...from the desk of Rande Wayne Smith D.Min., Th.M., M.Div.

Battlegrounds - 5

INTIMIDATION

2 Timothy 1:6-7

For this reason I remind you to keep alive the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you. For the Spirit that God has given us does not make us timid; instead, his Spirit fills us with power, love, and self-control.

May the Lord grant that we may engage in contemplating the mysteries of His Heavenly wisdom with really increasing devotion to His glory and our edification.  Amen.

If I say the name Rodney Dangerfield … what do you immediately think of? …
(“I don’t get any respect.”)

That’s the line he would use as he recounted the barrage of dirty tricks and shenanigans played upon him by his family and friends … “I don’t get any respect.”

Actually, those are the thoughts of a lot of people who trudge through life each day with a general sense of insignificance.

What do we think about when we look at our faces in the mirror each morning? What evaluations cross our minds when the day is over and we survey the actions and achievements of the day?

A dangerous % of people do not enjoy the summary … they simply do not like themselves. They view others as lucky, successful, attractive … they view themselves as victims, failures, and cast aside.

A low sense of self-esteem or self-image is crippling to everything God made a human being to be. It slowly causes us to withdraw from challenges, new discoveries, and opportunities, and from believing that we can accomplish anything out of the ordinary.

I have a feeling that Paul’s “sidekick” in ministry felt this way often.
My suspicion is bolstered each time I read the 2 letters written to him by his spiritual mentor, the Apostle Paul himself. Many of the paragraphs are studded with heavy action words, imperatives, warnings, and slaps on the back.

In no other writings of Paul do we get the feeling as strongly as it’s seen here of encouraging and inspiring potential.

To be sure, Timothy was a sensitive young man. All of us, I think, would have liked him. Paul tells the Philippians, “He is the only one who shares my feelings and who really cares about you.”

I think the pastoral gifts of caring, compassion, and tenderness came easily to Timothy. But perhaps that strength tailed off into a corresponding weakness.
There was a problem with poor self-image. Timothy was a man who would easily back down; one who was reluctant to stand up against people who were aggressive; one who may have been tempted to think he had little to offer. And Timothy joins a large crowd of people who have this same kind of problem.

Thus Paul is always seeking to bolster Timothy’s view of himself: “Do not let anyone look down on you because you are young … do not neglect the spiritual gift that is in you … avoid the profane talk and foolish arguments of what some people wrongly call ‘Knowledge.’”

The urgings go on paragraph after paragraph. But perhaps there is one statement which supersedes all the others.
It’s one for anyone who wrestles with a problem of self-image. Its’ counsel rings true not only for Timothy, but for all of us who tend to think that we are nothing, practically worthless.

In his 2nd letter to Timothy, Paul begins by tracing the young pastor’s spiritual heritage. Timothy comes from a 2nd generation family of believers: Lois, his grandmother, and Eunice, his mother.

“Timothy,” Paul writes, “you have a magnificent background, and now it rests upon you and the gift which God has given you.” Paul goes on, “For this reason I remind you to keep alive the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you.”

Did Timothy sometimes doubt his call and capacity for ministry?
Did Paul write these words because Timothy was waffling on his commitment to God’s work? Was Timothy going through depression or low self-esteem as he evaluated his contributions to the Church? “Keep alive the gift, Timothy! Turn up the flame! Get moving again!”

Now what’s the source of Paul’s encouragement for Timothy? The key is, “for the Spirit that God has given us does not make us timid; instead, his Spirit fills us with power, love, and self-control.”

There’s a lot of theology and practical implication in that statement. Actually it’s one of Paul’s teaching highpoints about what God does in our lives. We should all meditate upon on this thought until its’ meaning and application is ground deep into our entire beings.
Let’s take a quick look at the key verb … “to give.” God gives to believers The Holy Spirit. Even a surface kind of reading of The Acts shows that The Holy Spirit will give us power. “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be filled with power.”

The 1st thing Paul wants Timothy to understand is what the Spirit isn’t. He is not a Spirit that makes us timid. For Timothy’s purposes, that’s an important word. It’s fairly obvious that Paul thinks Timothy is somewhat timid.

The Greek word (deilia) which Paul chooses here is rarely seen in the N.T. Bible scholars are acquainted with 3 words found in Scripture which are translated into the English words “fear, afraid, or timid.”
The 1st of these 3 describes a respectful kind of fear … our “fear” of God. The 2nd describes one’s natural feelings in a threatening situation.

This 3rd word (deilia) portrays the action of being paralyzed in the face of something greater than oneself.

As I was going through pictures after our flood I came across this one with Liffort Hobley, who played football for the Miami Dolphins. I remember asking him what he thought about when he came into a set position on the line.

He said, “I’ve one thought: to hit my opponent so hard that when he falls to the ground he’ll look up at the sky and pray, ‘O God, please end this game right now so that there won’t be another play.’”
Liffort went on, “I want to dominate him, crush his spirit.” In other words, Liffort wanted to intimidate his opponent.
Which is what Paul believes has happened to Timothy. He’s intimidated.

And it’s exactly what God didn’t mean for a human being to have: a crushed spirit that looks at life and says, “I can’t cope; I’m not worth anything to myself, or anyone else; nothing goes right for me.” God didn’t make us to experience that crippling sense of worthlessness.

