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(upbeat music) - Drive Time Devotions is a Saddleback Church podcast. We want to
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- Welcome to day three of our look together through Second Timothy chapter one.

We're going to focus on verse seven today. I love Second Timothy one, seven, speaks
to me. Hope you see today how it speaks to you in your life.

Second Timothy one, seven says, for God did not give us a spirit of timidity,
but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline. For God did not give us
a spirit of timidity. Paul is talking personally to Timothy here.

What is Timothy being timid about? Why is Paul having to write this to him? He's
being timid about the verses that we looked at yesterday.

Paul's just said, I want you to fan and to flame God's gifts in your life. And
then he says, God didn't give us a spirit of timidity. He's saying, Timothy,
don't be timid about your own gifts.

For whatever reason, and we're not sure of all the reasons, Timothy, this pastor
of Ephesus, this pastor that had been trained by the apostle Paul and been so
used by God in his life, he's become filled with self-doubt. And when you get
filled with self-doubt, well, there are four responses to self-doubts. One, you
can listen to your doubt.

You can just start agreeing with them and feeling sorry for yourself and sad
about yourself and having pity parties all the time for yourself. Start kicking
yourself, putting yourself down, scolding yourself, calling yourself names. One
of the goals of this verse, looking at it together today, for some of you that
are listening to this, is that you stop calling yourself names and you start
calling on God's name.

You can listen to your doubts. That's one way you can go. Or you can ignore your
doubts.

Some people try to do that. It's interesting. Listening to your doubts makes
them big.

Trying to ignore your doubts makes them even bigger. Oh, you're not thinking
about them on a conscious level, but on a subconscious level, they're affecting
your life every day because you haven't dealt with them. This inner feeling
that, oh, God can't use me.

How could he use me? He used that person in such a great way, but he could never
use me in such a great way. He used me in the past, but he could never use me
now.

You can ignore your doubts. That doesn't work. Listening to your doubts, that
doesn't work.

You can lie to your doubts. That doesn't work. That's the third way that some of
us try.

You confront them. You can tell them they're not real, but what if they really
are real? You can only lie for so long.

What if some of the things that are causing you to have doubts, there are some
realities behind that? The reality of circumstances in your life or the fact
that you have to grow in your gifts or the fact that maybe someone has rejected
a message that you've brought to them. There is some truth to that.

So you have to find a way to recognize the truth, but also confront the lie. And
you can't do it by lying to yourself. This lie, I can do anything.

I'm not going to have self-doubt because I can do anything. But deep down, you know
you can't. You can't do anything.

You're not God. You don't control the universe. You don't control circumstances.

You don't control the opinions of others. You can't even control your own
emotions sometimes. You can lie to your doubts and try that.

That doesn't work either. Some people, it works better than others, and the ones
that it works better for, they become prideful about the way they lie to their
doubts, and they're worse off in the end too. So what do you do?

You don't listen to your doubts. You don't ignore your doubts. You don't lie to
your doubts.

You tell your doubts the truth, God's truth, and then you act on that truth. And
what's God's truth? God's truth is verse seven.

God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of
self-discipline. And what's he talking about when he talks about a spirit of
timidity? He's talking about fear, a spirit of fear.

And there are different ways that fear acts in our lives. Sometimes fear comes
in the form of tension, tension in our minds, and we feel the anxiety. Sometimes
fear comes in the form of terror, terror in our world, terror that we feel in
our body.

We feel the adrenaline when a terror comes upon us when we're surprised by
something or scared by something. But sometimes fear comes in the form of not
tension or terror, but timidity. And timidity, that's fear in your spirit, in a
hidden place in your life.

No one else may even know about it. Everyone knows when you have terror. Most
people know when you have tension, when you're worried about something.

You can see it in somebody's body language. But this timidity of spirit, many
times people don't even see it. But you know it's there, you know it's keeping
you from God's best in your life.

Timidity is this hidden fear, the fear that's unseen. Tension causes us to
worry. Timidity keeps us from action.

It's a hidden fear because it's more seen in what you don't do than in what you
do. It's not the ulcers of tension or the heart failure of terror. It's simply
the mediocrity that this fear can bring into your life, where you just choose to
do nothing, to settle for nothing, because you feel like God could use somebody
better.

I'm just going to fail. I'm going to let God down. Now if you've ever faced this
feeling of timidity, and I certainly have, if you've ever faced this feeling,
I've got some good news for you.

A surprising number of the people most used of God throughout history have faced
this fear and overcome this fear. People like Moses and Jeremiah in the
scriptures. People all the way down through Christian history.

They have faced this fear and overcome it. There's something about struggling
with and overcoming this fear, this timidity that causes your life to become
tremendously useful to God. So I want to focus for a moment today on one who
obviously struggled with this fear, Timothy.

Paul wrote this letter specifically to help him deal with this fear. In 1
Timothy, we are told that Paul was encouraging Timothy not to let anyone look
down on you because you're young. Don't be timid.

And here in this chapter of 2 Timothy, chapter one, he talks about don't be
ashamed of your faith. This fear of timidity often shows itself up in feeling
embarrassed or ashamed. I don't want to put myself forward.

