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Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you. 2 Timothy 1:14 (NIV)

You guard valuable things. Just as a good mailman guards the mail, a good Christian guards the gospel. If the gospel is not guarded in the church, it will be lost to the world.

If you are a parent, you likely have a personal story of that horrible moment when your child wanders and suddenly you don’t know where she is. You are in the park. She is playing on the swings with some friends. You are sitting nearby on a bench, scrolling through social media. Suddenly, you look up, and she is gone.

“Where is she?” you ask someone. But nobody can help you. You feel that dreadful sense of panic and begin to move as quickly as possible throughout the park, looking for her. You finally find her and try to figure out what happened. She lost her bearings and wandered away.

The church is in the same position. The greatest danger is not that the church will abandon the gospel, but that we will lose our bearings and wander from it, little by little. Three times in his letters to Timothy, Paul speaks about wandering away:

“Some have wandered away from these and turned to meaningless talk.” (1 Tim. 1:6)

“In so doing have wandered from the faith.” (1 Tim 6:21)

“Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have wandered away from the truth.” (2 Tim. 2:17, 18)

While some become lost by wandering, others become lost by following their own desires:

“The time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.” (2 Tim. 4:3)

Our itching ears want to hear a message about self, rather than God, and a message about this world, rather than the world to come. There will always be a large market for these kinds of messages.

Are you wandering? What is your part in guarding the gospel?