The One Relationship We Neglect Most - 2 Timothy 2:12

"if we endure, we will also reign with Him; if we deny Him, He will also deny us;" — 2 Timothy 2:12 (CSB)

I read this today, right after finishing the last post on sowing and reaping, and it hit closer to home than a job or a marriage or a friendship ever could. I have now written about a soldier's focus, a farmer's field, and a father's grace, and somehow never once written directly about the relationship all of that was supposed to be pointing back to the whole time. This is not about whether effort in general pays off. This is about the relationship that decides everything else, whether we are feeding it or letting it starve.

What denying Him looks like

Denying God does not have to look like standing up and renouncing Him out loud. For most people who already call themselves believers, myself included, it looks like skipping time in the Word because work and life are pressing that day, and then the next day, and then most days. It is the same entanglement in everyday affairs I wrote about with the soldier a few posts back, just aimed at the relationship everything else flows from. It looks like not praying, because prayer kept losing to everything else on the list, day after day. It looks like sitting through a sermon or opening a Bible app with a mind that is already back at work or already home, the same divided attention I wrote about before, present in the room but not there. It looks like watching something happen that is clearly the hand of God and calling it luck or coincidence instead, because naming it would ask something of us we were not ready to give. In the moment, all of it just feels like being busy.

The relationship nobody schedules time for

Every relationship I care about gets fed on purpose, time with Maddy, time with my friends, time training. Most people, including me on plenty of weeks, treat their relationship with God like something that runs on its own. It does not. Feeding it looks like real time in the Word, real time praying, living the way God has asked me to live instead of the way that is easiest that day, and sharing what I have been given instead of keeping it to myself. None of it is glamorous, or something to post about, or something to brag about. It is the same unseen, unapplauded work I wrote about with the farmer. All of it gets skipped constantly, because whatever is pressing on a given day almost always wins.

Two neighboring verses, two different warnings

The very next verse sounds like it contradicts verse twelve: if we are faithless, He remains faithful, because He cannot deny Himself. I wrote a whole post on that verse already, and I do not think Paul is contradicting himself one line later. Verse thirteen is about the ordinary faithlessness every believer lives inside of, the days we fall short and come back anyway. Verse twelve is about denial, a settled decision to walk away and not come back. God stays faithful through the first. He does not promise to stay attached to the second.

What Jesus already said about treasure

In Matthew, Jesus says not to store up treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy it and thieves steal it, but to store it up in heaven, where nothing can touch it. Every hour spent in the Word, in prayer, in obedience, and in sharing what I know is treasure going into an account nothing can take from me. Every hour I hand over instead to whatever felt urgent that day is treasure I chose to leave on earth, where it was never going to last no matter how important it felt at the time.

Wherever you land

If you do not believe in God, do not assume that lets you off the hook here. Never getting around to deciding anything at all is its own way of denying Him, whether you ever meant it that way or not. The verse is specific about the cost of that. Denial gets met with denial, on His end too, and reigning with Him is what gets forfeited instead of granted. Indifference still arrives at that same outcome, just slowly instead of all at once.

If you are a believer who has drifted, and I include myself in this most weeks, this should not be a comfortable message. Drifting has a bottom to it. Nobody sets out to deny God, they just keep skipping the small things until the relationship itself is gone and denial is simply the state they have arrived in without ever announcing it. Verse thirteen covers the drift while you are still in it and still coming back. It does not cover the day you stop coming back at all. Open the Word again today. Pray today.

This relationship does not run on its own any more than a marriage does, or a friendship does, or a body does. All of those need to be fed on purpose to stay alive, and this relationship is no different, except that it is the one everything else in our lives depends on. Feed it like it matters, because it is the reason any of the others work.