This has certainly been inordinately long teaching but I feel a very necessary one. We must always be vigilant of our own hearts and actions and be aware of the people around us, being able to discern their hearts and motives. Are their motives (or laws) Godly? Do they really have their fellow man in mind or are they out to get what they can and to further their agenda?
Good questions, let’s finish this teaching up and then maybe reassess our thinking and get more aligned with how God wants us to lead our lives.
II Timothy 1:7-8 For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not you therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be you partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God.
I do not know whether you have ever thought of all of these characteristics, these qualities that appear in II Timothy 3:1-5, that they are evidence of insanity. I am looking at this from God’s point of view. If we look at it from God’s point of view in considering the illustrations and so forth that I gave at the very beginning of this teaching, and how God looks at our heart, you can begin to see elements of why God would say that His Spirit is the Spirit of a sound mind. There is a difference between being sound and being unsound, and He is implying pretty clearly there that before we were converted we were unsound. There is some degree of mental illness in a heart able to do good things, but at the same time having the propensity within it to do all nineteen of those things, and worse. All of those characteristics are evidence of some degree of mental illness.
These characteristics are the very mental and conduct instabilities we come out with and are those that we are to overcome during our Christian life. We all have elements of them as part of our character, and they must be challenged and put out.
I discovered a very interesting thing as I was preparing this teaching. It was interesting to me anyway. It is that a number of newer translations of the Bible replace the word “sound” with a different word. First, understand that the King James is not wrong. It is an okay translation. There is nothing wrong with it, but some modern translations have changed that reading to “self-discipline.” “God has given us a mind of self-discipline.” To me, that was really interesting, and I feel that “self-discipline” more directly expresses what Paul was instructing. Again, even my Bible has a marginal note that says, “A sound mind is a disciplined mind.”
The word “discipline” has several applications of usage in the English language, and I am going to give you what Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary says regarding this word: “1. Discipline means a punishment; 2. It means instruction; 3. It means a subject that is taught; 4. Discipline is training that corrects, molds, or corrects the mental faculties or moral character; 5. Discipline is control gained by enforcing obedience and order.”
Now either of those last two fits what we are looking at here in II Timothy 1:7, but I feel that the fifth one—”Discipline is control gained by forcing obedience and order”—fits. What verse 7 then means is that the godly person has his spirit under control and he does not permit human nature to express itself in a way that is not godly. He puts a cork on it and holds it until it is overcome and it is no longer part of his character, is no longer part of his nature.
Paul is not implying that the person disciplines himself without any deviation. Paul is just giving a generality. We see right here one of the things that Timothy had to overcome. He was a timid person by nature, and fearful, and that is what Paul mentioned there. “Do not be ashamed.” “Do not be afraid.” “Do not fear.” “Go on.”
On page 18 of his book The Road Less Traveled, the author M. Scott Peck suggested four broad areas of human behavior that he feels are absolutely essential to produce stable well-rounded productive people who can overcome life’s problems and produce good relationships. Our problem in our relationship with God is keeping human nature corked. Now God has given us the tool to do it: His Spirit. And He says, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
- Scott Peck strongly urges everybody who reads his book to inculcate these four disciplines, or whatever, in themselves and in their children as a means of achieving good mental and spiritual health. He calls these disciplines “the basic set of tools needed to solve life’s problems.” We all have problems that need to be solved.
Besides calling them “disciplines,” he also calls them “tools” and “techniques of suffering.” That last one is a good one. Do you know why he calls it that? Everybody, when facing problems, suffers, and we need a technique to handle that suffering. There is going to be suffering in some way and of some measure connected to solving problems. I think that you will agree that life is filled with problems that create pressures that are interspersed with short periods of peace. We call these problems “stress,” and each of these trials produces some degree of anxiety, of mental anguish, or we might even use the term “suffering” for a period of time. When these things begin, that is when we have a tendency to let human nature run in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, many people, as we would say, gradually crack under the stress and become to some degree mentally ill. Do you know why they crack? The simple answer is because they fail to solve the problem to the degree that they can, and they become so self-concerned about their failures that they become mentally ill, and react badly. It is the extreme self-centeredness that is the real problem. Those who handle these stresses best are those who are the most mature.
Peck calls these disciplines “tools of suffering” because they are the means by which we can experience the pain of problems in such a way as to work through them and solve them successfully. I was struck that these are some of the very qualities that God is working to instill in us in order to bring us to maturity. We should be working on our children to instill these qualities in them. Here they are:
Tool number 1: We need to learn the delaying of gratification.
Tool number 2: We need to learn the acceptance of responsibility.
Tool number 3: Dedication to the truth. (I personally feel this is the most important one, considering our deceitful heart. If we are not dedicated to truth, nothing is going to work. I can guarantee that.)
