As Timothy Network prepares to celebrate a 15th birthday this summer, what follows has a direct tie-in with this project’s formation in 2005. Curry and I, along with several others, were discipled, taught, and influenced by a brother who ministered at our church in Murfreesboro in the mid-1980s. You’ll hear the impact in Curry’s words, below.  For me, being on the receiving end of an intentional discipling relationship provided eventual impetus to start this ministry focused on making disciple makers.     M. Stroud

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During my early formative years, it was so hard to put myself in the picture of such exquisite love.  In fact, I did not.

I was conflicted because of misunderstanding who I was in God’s sight, even who our Heavenly Father was.  Couple that with a lack of spiritual insight, compounded by outright unbelief that God held me in esteem and loved me deeply in a personal, individual way.  And then there was a rebellious heart and soulish desire attracted by the pleasures of the world.  Even my everyday language betrayed the lack of spiritual wisdom and understanding of the deep love God had for me and mine.  But he pursued me, hemmed me in, surrounded me by believers and godly examples.  A signal health event at 44 years of age turned me in a different direction.

A preacher teaching that one could gain spiritual insight set me on a path that I pray (and I am confident of this) that I will never turn away from now.  Oh, to be able to redeem the former time. But that’s not what God sets before us normally; it is hard to go back and repair our life history, and he doesn’t ask us to.  He simply asks us to believe this great truth: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; allow me to draw you with my love and kindness.”  Jeremiah 31:3

He is the one who is my Redeemer.  I am not unique; he does that for all.  Mine was the life of “do’s and don’ts,” but he changed my perspective.  So now I seek better things, resting in his presence and allowing his Spirit to guide, teach, and comfort.  I rise each morning asking how I can please him, how I can give my life back to my Father, and how I can tell others that he eagerly desires fellowship with them.  Today I remind my heart that he drew me, he loved me, and his kind and loving hand is guiding me. I pray that you will know him in your most innermost being, that you are loved by an eternal Father.  Ask, seek, knock.