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In an email to the Life to Life leaders this past week I mentioned that I have an emergency list. This is a list of a few resources—books, video clips, and articles—that I keep at hand in case of soul emergency. There are any variety of circumstances that can threaten our hearts and push them to critical condition. For me, when I fall toward discouragement or when I sense a lack of direction, one place I return again and again are the Pastoral Epistles.

I can’t take credit for the idea but I can say that I’ve followed counsel. It was during my senior year of high school, after I recognized a growing desire and communicated to my youth pastor that I thought I wanted to be a pastor. He met with me weekly and, at some point in his discipleship, he recommended that I get steeped in the Pastoral Epistles: 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. I’ve read and reread these letters from Paul maybe more than any other books in the Bible except for Proverbs. They are full of mature wisdom, of pastoral and eternal perspective. They provide instructions for personal and ministry priorities. They encourage and charge Timothy and Titus to take their calling and responsibilities seriously. Paul told Timothy in his first letter that the salvation of himself and his hearers depended on paying attention to himself (his soul) and the teaching. Near the end of his second letter to Timothy, Paul charged him in the presence of the Lord Jesus who will judge the living and the dead to press on and preach the Word with patience.

These are great letters, a sort of pastoral north star always shining and providing bearing. They have immediate and direct application benefit for shepherds so that they will know how to conduct themselves in the household of God, how to treat and what to do for the sheep. But they do have extended application beyond those who have “Pastor” printed on their business cards.

For all my reading of the Pastorals, even one time beginning to memorize 1 Timothy with some guys, I’ve never preached through one of them. I keep thinking about it and, Lord willing, one day I will. But at the beginning of January I decided that it was time to go through them again. Any number of nuggets caught my attention, but half of a sentence in 2 Timothy 1 begged for more attention. I couldn’t wait to preach through all six chapters of 1 Timothy and introduce 2 Timothy, so here we go. It was that sort of emergency.

One of the things I’ve realized over the last few years is that I don’t really want to fight. That’s not to say that I won’t or don’t want to argue. I can still get into a debate to prove that I’m right as long as the debate happens in a relatively controlled environment. I don’t want to fight if the bullets are real.

This is part of the problem. We, as Christians, (and the same is true for non-Christians) don’t get to choose if we’re in a battle or now. You may remember Superstorm Sweaty Sunday night last summer when we talked about the God-established antithesis between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. We cannot get out of the hostility, we do not choose whether or not to be soldiers. We choose what type of soldiers to be.

Again, I’d rather not fight. I’d rather not endure, I’d prefer to get it over with. That misses that God is the God of endurance and He is working, through our suffering and trials, so that we will be like Him, with endurance having its full effect that we may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:4). Resisting the difficulties is resisting becoming like God.

Who really wants to fight? We all want to win, or most of us do. We want Jesus to win, but we have to think about how involved we’re going to be. I’m not just talking about selling your stuff and taking a boat to Africa, I’m talking about how much work you have to do to show up happy in Jesus at your dinner table. You want to change the culture of your family, dad? Then you’re going to have to give up some quiet solitude and give up your impatience when not everyone appreciates what you’re doing. Who wants to fight like that? Let’s be mediocre in love, giving and asking little from each other so that we can get back to checking Facebook.

Our current American culture, and the culture of the American church, doesn’t want to make things better if making things better might hurt. We’ll get to changing culture as long as dinner is still hot and on the table at 6:00 PM.

As a church, we believe that there are some things that we need to unlearn, in fact, we may have more to unlearn than to learn. We believe that there are some things that we need to repent from. We believe that we still have areas in which we need to grow. Who wants the growing pains? Who wants to deal with the ignorance or resistance of the criticism or the departings? Maybe if we just did things how they’ve always been it would be more comfortable.

Why start a school? Why go through the hassles of scheduling and lesson planning and dry wells and flooded basements and Latin conjugations? Is it really that bad elsewhere? Won’t it be okay? Our kids will survive. Probably.

The thing is, we’re a fearful people. We fear criticism or worse, being marginalized. We hate when others condemn us by ignoring us. We fear loss of reputation, loss of connections, loss of our jobs, loss of health, loss of sleep. We fear that others may recognize that we don’t know what we’re talking about. We fear that we might mess up and need their forgiveness and forever be in debt to them. We fear that we might have to admit that we were wrong. We fear that we might have to change something.

