Guard The Good Deposit

Over the past year I have started to understand how truly precious the gospel is, how important it is and how high a place it should have in my life. But only in the past few weeks have I really seen how that understanding is necessary in my daily life.

Being a part of a church with brilliant expository biblical teaching every week for the first 18 years of my life has been an absolute blessing to me. I’ve been spoilt with knowledge and instruction on the bible, how to read it, how to interpret it correctly, and how to live out what it says, and although I wouldn’t have said it at the time, its probably something I very often took for granted.

Now that I am living in a different city, going to a different church, spending my time doing completely different things, it is now that I see what a blessing good bible teaching is. It isn’t that the teaching I am receiving now is bad or unbiblical or any less ‘sound’ than back home, but it is strange that here, attending a Christian music college, I feel less immersed in the gospel than I did back home in my everyday life.

Over the last 6 months God has shown me an understanding of his gospel and his grace like never before. The knowledge that I am completely free from my sin by Jesus’ blood is now for me something much more than words written on a page. It was only when God showed me that trying to earn His favour always either leads to pride or despair (pride because we think we can do it ourselves, or despair because we try and fail) that I began to understand grace. I do not have to, and ultimately cannot, earn God’s favour because He already delights in me! Because of his grace I can know his love in my life everyday and that is such a wonderful thing. However, when I first arrived in Coventry I found it so hard to find God here. It almost felt like I’d left him behind in Sheffield; everything I once understood was cloudy, the God I had once known so personally felt so distant, and the gospel that had been so clear to me seemed dim and distant.

A passage that has reached out to me so clearly these past few weeks has been 2 Timothy 1:13-14 which says:

“What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you – guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.”

Paul is telling Timothy to hold on tight to the gospel, to the truths of God’s word, no matter what anyone else tries to throw at him. The image of ‘holding tight’ is a helpful one for me. If we are trying to hold on to lots of things at once its easy to drop something; we should focus on one thing, holding on tight to what God has said and done for us rather than getting distracting and reaching out for other things and risk ‘dropping’ the one thing that is important.

Paul describes the gospel here as ‘the good deposit’, he recognises how valuable it really is – and he knows that it needs guarding. But the greatest thing of all is that God didn’t give us the most valuable thing in the world and simply hope we can look after it ourselves. We have the Holy Spirit to help us, and he’s not just around some of the time, he ‘lives in us’! This realisation that I don’t need to worry about losing the gospel somewhere along the way has been such a help for me here. I didn’t leave the gospel back in Sheffield when I moved here; neither did I leave the Holy Spirit. The understanding of what Jesus has done for me will be with me as long as I have the Holy Spirit, and he’s not just visiting – he lives here! Whatever I am taught, and whoever I am taught by, I know that I have the gospel to ‘keep as the pattern of sound teaching’, and that by God’s grace, through the help of the Holy Spirit I can now know my left from my right: my true from my false. The God I worshipped in Sheffield is the same God I worship here in Coventry, and He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

“Where can I go from your Spirit

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens you are there;

If I make my bed in the depths you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

If I settle on the far side of the sea,

Even there your hand will guide me,

Your right hand will hold me fast.”

Psalm 139:7-10