So what has God given us? A Spirit of “power, love, and self-control.” Think about those 3 qualities for a moment. My instincts tell me that no one in this world accomplishes much unless they have a combination of those qualities … or have somehow created synthetic substitutes.
Let me explain what I mean.

People who get ahead either have “power” or they substitute for it “brute force.” Some people have gotten ahead in this world through the use of plain force.

Fathers intimidate their families on the basis of threats. Some men and women muscle their way into positions of influence and recognition through manipulating the people around them; intimidating others.

People who get ahead either have “self-control” or “self-indulgence.” The newspapers are filled with stories of those who are indulging their instincts each day. On the surface everything seems to be going fine, and we’re tempted to want to join them.
After all, they seem to be getting away with whatever they’re doing. “If it feels good, it can’t be wrong.”

But God didn’t mean for force, exploitation, or self-indulgence to be the order of life anymore than He delights in those who are wallowing in low self-image.

What God meant was for people to live in a Spirit of “power, love, and self-control.” And that’s worth our thinking about because that’s the quality of personality and character which the Christian is supposed to have.

The 1st thing that impresses me about these 3 qualities is that they belong to God. God is a God of power; nothing exceeds His capability to create and/or change.
God created this world … and He will someday dissolve it.

He set in motion various forces, and He can check them or He can modify them. God is a powerful God. When He created humanity in His own image, power was one of the attributes seen in Adam and Eve.

Setting man and woman in the Garden, He told them to have “power” over every living thing. Power is the capability to discern things as they are and should be; to bring things to their rightful state. And that’s what God created humanity to have.

But sinned dulled humanity’s power and left us weakened, often victimized by the very things we should have power over. “Timothy,” Paul writes, “God has created you to be a man of power … not intimidated by people, events, or things.”

We can make the same comments about love … the 2nd of Paul’s 3 qualities of the Spirit. God is a God of love … all consuming love. Love is that capacity to see people as they are, and yet as they should be. It follows then that love is that extraordinary capacity to provide conditions in which others can grow to the fullness of their creative potential.

When God created humanity He made us to be loving. The Garden story shows us a man and woman who knew perfect love with one another. There were no secrets, no shames. There was open and total communication. Each could see the other as he or she actually was.
Sin ruined just about all of that. The shame of their sin began the dulling of love. It has been replaced by exploitation.

The experience of being a Christian is the process of recovering love. God has given us a Spirit of love. Love sees people as God made them to be and enables us to create the process to grow to that end. Timothy, you have that Spirit within you.

Then there is self-control. The Garden version of humanity before sin was 2 people in total control of themselves … all of their emotions, physical, and mental processes. To a considerable extent all of that control has been lost.

It’s amazing … when we stop to think about it … how little control we actually have over ourselves.
We have little control over our instincts, over our health issues, over the various systems of our bodies. We have limited control over our feelings and emotions, and our grasp even of our mental processes is often up for grabs.

This is where the working of The Holy Spirit should be seen in us. The Christian life should be one of growing self-control. That’s the Spirit God has given us.

Paul wants Timothy to see himself as a completed man in Christ. He’s trying to get Timothy to stop looking at the past, when he was a man intimidated by his failures and faults.

Paul wants Timothy to see what God is doing, and what more He’s willing to do, as Timothy opens himself up to Him. “Don’t be intimidated by those who use force, exploitation and self-indulgence as their gimmicks in life; be what God is making you. See yourself as a completed human being, a new man in Jesus Christ.”

What Paul is telling you and me is that we don’t have to stand toe-to-toe with people whose ways are not God’s.

We don’t have to match force with force, exploitation with exploitation, and self-indulgence with self-indulgence. Rather, we match the world’s way with power, love, and self-control.

Trace the Christian witness in the early Church and you’ll see a perfect example of this. When the enemy used force, Christians responded with the power of God in their lives.
Their love for one another was faultless. And slowly the resistance to the Gospel crumbled. It could not stand against the qualities of personality inherent in the new person in Christ. And so it has been ever since.

The Christian is called to possess a new self-image … the one Christ has recovered with us: it’s a life of power, love, and self-control. And as we begin to see ourselves in that vein, it will be amazing the new freedom and liberation which becomes ours.

When I lived back in PA, I had a friend, Howard White. Actually, when I 1st got to know him he was a young man with a reputation. He was known throughout the county for his high school athletic accomplishments.
But he was even better known for his reputation as a troublemaker. He was tough and mean.

To be honest, I’m a little hazy about how we got reconnected a few years later, but a friendship was ignited. So I invited him to be my guest at a Christian men’s program. And to make a long story short, Howard came to faith in Jesus Christ.

And a process of growth was set in motion. A life of force began to turn to power; a life of exploitation to love; a life of self-indulgence was transformed into one of self-control.

Howard became a Sunday School teacher, and later the superintendent. There were a lot of people who had a rough time believing their eyes.
He became a Deacon and then later an Elder. Howard took his spiritual responsibilities seriously. Men and women broken through crisis, relational problems, and spiritual despair found their way to his house for consultation and prayer.

And they discovered a person whose personality was marked with power, love, and self-control.

Timothy, members of Community Church, there’s no need to be intimidated by the enemy or by people and circumstances who are anti-Christ. Don’t run from them; don’t become like them. But be what God is making you … a person whose life is marked with power, love, and self-control.
 

MARANA THA