I don't want to trip and fail. But what's God's answer? God's answer is verse
seven.

God did not give us a spirit of timidity. That feeling that you have, it is not
from God. If it's not from God, who's it from?

It's from Satan. He's the liar. He's the one who's lying to you about who you
really are.

God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of
self-discipline. That's God's answer. Power, love, and self-discipline.

When you struggle with timidity, what's God's answer? Those three things. First
of all, power.

It's interesting. Jesus called his disciples timid only once in the Gospels. And
it might surprise you when that was.

It wasn't when they fled from the Garden of Gethsemane or when they were afraid
to go back into Jerusalem because of the armies that were there that might want
to take Jesus and arrest him. The disciples in Mark chapter four, verse 20, were
called timid by Jesus because in the face of the wind and the waves, they felt
nervous that the boat might capsize. And Jesus said, "Why are you so timid?

" Now, why did Jesus call that timid? Because they were allowing, here's why.
Because they were allowing the force of the waves to cause them to forget the
power that was in their boat.

These fishermen cowered from the waves and timid fear instead of calling upon
the master of the waves of everything, Jesus Christ, in total faith. And there
is the key to God's power. There's the key to solving this issue of timidity in
my life and in your life.

The answer is not in your adequacy. It's in his adequacy. The answer is just in
admitting I am inadequate.

You know what? I have every reason to be timid, as do you and you and you. Every
one of us has every reason to be timid.

None of us are perfect. All of us have failings. All of us have failed ourselves
and others.

All of us have some gifts that are very strong in other places in our lives
where we're very weak. And even the gifts that are strong, sometimes we don't
use them as we should because we're lazy and we don't follow God like we should.
All of us have plenty of reasons to be timid if we're just looking at ourselves.

If you're trying to feel adequate in yourself, of course you're going to be timid.
Our adequacy is not of ourselves. It is of God.

You look to his adequacy. You don't look at the waves around you or even the
timidity inside of you. You look at the one who's with you in the boat.

I will admit that I am inadequate to meet life's opportunities. I am inadequate
to meet life's challenges. But I found in my life again and again and again that
my timidity changes when I recognize God's power.

Not when I try to make myself feel better about my power. No, it changes when I
recognize God's power. God didn't give us a spirit of timidity, but of power and
of love.

Even on a human level, love has an amazing power when it comes to timidity. It
has an amazing power to overcome the spirit of timidity. You have a mom who
won't speak up much, very timid mom, but you just threaten one of her kids and
you watch what happens.

All of a sudden, you're facing a roaring lion. What happened? Love happened.

She loves that child, and because of her love for that child, she is showing up
in that moment. And the fact that love is one of the answers to our timid
spirit, our timid fear, is a reminder that selfishness will not help me to
overcome my timidity. It's love for others that will help me to overcome it.

If you feel timid about God's gifts in your life, don't try to feel better about
how gifted you are. Just fall more in love with people. Just have a deeper heart
for people.

And then, even though you feel like your gifts aren't that great, you'll still
give what you have because you love people. There's no parent who's ever felt
that they are perfect, but because they know that the parent of that child and
they love that child, they're going to give all that they have. Love is one of the
answers.

Power is one of the answers. And self-discipline is the third answer. Now, some
versions translate this as sound mind.

It has the idea of the discipline of mind and of self. It has the idea of
self-control. It's interesting.

Self-control is given by God's Spirit. Over in Galatians chapter five, we're
told that self-control is one of the fruits, one of the results of God's Spirit
in our lives. Self-control comes through recognizing that God is in control.

And the truth of the matter is that in this verse, self-control, I'm going to feel
timid sometimes. Am I going to let that emotion guide my life, control my life, and
eventually totally consume my life? It will.

It might be in your life right now, consuming your life. Am I going to let that
consume my life, or am I going to have a sound mind? Am I going to have a
self-discipline mind?

Is Christ's control going to be what controls my life instead? The truth is, none
of us are naturally disciplined people. Some are better than others, but none of
us are naturally perfect at this.

But you can be a supernaturally disciplined person. And instead of living life
by your emotions or your feelings about yourself, you can begin to, in a new
way, live life by your trust in God and who he is. Self-discipline.

Living life based on the truth that God has told me rather than the feeling I'm
having in the moment. You see, the point of all we're talking about is this.
We're not talking about attitudes that you have to develop yourself to make
yourself less timid.

We're talking about gifts that God's Spirit has given into your life. His power,
His love, His self-control. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a
spirit of power and love and self-discipline.

Let's pray together. Jesus, none of us are perfect. I have lots of failings.

I can see lots of places in my life that are reasons I shouldn't serve you for
another minute and reasons I could easily think somebody else could do better.
But the truth of the matter is, you've gifted every one of us and you have
tasks, you have things, you have places to serve for every one of us. And if I
don't serve, something's going to be missing in the body of Christ.

Someone's going to miss out in the body of Christ. So Lord, instead of listening to
those temptations that Satan sends into our mind to live with timidity, we pray
that we would listen today, just one day at a time, to this invitation that you
give into our lives, to live with power, to live with love, to live with
self-discipline. And we ask for this, not on our strength, but on yours, Jesus.

In your name, amen.