Plan to work on your godliness. This could mean deciding where and how to serve the church family. It could mean identifying a weakness you currently have and being careful and thoughtful about how you might improve in that area. We all need to pursue the things of God intentionally and repeatedly. Make every effort to be more like Jesus.
When you are trying to change some kind of bad habit or mindset, working on what to stop doing is only part of the story. You need to replace the bad habit with something else. That is why you often find former smokers becoming committed runners. It’s not just about what to stop; it is also about what to start.
Paul uses this logic when he speaks to Timothy about the dangers of greed. While being aware of the problem and fleeing the love of money is important (and see the last blog post on this here), Timothy was also urged to replace this love with something else. We read this in 1 Timothy 6:
But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.                                                  —1 Timothy 6:11 ESV
The instruction here is not only to flee greed, but to pursue the things of God. We all are made to have desires; Paul is not telling Timothy to just stop desiring things. No, he is to desire to serve God and not money. He is to serve one master and not another.
Just as the word “flee” is an active, continuous verb here, so is the word “pursue”. The idea is that active effort be taken to pursue the things of God. And not just once, a decision to follow Jesus made sometime in the past. These kinds of active decisions are required regularly and often. Greed is a real continuous danger and neglecting the things of God is also an ongoing problem for us.
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Seasoned pastor, watch your doctrine and life, and work hard to be a faithful finisher who also teaches younger pastors how to be faithful finishers. Younger pastor, watch your doctrine and life. Focus on what it will take to be faithful ministers with character and who finish well because you purpose to be faithful rather than fast and famous.

It doesn’t happen often, but there are times when I am out to dinner with my wife, and I am absolutely blown away by the meal we are eating. The dish is masterfully composed and beautifully presented. The textures are varied, and the flavors are distinct yet combined to provide a complex, satisfying mouthfeel.
With each bite, I try to taste every flavor individually and in combination, trying to reverse-engineer the dish. In my mind, the process is similar to Russell Crowe’s character cracking codes in “A Beautiful Mind.” It’s probably not that impressive, but, in the moment, I am trying to take a broad field of potential data and determine how a dish came together so that I can replicate it in my own kitchen.
I love to cook, and this reverse engineering process allows me to test the limits of my skill and knowledge in the kitchen. Sometimes I can talk to the chef and get an idea about some of their process. Other times, I just try to recreate that dish through trial and error. What was added? What was left out? How long and with what method was it cooked in order for these simple ingredients to meld into such majestic, complex flavors?
Ultimately the question I am seeking to answer is: Can I, based on the ingredients that I know are present and the ones that I taste (or think I taste), reproduce this dish in my own home?
Long Obedience
I do that same work of reverse engineering when I consider the lives of men who are fathers in the faith, men who have finished the race well. Their lives stand out against the backdrop of stories of Christians who had the appearance of faithful, effective gospel witness but instead crash-landed in scandal. I look at those examples of faithfulness with the same sorts of questions that I have when I encounter a masterfully composed meal.
How did they minister with such enduring faithfulness? How did they preach and write with such a timely and timeless voice? What pursuits and practices did they have that grounded them in a life of faithfulness to Jesus?
A few years ago, I was at a gathering of church planters and aspiring church planters. As I observed the conversations and listened to the presentations, there was something that stood out to me about the way we talk about church planting.
We spend a lot of time talking about starting and what ingredients need to be present to start well. However, we don’t spend as much time talking about what it will take to finish well. We spend a lot of time weighing out how to expand our platform and increase our fame, but not as much about what it will take to have a long life of faithfulness as a minister.
Our problem is that too often, we assume that anything worthwhile can and must be acquired or achieved quickly and, more often than not, in our own strength. But the Christian life looks more like what Eugene Peterson called “a long obedience in the same direction.” We think fast and famous, but the way of kingdom discipleship is long obedience and a desire to be a faithful finisher.
The Ingredients of a Faithful Finisher
A few years ago, I was scheduled to preach Paul’s testimony in 2 Timothy 4.
