Are You Dealing Well With What God Has Given You?

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I am constantly reminded of this text from Paul’s last letter that he wrote from prison. It is a most important text for every believer to remember . . .

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7 – NKJV)

The disciple of Christ has been given a great deal by “God” in his/her new birth. As a new creation (cf. II Corinthians 5:17) we can safely say that we are not what we once were and we now have what we once did not have.

Paul lets us know a very important fact that . . .

“. . . God has not given us a spirit of fear”

Note that this addresses “us;” that is to say, disciples of Christ. This would be then an all-inclusive statement by the apostle. In other words, it is said by Paul, as he is led by the Holy Spirit to write, that he and Timothy and you and I and every believer, past and present, “have not” been “given . . . a spirit of fear.”

“The word ‘spirit’ here is best taken as an equivalent of charisma, a gift given by the Holy Spirit” (Wuest). Thus, the Holy Spirit has “not given us” something that negatively affects “us,” such as “fear.”

This word for “fear” speaks of “timidity” (Strong), of “fearfulness” (Wuest). Likely there was an element of “timidity,” of “fear” in Paul’s young disciple, and it can safely be said that this same element infects every believer to some degree or another, because the Holy Spirit is saying that this is “not” something that, in the new self (cf. Ephesians 4:20-24), we have from “God.”

No, not “fear,” not “timidity,” but we have . . .

” . . . a spirit of . . . power and of love and of a sound mind”

The “power” here is best understood by the Greek word used here, dynamis. For we actually get our English word dynamite from this word. We have “a spirit of . . . (dynamite like) power,” a “miraculous power” (Strong).

And we have “a spirit of . . . love.” This “love” here is the Greek word agape, a word that speaks of the “love” that God loves with . . . it is a self-sacrificing “love,” one that does not think of oneself but, thinks and acts sacrificially on behalf of others.

And finally, we have “a spirit of . . . a sound mind.” This speaks of a “disciplined, sober (Strong) . . . mind.” The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is not an irrational person, one who is “off the wall” in his/her thinking, and acting out his/her thinking in some undisciplined manner. There is a “soberness” about the disciple of Christ, a “controlled self” (Strong) that, with the word of Christ indwelling them (cf. Colossians 3:16) thinks and acts like Christ.

“God has” not only reconciled “us” to Himself through the blood of His Son’s cross (cf. Colossians 1:19-20) but He has seen fit to leave us on this earthly domain to not exude “a spirit of fear” but rather of divine traits, distinguishing features, that He Himself “has . . . given” to “us.”

So the question then is . . . How are you dealing with what God has given you?