How will time change you?
Think of a 4 year period in your life. How did you change? Was it for the better or for the worse? How about the period of going from middle school to your senior year in high school? Or from entering college as an 18 year old to a graduating senior? Or maybe the 4 years you spent in the military service? Or the 4 years that saw your life go from a single person to one married and with children? Maybe the 4 years that saw you go from having teenagers in the home to the empty nest.
Select any 4 year period and consider how you changed. I’d like you to particularly consider your spiritual walk. Personally I don’t think it is possible to remain unchanged in this area. There is no status quo in your spiritual walk. You will either be growing or dying. Your faith will either be increasing or decreasing. With your faith I don’t think you can remain stationary.
Let us consider a colleague of the apostle Paul in the New Testament. Demas is discussed in 3 different places in Scripture. Colossians 4:14 and Philemon 24 were both written and delivered at the same time, probably around AD 63.
In the Colossian and Philemon context Demas is identified as a fellow laborer of Paul. Imagine what that entailed. A laborer meant that he was a worker. Demas was a worker! I have great respect for one who is characterized as a worker. Give me someone who will roll up their sleeves and go to work.
Not only was he a worker. The text further describes him as a fellow laborer indicating he was a co-worker with Paul. He was a fellow laborer with Paul – in the work of the LORD! This means he knew how to be cooperative and work with others. Again, what a blessing that must have been. And Demas is identified by Inspiration as being one of those fellow laborers. This most certainly affirms that he was a faithful servant.
Now earlier I asked you to remember the 4 year period of your life. I used the 4 year period for a reason. The only other time Demas is mentioned is in the book of 2nd Timothy. This book was the last of Paul’s epistles and is thought to have been written around AD 67. This would have been about 4 years after the reference of being a fellow laborer. Here, 4 years later, sadly we read, Demas has forsaken me having loved this present world (2 Tim 4:10).
Demas has forsaken me having (present tense) loved this present world. The present tense indicates it was an ongoing love. He just couldn’t let go of the world and eventually it pulled him back to it. We have no record of his ever coming back to the LORD. One thing we know, if he did not he was lost eternally.
Four years. During that time Demas went from fellow laborer to unfaithful steward.
As we reflect on our lives, we can’t do anything about those years that have passed. But we do have control over the present and, LORD willing, the future if we have such.
Spiritually speaking, where will the next 4 years find you?