For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time for my departure is close. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. There is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but to all those who have loved his appearing (2 Tim. 4:6–8, CSB).
When I read the text, I was a little overwhelmed by trying to preach it as a young man. Those are finishing words. I was very early in my pastoral work, just a few steps into my long obedience. But then it dawned on me that I needed to apply the same kind of reverse-engineering process that I do over a delicious meal and ask, “What ingredients went into a life and ministry that ended in a faithful finish when so many shipwreck their own faith and the faith of others through failure?”
Fortunately, as you examine Paul’s writings and life, you can observe some of the ingredients that led to that incredible testimony.
Paul Never Got Over the Gospel
For Paul, his course was set on the day he encountered Jesus on that road to Damascus. In a flash, he went from “alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds” (Col. 1:21) to “chosen instrument” of Christ, called to carry his name “before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15).
That moment of transformation was so decisive for him that later in his life, he recounts to Timothy,
I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an arrogant man. But I received mercy because I acted out of ignorance in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. This saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them. But I received mercy for this reason, so that in me, the worst of them, Christ Jesus might demonstrate his extraordinary patience as an example to those who would believe in him for eternal life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. (1 Tim. 1:13–17, CSB)
Throughout his letters, Paul gives us beautiful gospel vistas meant to awaken that kind of gratitude and worship in our souls. This gospel wasn’t just the content of theological reflection or communication for him. The gospel was what fueled his worship and grounded all his ministry.
When you are consistently reflecting on God’s grace toward you, there is no room for arrogance and pride. When you are consistently reflecting on the grace of God toward you, you can pastor even in the toughest of times with a sense that the grace of God can powerfully transform even this hard situation or hardened person. When you are consistently reflecting on this gospel, you feel the freedom to admit weakness and confess sin because you know the depths of the riches of God’s mercy. When you are consistently reflecting on the grace of God toward you, you can walk with patience, gentleness, and humility with other sinners around you because you are always aware of God’s “extraordinary patience” and mercy toward you at your worst.
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However great the benefits of reading the scriptures in schools have been, I cannot help remarking, that these benefits might be much greater, did schoolmasters take more pains to explain them to their scholars. Did they demonstrate the divine original of the Bible from the purity, consistency, and benevolence of its doctrines and precepts—did they explain the meaning of the Levitical institutions, and show their application to the numerous and successive gospel dispensations—did they inform their pupils that the gross and abominable vices of the Jews were recorded only as proofs of the depravity of human nature, and of the insufficiency of the law, to produce moral virtue and thereby to establish the necessity and perfection of the gospel system—and above all, did they often enforce the discourses of our Savior, as the best rule of life, and the surest guide to happiness, how great would be the influence of our schools upon the order and prosperity of our country! 

Introduction
Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) is rarely remembered as an American founder; his writings are ill-read. But like most of his contemporaries, he lived a rich life of correspondence. One letter is produced below. Thus far at American Reformer we have only republished seventeenth-and-eighteenth-century sermons as part of our resourcement project. Rush’s letter is the first to diversify our genre but will not be the last.
Rush graduated Princeton and then attended medical school at Edinburgh becoming fluent in several languages galivanting around Europe. Upon his return, he practiced medicine in Philadelphia and taught chemistry at what would be come University of Pennsylvania, and authored textbooks on multiple subjects. An active member of the Sons of Liberty, he was a signatory to the Declaration of Independence and a delegate to Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Convention. He served as a field surgeon with the Philadelphia militia. After the war he stayed busy, founding, among other things, the Pennsylvania Bible Society, and was heavily involved with the American Sunday School Union. Public morality and education were central to his work.
Rush’s position on education and Christianity was like Noah Webster’s (1758-1843) who famously recorded in his Dictionary, “Education is useless without the Bible. The Bible was America’s basic textbook in all fields. God’s Word, contained in the Bible, has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct.” (See also Webster’s Value of the Bible and Excellence of the Christian Religion (1834)). Both Rush and Webster can, by all accounts, be rightly called Christian nationalists. Webster was a staunch Calvinist and Rush was a microcosm of all American Protestant denominations it seems. Both men saw education, its quality generally and use of the Bible particularly, as invariably dictating America’s future. They were right, on both counts.
