by Alan Martin
“For God has not given us the spirit of fear….” Paul writes to Timothy.
The Greek here is not “phobia” but “deilia” – timidity, cowardice, or faintheartedness. This condition of heart is associated with unbelief as in Mark’s description of the disciples being tossed about in the storm. “Why are ye so fearful (deilia) How is it that ye have no faith?” Jesus’ instructions to His disciples forbade this heart condition, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid (deilia).” It is obvious we have a choice in the matter; moreover, that choice has eternal consequences. In the Revelation of Jesus Christ given to John on Patmos, the voice of the One on the throne declared “he that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son, But the fearful (deilia) and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers….shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone which is the second death.”
Do we see timidity, and faintheartedness as the One on the Throne sees it? Why would this “human weakness” be classified with other abominable sins? May the Lord give us His Spirit of wisdom and revelation to consider the answer. Timidity was to be rooted out of the troops of Israel before they even entered battle. “And the officers shall speak further unto the people, and they shall say, What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted (deilia in the LXX)? Let him go and return unto his house lest his brethren’s heart faint (deilia in the LXX) as well as his heart.” Let’s call this the “Domino Dread Effect”, where one unbelieving cowardly heart falls knocking first one, then another, still another out of the will of God and abiding faith. Surely we can remember the report of the ten spies and its doubting domino effect upon the nation of Israel standing on the brink of entering God’s glorious promise to them. Their factually accurate, unbelieving report resulted in the people lifting their voices not in praise, rather in wailing despondency, accusing God of ill intentions and provoking Him to declare an oath in His wrath that none of that evil, unbelieving generation would ever see His promise to them. God struck down the ten spies with a plague and made everyone twenty years or older (except Joshua and Caleb) wander for forty years in a slow death march to nowhere.
Amen we say! Really? - then we acknowledge that such an effect on others is worthy of God’s judgment. What if we are guilty then of having the same effect on even a few? If we were able to keep our timid, fainting heart to ourselves, we should not be in such danger; however, misery loves company. None of us do well in carrying our burdens or cares alone, we all look for someone to share them with. When we are in faith we cast our cares upon the Lord remembering that He cares for us. When we are unbelieving and fearful, we will most often not cast our cares upon Him who is unseen, but rather our neighbor who we can see. If the one receiving our own factually accurate spiritually unbelieving report is not in the Spirit, they will likely become the first domino in the domino dread effect. For example, when we have been deeply hurt by the unkindness of another, and we do not find that place of faith where we cast our hurting care upon the God of all comfort, we are tempted to share our burden with a friend who will sympathize with us. Rarely do we stop to realize that “covering over an offense promotes love but repeating the matter separates chief friends.” The potential for negatively affecting someone’s heart towards others is far greater than we realize. Great fires are set ablaze by such small and brief private conversations where we allow our unbelieving fearful heart to spill out onto the wrong comforter – then we must understand the Spirit God has given us if we are to overcome what He has not!
Fear = Focus Entirely Absent of Righteousness. The Righteous shall live by their faith, thus a focus upon the problem or pain and not upon the Faithfulness of the Father will always produce an unbelieving fainthearted response to our boat being rocked. Fear results from having the wrong focus, and the more intensely we focus our thoughts upon the hurt, the injustice, the danger, or the difficulty, the more gripping the timidity becomes. God has not given us the Spirit of fear because – the Spirit will never focus upon those things – He will always focus upon the Father. Focusing upon the Father, even in the face of our own crucifixion, will enable us to say “nevertheless, not what I will, but Thy will be done.” Seeing the Father clearly breathes the enabling power of faith into our human frailty and we overcome through tribulation rather than being overwhelmed by it. The Holy Spirit will never speak on His own, but only that which the Father speaks; therefore, when our mind is controlled by the Spirit – it is a mind of life and peace. The Spirit takes from what is Jesus’ and makes that known to us – and all that the Father has was given to Jesus – that means the Spirit makes all of the Father available to us.
That’s how Jesus overcame, through the Father being with Him and at work in Him. When we are in step with His Spirit, and the Father is being made known to us, our own minds will be controlled by life and peace. This is what it means to live by the Spirit as a son of God, having been set free from a sinful unbelieving heart that turns away (during crisis) from the living God.
