1 Timothy 4:16 -- Watch your life & doctrine closely

To catch up on our adventure through 1 Timothy, click here and read from the bottom post up.

1 Timothy 4:16 (NIV):

"Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers."

Paul says to Timothy to pay close attention to both yourself and your teaching.

This verse sums up 1 Timothy 4:6-15. (You might even consider it the key verse of all of 1 Timothy.)

The leader must pay close attention to both his private life and public ministry. He must keep a sharp eye on both and persevere in both.

As we've seen in 1 Timothy, both parts of a leader are so important. We tend to think of them as two halves of a whole, easily divisible. But they are so intertwined you cannot separate the two.

I want everything I do, both publicly and privately, to honor God. I want the fulness of my private life to impact the wholeness of my public ministry, and vice versa.

And if I do, Paul says I will save both myself and my hearers. He doesn't specify which  hearers. I believe it's not just the people who hear me at church or read my words on a blog, but the people who see me every single day, and the people with whom I come into contact at other parts of my day and life when I'm not even "doing ministry."