In 1791, Rush wrote to the Congregationalist clergyman, Jeremy Belknap (1744-1798), presenting his case for why the Bible should be central to American curriculum. Education was socially and politically essential in a republic, Rush argued elsewhere. And if it was to be good education, then it must be religious. If it was to be religious then it must be true, that is, Christian. Rush’s arguments below are as potent today as they were then. Has his view not been demonstrated by converse occurrences? (More commentary on the substance of the letter will be provided in the Forum section.)

Letter
Dear Sir,
It is now several months, since I promised to give you my reasons for preferring the Bible as a schoolbook, to all other compositions. I shall not trouble you with an apology for my delaying so long to comply with my promise, but shall proceed immediately to the subject of my letter.
Assumptions
Before I state my arguments in favor of teaching children to read by means of the Bible, I shall assume the five following propositions.
1. That Christianity is the only true and perfect religion, and that in proportion as mankind adopt its principles, and obey its precepts, they will be wise, and happy.
2. That a better knowledge of this religion is to be acquired by reading the Bible, than in any other way.
3. That the Bible contains more knowledge necessary to man in his present state, than any other book in the world.
4. That knowledge is most durable, and religious instruction most useful, when imparted in early life,
5. That the bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life.
First Argument
My arguments in favor of the use of the Bible as a schoolbook are founded, in the constitution of the human mind.
1. The memory is the first faculty which opens in the minds of children. Of how much consequence, then, must it be, to impress it with the great truths of Christianity, before it is pre-occupied with less interesting subjects! As all the liquors, which are poured into a cup, generally taste of that which first filled it, so all the knowledge, which is added to that which is treasured up in the memory from the Bible, generally receives an agreeable and useful tincture from it.
2. There is a peculiar aptitude in the minds of children for religious knowledge. I have constantly found them in the first six or seven years of their lives, more inquisitive upon religious subjects, than upon any others: and an ingenious instructor of youth has informed me, that he has found young children more capable of receiving just ideas upon the most difficult tenets of religion, than upon the most simple branches of human knowledge. It would be strange if it were otherwise; for God creates all his means to suit all his ends. There must of course be a fitness between the human mind, and the truths which are essential to its happiness.
3. The influence of prejudice is derived from the impressions, which are made upon the mind in early life; prejudices are of two kinds, true and false. In a world where false prejudices do so much mischief, it would discover great weakness not to oppose them, by such as are true.
I grant that many men have rejected the prejudices derived from the Bible: but I believe no man ever did so, without having been made wiser or better, by the early operation of these prejudices upon his mind. Every just principle that is to be found in the writings of Voltaire, is borrowed from the Bible: and the morality of the Deists, which has been so much admired and praised, is, I believe, in most cases, the effect of habits, produced by early instruction in the principles of Christianity.
4. We are subject, by a general law in our natures, to what is called habit. Now if the study of the scriptures be necessary to our happiness at any time of our lives, the sooner we begin to read them, the more we shall be attached to them; for it is peculiar to all the acts of habit, to become easy, strong and agreeable by repetition.
5. It is a law in our natures, that we remember longest the knowledge we acquire by the greatest number of our senses. Now a knowledge of the contents of the Bible, is acquired in school by the aid of the eyes and the ears; for children after getting their lessons, always say them to their masters in an audible voice; of course there is a presumption, that this knowledge will be retained much longer than if it had been acquired in any other way.
6. The interesting events and characters, recorded and described in the Old and New Testaments, are accommodated above all others to seize upon all the faculties of the minds of children. The understanding, the memory, the imagination, the passions, and the moral powers, are all occasionally addressed by the various incidents which are contained in those divine books, insomuch that not to be delighted with them, is to be devoid of every principle of pleasure that exists in a sound mind.