Tool number 4: Balance (I prefer the term “Wisdom.” This last one is the longest one coming because it takes life’s experience to have wisdom.)
As important as child-training is, these qualities have a far more important direct connection to God’s purpose. Brothers and sisters, He has called us to be problem-solvers.
John 14:1-3 Let not your heart be troubled: You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions [offices, rooms, abodes]: If it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
In conjunction with many other verses, it is revealed that we are going to be established in positions, offices, rooms, places of responsibility in a world totally devastated by horrific nuclear warfare and populated by people spiritually, mentally, and emotionally scarred from experiencing those horrors. I am talking about that period of time after we are resurrected or changed, and God says, “Okay. Go out there and straighten up this mess!”
We are going to be faced with problems like you never saw before, and God wants people working out there who know what they are doing and are disciplined enough, and responsible enough to carry it out. He wants them to be so dedicated to seeing the truth established that nothing will deter them. They will handle that responsibility with balance and wisdom, and not be an oppressive ogre just throwing his weight around, but will deal with people with kindness and with honor and a deliberate love to lift them up out of the muck and mire of what the world has become.
I want you to go now to Luke 8:14. Jesus is giving the parable of the Sower and the Seed, and He says:
And that which fell among thorns are they which when they have heard go forth, and are choked with care and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.
It is the word “perfection” that I am looking at right now.
Hebrews 6:1 Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection.
Ephesians 4:11-14 And he [Christ] gave some apostles; and some prophets; and some evangelists; and some pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: [Why?] That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive.
All three of these words rendered perfection, perfect, or perfecting, with one exception, are related to the same root verb teleioo. Teleioo is synonymous with our English words “to complete,” “to finish,” “to accomplish,” “to consummate,” “to perfect,” or in these contexts, “to bring or come to maturity.”
God is perfecting us. Why? So we can be changed and work in the family business.
That one exception is in Ephesians 4:12, where the word “perfecting” is appropriate, but it should really be translated “equipping.” God is equipping us to handle the responsibilities that are coming. So what is our involvement in this Christian life? It is the bringing of us to maturity where we have been completely subjected to human nature to where we can control it by the power of God’s Spirit and truth to where it is no longer driving us around by the nose. Instead, we are, by our own will, submitting ourselves to God and His truth, revealing to Him that we are being perfected, that we are becoming mature.
Ephesians 2:8-10 For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:8 says that we are saved by grace through faith, but then he goes on to say that we are being saved for the purpose of working works that God has ordained. God has already set it up for us. We know at least the outline of what He is doing, but He is preparing us to do those works He has ordained us to do. Right now the work He has given us to do is to yield to Him so that we can become mature and grow up from being a child to being a real true adult.
Did not Paul say in the “Love” chapter there was a time when he was a child, and when he was a child he spoke as a child, he thought as a child; but when he became a man he put away childish things? That is what faces us. We are to aim for the character and the mind of God. We have the tool in His Spirit. We have the truth to apply ourselves, but human nature is present, and God has left it there so we can struggle against it and overcome it and get the benefit of all the experiences of learning how to work.
Do you know what the failure to delay gratification does? It produces procrastination. That is its product. Yet we keep putting off the hard things and always do the easy things. The failure to delay gratification produces procrastination. It is always fun to do the easy stuff. We get a reward right away. Do you know how the person who will not delay gratification reacts? I will give a simple illustration. This is the person who, when he gets his dessert, eats the icing first. He wants to be gratified first. That is a little thing, but it shows the inclination of the mind. I am going to try to put together a teaching on those four qualities, but it is going to be hard I think. It will be quite a challenge.
All I want us to understand out of this is that those qualities in II Timothy 3:1-5 are active within us to some degree. They are not just lying there latent. They want to spring out and control. We must come to the place where we can control them, but know this, that the labor and the sacrifices that need to be made to keep those things under control are for our good. God allowed them to remain within us so that they could be met and challenged, and from this: good fruit will be produced.
We can do it, you can do it, not on our own but through the help of the Holy Spirit. He is the answer to All the problems we face, He is the only answer. Any answer we can come up with without Him is only a band-aid, it won’t last.
Have been to the Roman road yet? What are you waiting for? Romans 10:9-10 opens the door all you need to do is walk through. Are you ready? IT’S NEVER TOO LATE!
I’m here to lend a hand if you need it, my contact information is at the top of the page under contact.
Until next time, see ya down the road! Dusty
My Prayer for You: 
Father, we ask forgiveness for our sin and ask for a new heart and strength to do your work.
We give thanks for the healing going on in brother Bruce’s body and know your hand is on him.
Lord, this virus needs to end and the pain and suffering to stop. Your word says where two or more agree it shall be done (Matthew 18:19-20) and I claim that word in Jesus’s name. We thank you for it and give you all the praise and glory …
In Jesus name, we pray
Amen