word that would mean to provide relief from obligation, or trouble, to give someone a breathing space, to revive them, to refresh them.
And I loved, even in kind of the dictionary definition of this Greek word, someone that gives you a breathing space, someone that gives you relief from trouble. Now, Onesiphorus obviously couldn't remove Paul from his Roman jail cell.
That wasn't something that he was able to do. But when he was around Paul, he was a breath of fresh air, would be how we might describe that today.
We can choose in every single interaction that we have with other people, whether we are going to be a relief from trouble, if we're going to be a breath of fresh air, or if we kind of suck the life out of a room that we enter in.
Is it a pleasant thing to be in conversations with you? Are you someone that is consistently speaking well, encouraging, building others up?
Or are you always complaining, gossiping, always having something negative to say, always having something sad to say? If we are going to be like Onesiphorus, someone that Paul expressly mentioned, I want God to give him mercy. It's Elias.
It is grace. It is kindness, compassion. I want God to do amazing, great, good things to show his love to this person because he is a breath of fresh air.
Man, that's what I want to be in my life. You know, as a pastor, there can often be an expectation of like, oh man, I bet he's gonna tell me something that I'm doing wrong. But I don't just want to be someone that brings encouragement to do right.
I also just want to be a blessing to people.
That's why I want to always be asking how I can pray for people so that I can let people know that they are on my mind, that every time that I think about them, that I am asking for God to bless them, that I want to be someone that is thankful for
what they do and how they serve and what they say. And I want to be that breath of fresh air for other people because I know what a valuable thing that is in my life when people are a breath of fresh air to me.
So I think that would be a great spot to stop for today. The question is, are you a refreshment to others? Are you someone that brings joy and encouragement and relief to others through what you say, how you say it, when you say it?
Let's be those and may we, as we follow that, find mercy, compassion, the love of the Lord, and being a blessing to others. Thanks for tuning in tomorrow. Verse number 17.