7. There is a native love of truth in the human mind. Lord Shaftesbury says, that truth is so congenial to our minds, that we love ever the shadow of it: and Horace, in his rules for composing an epic poem, establishes the same law in our natures, by advising the “fictions in poetry to resemble truth.” Now the Bible contains more truths than any other book in the world: so true is the testimony that it bears of God in his works of creation, providence, and redemption, that it is called truth itself, by way of preeminence above things that are only simply true. How forcibly are we struck with the evidences of truth, in the history of the Jews, above what we discover in the history of other nations? Where do we find a hero, or an historian record his own faults or vices except in the Old Testament? Indeed, my friend, from some accounts which I have read of the American revolution, I begin to grow skeptical to all history except to that which is contained in the Bible. Now if this book be known to contain nothing but what is materially true, the mind will naturally acquire a love for it from this circumstance: and from this affection for the truths of the Bible, it will acquire a discernment of truth in other books, and a preference of it in all the transactions of life.
8. There is a wonderful property in the memory, which enables it in old age, to recover the knowledge it had acquired in early life, after it had been apparently forgotten for forty or fifty years. Of how much consequence, then, must it be, to fill the mind with that species of knowledge, in childhood and youth, which, when recalled in the decline of life, will support the soul under the infirmities of age, and smooth the avenues of approaching death? The Bible is the only book which is capable of affording this support to old age; and it is for this reason that we find it resorted to with so much diligence and pleasure by such old people as have read it in early life. I can recollect many instances of this kind in persons who discovered no attachment to the Bible, in the meridian of their lives, who have notwithstanding, spent the evening of them, in reading no other book. The late Sir John Pringle [1707-1782], Physician to the Queen of Great Britain, after passing a long life in camps and at court, closed it by studying the scriptures. So anxious was he to increase his knowledge in them, that he wrote to Dr. [Johann David] Michaelis [1717-1791], a learned professor of divinity in Germany [i.e., University of Halle], for an explanation of a difficult text of scripture, a short time before his death.
Second Argument
My second argument in favor of the use of the Bible in schools, is founded upon an implied command of God, and upon the practice of several of the wisest nations of the world. —In the 6th chapter of Deuteronomy, we find the following words, which are directly to my purpose,
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
It appears, moreover, from the history of the Jews, that they flourished as a nation, in proportion as they honored and read the books of Moses, which contained, a written revelation of the will of God, to the children of men. The law was not only neglected, but lost during the general profligacy of manners which accompanied the long and wicked reign of Manasseh. But the discovery of it, in the rubbish of the temple, by Josiah, and its subsequent general use, were followed by a return of national virtue and prosperity. We read further, of the wonderful effects which the reading of the law by Ezra, after his return from his captivity in Babylon, had upon the Jews. They hung upon his lips with tears, and showed the sincerity of their repentance, by their general reformation.
The learning of the Jews, for many years consisted in nothing but a knowledge of the scriptures. These were the textbooks of all the instruction that was given in the schools of their prophets. It was by […] of this general knowledge of their law, that those Jews that wandered from Judea into our countries, carried with them and propagated certain ideas of the true God among all the civilized nations upon the face of the earth. And it was from the attachment they retained to the Old Testament, that they procured a translation of it into the Greek language, after they lost the Hebrew tongue, by their long absence from their native country. The utility of this translation, commonly called the Septuagint, in facilitating the progress of the gospel, is well known to all who are acquainted with the history of the first age of the Christian church.
But the benefits of an early and general acquaintance with the Bible, were not confined only to the Jewish nations. They have appeared in many countries in Europe, since the reformation. The industry, and habits of order, which distinguish many of the German nations, are derived from their early instruction in the principles of Christianity, by means of the Bible. The moral and enlightened character of the inhabitants of Scotland, and of the New England States, appears to be derived from the same cause. If we descend from nations to sects, we shall find them wise and prosperous in proportion as they become early acquainted with the scriptures. The Bible is still used as a schoolbook among the quakers. The morality of this sect of Christians is universally acknowledged. Nor is this all, —their prudence in the management of their private affairs, is as much a mark of their society, as their sober manners.
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