Thank you. How can church leaders continue to be strong in their faith right to the very end?

Today on Truth for Life, we'll explore the Apostle Paul's biblical guidelines to help pastors perform their duties

effectively without losing heart or slipping into lifeless mechanical preaching.

Alistair Begg is teaching from 2 Timothy chapter 4.

Timothy is being urged to take a stand to swim against the current.

I charge you, it's solemn.

Preach the word. It's straightforward.

It's strategic because the time has come now, seasons that will come again and again, they will turn away,

they will wander off. Now, he says, let me speak directly to you, Timothy, as for you, as for you.

And this is familiar material. Number one, he says, always be sober-minded. In other words, the fact that some of your contemporaries

have been intoxicated by various ideas and have drifted off, that is all the more reason for you to stay awake, to be vigilant. Don't fall asleep at the wheel. Watch your life. Watch your doctrine. It's crucial

for you and for your passengers. Remember that line? I want to die falling asleep peacefully,

just like my grandfather and not like the other passengers

in his car.

Don't fall asleep at the wheel.

Keep your head. Be brave. Endure suffering. He's not issuing a new note.

He's actually sounding out a refrain. You go back through the four chapters. At the beginning,

he says, I invite you to share in sufferings with me for the gospel. I suffer, he says, in verse 12. I am suffering. In fact,

I endure everything for the sake of the allent. And he's saying to Timothy, this is part of the

territory. This is what goes with doing what you're going to do. The challenges,

the suffering may actually be physical suffering, certainly mental, emotional, the cost that comes

in following a pattern of sound words when people around you are suggesting that you have lost

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