For God gave us not a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. 2 Timothy 1:7
This instruction by Paul to Timothy is written in the context of encouragement to “fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands”.
What a shame for us to miss out on the blessing of being a part of what God wants to do thru us because we are uncertain of the outcome, scared of what people will think, or just simply afraid of failure.
In Exodus 3-4 we read about Moses and his debate with God. God has called Moses to a task, it was a daunting task and from a human perspective, it makes a lot of sense to question whether he was really the right man for the job. But in 1 Thessalonians 5:24 we read that faithful is he that calls you, who also will do it.
Moses had no credentials, he had a speech impediment, he didn’t have the trust of the people, and he was certain that this would all end in an embarrassing defeat. But God who called him would follow thru.
Moses was doing what we so often do; he was basing his confidence on a wrong assumption. That assumption is, for us to be successful in fulfilling the call that God has placed on our lives, it will be contingent on our abilities and our resources. It assumes that we are all we have to count on to fulfill that call.
But the truth is, when God calls us to something that seems to be beyond our abilities, he expects us to factor in his involvement. He knows what our abilities and limitations are. He will fill in the gaps. The impossible becomes possible when God is in it. It requires a lot of faith to move forward when we haven’t seen the outcome yet.
Jesus also demonstrated this truth in the New Testament. When the multitudes had been listening to Jesus teaching all day and it was time to eat, the disciples realized that they would need to send them home. There wasn’t enough food to feed the crowd. But when Jesus tells them to feed the people, they could now factor in his involvement and the crowd could be fed.
Later that night, as the disciples were in a boat and likely pondering the miraculous feeding, Peter was given the opportunity to factor in Jesus involvement again. “Lord, if it’s you, tell me to come to you on the water”. When Jesus said “come”, Peter realized that this was possible even though he had never experienced it before, he had never been taught to walk on water, he had never seen it done. But because Jesus was in it, he walked on the water.
If we follow this story a bit further, we see fear entering the picture. The unfortunate truth we find here is that fear will abort the miracle. Fear is not from God. How many miracles have been aborted or maybe not even conceived, because we didn’t have the faith to step out of the boat?
Let’s choose to stand on the promise of God when he said that faithful is he that calls you, who also will do it.