Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The spirit God gives

2 Timothy 1:7
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
There are a number of types of "spirits" a person might get from the world the flesh and the devil
A spirit of anger
A spirit of gossip
A spirit of rashness
A spirit of bitterness
Here Paul refers to
A spirit of fear

All those and others may be brought upon us from our exposure to the world and the people of it. While each of us tends to one form of spirit or another from birth, that spirit and others may be compounded in our lives through the experiences of life. The implication is that Timothy possessed a timid or fearful spirit, owing perhaps to the things he was exposed to as a half Gentile, half Jewish boy. Still, God could and did use him.

But God has a different kind of spirit available to us.
The spirit of power
Which I take to be boldness to do the work of the Lord and to stand despite the trials of the ministry

The spirit of loveBoth for the Lord and for men. Such love motivates and compels us to continue in the face of opposition.

The spirit of a sound mind
God has given us something far greater than the ability to reason and logic in debate with men. He has given us the Word of God and it becomes our mind as we study and meditate upon it.

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