It’s so much easier not to fight. And when we sense a growing desire to pull back and sit it out, we’re in an emergency situation. So was Timothy.

It seems that Timothy was struggling by the time Paul wrote his second letter. To some extent, Timothy was having a hard time. Perhaps the central theme of the epistle is found in chapter 2, verse 1.

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, (2 Timothy 2:1, ESV)

After the well-known instruction to pass the baton to other faithful men, Paul said,

Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. (2 Timothy 2:3, ESV)

Timothy was in a battle and apparently needed some emergency encouragement.

That encouragement came from his discipler, Paul. Of course Paul wrote his encouragement to Timothy from prison (1:8). In fact, on a time-line, this is the last epistle Paul ever wrote. These were his last inspired encouragements to a discouraged solider. Let’s go back to the beginning.

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God according to the promise of the life that is in Christ Jesus,

To Timothy, my beloved child:
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

I thank God whom I serve, as did my ancestors, with a clear conscience, as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. As I remember your tears, I long to see you, that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:1–7, ESV)

Timothy’s gift was growing cold so Paul told him “to fan into flame,” stir it up, rekindle the coals so that they would start burning hot again. Timothy had been commissioned by Paul and other elders (1 Timothy 4:14) for the work. He had been left by Paul in Ephesus to deal with certain persons who had wandered into vain discussions. He was dealing with certain persons who fancied themselves teachers but who were without understanding either what they were saying or the things about which they make confident assertions (1 Timothy 1:3-7).

That’s an easy job. No problems there, a quick fix. No. This was difficult work in a tough context. Timothy was trying to turn the ship around and establish the church in the right direction. Paul told him to keep stoking the fire.

Then in verse 7, the second half of the sentence, Paul draws out the implications.

for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:7, ESV)

Even though it comes out of the context of Timothy’s giftedness and calling to the ministry, the “us” in verse 7 belongs with Christians, not pastors per se.

What marks us is not a spirit of fear (ESV) or “cowardice.” δειλίας means lack of mental or moral strength. lack of resolve, lack of courage, or timidity. God did not give us a spirit of freaking out. God did not give us faint-hearts as Bunyan wrote about in The Pilgrim’s Progress.

Our attitude is not one of fear. That is not what God gave us. Whether “spirit” means the Holy Spirit or way of thinking, it comes out the same in the wash. We do have the Holy Spirit and we do not have a panicky, fearful, cowardly, heart. That’s not to say that we aren’t weak or that we never have struggles or heaviness. It is saying that God doesn’t define His people by fear, but rather by faith.

There is a triumvirate or triad of fear contrasts. God does not make Christian scaredy-cats. He makes Christians who have a spirit of power and love and self-control .

Power means that God gives us strength. He provides and sustains our energy. We are confident and unshaken rather than flinching and falling back. We go and work and fight boldly with power.

Love means that we fight courageously for people, for God’s people, rather than against everyone. We do not have power that God means to run over other people. The strength is for them. We can be forceful but not furious.

But we need love for them, too. It is easy to run away from critical or even lukewarm people. They can be such a soul-suck. If we do not have God-given, Spirit-produced love we will flee. We go and work and fight with affectionate endurance.

Self-control means that we have a controlled response. We do not fly off the handle. We also do not make a practice of self-indulgence. We are not reckless and wild. We go and work and fight and do not wander away.

Remember, God has in no way given us a spirit of fear. Just the opposite. He does give us, supernaturally, power and love and self-control. God doesn’t gift us with cold hearted cowardice but with courageous compassion and commitment.

Conclusion

There are great demands, burdens, opposition, fatigue, responsibilities, uncertainties, noises, criticisms, and pressures. We will be tempted to shrink back, sink down, and give up.

Timothy faced heresy, unbelief, and challenges to his leadership. But God does not give us a spirit of hesitation. He does not give us a spirit of faltering. We are called not to let our fight be extinguished but rather to remember that God has provided and gifted us with greater resources: power and love and self-control.

C.S. Lewis once wrote:

The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come.

We cannot wait to fight until the conditions are favourable. We don’t need to fear, God gives us with courage.