Timothy has fallen victim to his overwhelming sense of fear of the two renegade false teachers that have overrun the church in Ephesus. Bottom line? There are lost souls in that church that are now in the hands of two false teachers who are teaching a gospel that cannot save souls. So let’s get some perspective here. What is worse? The rape of a little boy or an adult going to hell because Timothy couldn’t control his fears, causing him to do nothing about the two false teachers?
Here is the magic of 2nd Timothy. Notice that Paul does not go off on Timothy. Why would he? How does degrading a person magically make them better? It doesn’t, and so I believe that we are witnessing the maturation process of even Paul himself, considering his letter to the city of Galatia and the two letters to the Corinthian church. Paul wrote three outrageously aggressive letters, but in this final letter of Paul’s, he chooses to build Timothy’s confidence.
Paul begins to build Timothy’s confidence by establishing his roots in his mother and grandmother. Paul uses theology to rebuild Timothy’s beliefs. Paul masterfully even places Timothy well into the future, which is called “expectant confidence”, and talks about what Timothy will do and say and Paul writes this powerfully and convincingly. Imagine if you were timid Timothy, with “lost souls” on your shoulders….and you read that letter. How would you feel? You’d feel empowered! You would be grateful that the great Apostle Paul isn’t shredding your head apart like he has in the past with others! Instead, Paul is not focused on the behavior of Timothy, rather, Paul is focused on his weakened heart.
My point is, is that I’m not worried about you being angry or being aggressive. We need to concentrate on why. We need to figure out what it is that you believe that is causing you to submit to people in ways that are not healthy. I mention submission because if my guess is true, which is that you are falsely submitting to people, this, then, would be the cause of your becoming angry. Let me see if I can explain this very thing that I’ve suffered from for the greater part of my life….
When I submit to others, the thought behind this is that I believe that they are better than me, so I strain very hard to please people. The problem is that my attempts to please others are not genuine, which would be marked with the mindset that I don’t have to be repaid, but I DO WANT TO BE REPAID for I wanted people to like me. You see, I didn’t understand that I was submitting to people in such a wrongful way. What do I do now? Well, I don’t lower myself in any way whatsoever. I don’t crack silly jokes out of nervousness anymore. I don’t talk about anything that is fruitless anymore. I believe in myself verses not liking myself. I began to realize that I was a good person, and that the ideas that others were trying to get me to believe about myself were wrong. In fact, they were sick.
And this is how I see your situation. The people around you who are purposefully antagonizing you are really sick. They are not well. As you describe their behavior, do they sound like good minded, healthy people? No, I would never want my child to be around people that purposefully try to get another person all riled up. What’s the point in that? No more. Waves, you are worth so much more than that! Self-Control….here’s what I think about that.
If you really want to start to develop self-control, then it is incredibly wise to start with pruning your circle of friends. If you have friends that are harming you, how would this be any different from allowing leaches to attach themselves to you and slurp you dry? Upper levels of self-control is limiting those in your inner circle. I have completely pruned everyone. I had not one person in my life that was any good. Only a true idiot would keep people in his or her life that was causing us harm. The only legitimate reason would be because you are attempting to be an example of Christ in some way. And if that’s the case, right on! But if not, then we are actually commanded not to be around such people. For us to be around sick people, we need to be healthy, well and protected with our armor! But if we do not have our acts together, we cannot be around antagonists. Even still for me today, after all of the work that I’ve undergone, I still have that tendency to protect and defend with heavy aggression.
Listen my friend, this is something that you may carry throughout your life, but you might need to become that of a lion. A lion is a powerful, powerful beast, but it can be as soft and tender as it desires with it’s little cubs and others in it’s Pride. You would be advised to be one of God’s tamed lions, but when things get rough, you can know that your aggression can be used in a most incredible way. It is people like you and me that are able to risk our own lives for the good of others. So I don’t know if eliminating the aggression should be as much of a focus as it would be to tame it. In my opinion I think that it’s good to look at how Paul defended himself, and how Jesus often spoke to people, or being aggressive in the temple as it became a den of profit.
One of the most horrible teachings that we receive in “church” today is that we’re to be meek. Excuse me? No, we’re not! Repeatedly we are commanded, yes commanded to be bold, strong, tough, immovable, unstoppable! We are to be bold and confident, marching forward into the fire even if it means dying! We do this because we KNOW our Almighty, Powerful God! True, accurate beliefs allows us to have true and accurate submissions which always creates a street of gold that leads to extreme obedience. When we have experienced a change to extreme obedience, we will most certainly have lost our fears which have been naturally replaced with confidence. Now, fully confident, we can share everything about ourselves! And most importantly, with full confidence, we can talk to others about the name of Jesus Christ.
