All Things Skin, Wellness & Faith

BREADCRUMBS OF FAITH DEVOTIONAL 38: Trade Timidity For Authority And Purpose

• Natasha Dias

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We reflect on 2 Timothy 1:7 and choose courage over timidity, trading seasonal fear for Christ-centered authority. We share practical ways to discipline the mind, know God’s character, and evangelize with love in everyday places.

• reading and comparing translations of 2 Timothy 1:7
• naming fear’s many faces and roots
• choosing self-discipline as daily renewal in Scripture
• knowing God’s character through His names and Word
• moving from timidity to bold, loving evangelism
• simple ways to share the gospel in normal life
• trusting the Holy Spirit to water the seeds we plant
• encouragement and blessing for a fear-free week


SPEAKER_00:

It's time to get ready to get encouraged and empowered as we dive into all things skin, wellness, and faith. Hello, hello, and welcome back to this week's breadcrumb of faith by all things skin, wellness, and faith. Uh, if you're new to this podcast, this week we are just doing a breadcrumb, which is a brief tidbit, um, pretty much a little bit of encouragement for you guys this week. And this week I just want to come to you really briefly and quickly with a little bit of encouragement or a word for you to just help carry you through your week. This week I'm speaking out of 2 Timothy 1 and 7. I think this is a staple verse that we are all familiar with. Reads a little bit differently in a couple different versions. Uh, what I'm gonna read for you right now is going to be from the Bible version that I have been reading in lately, which is I believe it's called the Jewish Standard Bible. And it reads, for God has not given us a spirit that produces timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. And if many of us know that scripture, we know that scripture as reading, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, love, and the sound mind. So both those versions are pretty similar. And the reason I believe the Holy Spirit brought this to my attention this week, the first thing I was thinking of when I was just like, Holy Spirit, what do you want to speak to me on is the season that we are in. And I know that I do have listeners from all over the globe, which is pretty awesome that I've realized that lately. But for those of us that are in the US, this is a time where a lot of people are celebrating a season that I personally have absolutely nothing to do with, but is the Halloween season, and it is a season that invokes a lot of fear, excuse me, a season that is revolved all around fear, all around the enemy. We know where fear comes from, and that's from him. Not gonna give him a lot of credit on this podcast, but he does exist. But just going to speak on, you know, what Halloween, what Halloween pretty much is all about, and it's invoking fear in the face of fun, which is very odd to me, but what may have you? Some people celebrate it, some people don't. I personally believe, if what I personally believe is that if you are of God, if Christ is your savior, I could not see why you would take any part of it, but that's a whole nother issue. I have last year's episode where I dove into my feelings on Halloween kind of deeply. I mean, there are a lot of different takes on it, how we can turn it around, how we can use it for good, how we can use it to evangelize. At this point, I'm really much I'm I'm really like to each his own. But what I want to speak to you today, dive in about today is this scripture. And as we are in a season that is pretty much fear-induced, what I want to do is just speak to you about coming out from under a spirit of fear. The spirit of fear looks like a lot of different things, it can be something from a phobia, which a lot of people do face a lot of different phobias, fear of heights, fear of spiders, fear of dogs, cats, animals, fear of you know, germs. There are a lot of different fears and phobias out there, and then there are also fears that you know just paralyze and hinder us from moving forward, generational type of here fears that keep us in a place of thinking that we can't do certain things. Yes, God does do those things for other people, but will it necessarily do that for me? No, he won't because whatever the reasons may be, this is in my bloodline, this is in my family, I'm not that smart. You know, whatever the reasons are, fear wears many different faces. And what I just want to speak to you today is just really taking the scripture, dissecting it, and taking it to heart and applying it to you because a lot of the times fear is the number one thing that the enemy hinders us with, and we don't even realize it. I know that I personally am a person that has a more type A bold I can do it, you know, or I should say I can do all things from Christ type of personality. But at the same time, what I noticed is that in these many faces of fear, that I too myself have been and can be gripped with fear sometimes. So I just want to encourage you to take this scripture and I'll read it to you again. For God has not given us a spirit of timidity slash fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline. And what I want to speak to you about is the self-discipline portion. I like that it says self-discipline because a lot of other versions say sound mind. And I like that this version says self-discipline, because if we are disciplining ourselves to spend time in the word, to spend time in the word, to spend time getting to know our Heavenly Father, our Creator, then it makes it kind of hard for a spirit like fear to rise up within us and to kind of take over our lives. When we are renewing our mind daily, which is something else that the scripture tells us to do, it means we know our authority, we know who we are in Christ. And if we know who we are in Christ, we execute that authority, then it becomes pretty hard for us to be gripped with fear no matter what our situations, no matter what our generational backgrounds or whatever hereditary things we have that attached to us, we know ultimately who we are in Christ. So I just want to encourage you to practice a self-discipline of being in your word and spending time and getting to know the true character of God, the true character of Yahweh. I've been spending a lot of time just, you know, discovering and looking into the Hebrew and a lot of the Hebrew, you know, language, and it goes in really, really deep. It goes in a little bit deeper than you know just traditional Western Western Christianity and things of as we know it. And it allows you to just get to know the character of God and who he is. And it's like if you are in love with someone, you want to know every aspect of them. So if we love the Lord as much as we say we do, then we have to be on a journey where we are always digging in deep. There are so many different layers to them. If you look in the Bible or throughout the Old Testament, there are all there's over a hundred different names of God, and all those names are attributed to his character. And I mean, that's like that's more than a lifetime of studying you can do to get to know his character, is to get to know like pretty much your genealogy because we are made in the image of Christ. God, you know, made us, you know, to look exactly like him. So in ultimately, in getting to know him, you are getting to know more about yourself, you're getting to know more about your inheritance. So if you have the discipline to spend time getting to know him, then you have what you need to pretty much not walk under a spirit of fear. Now, what this also says, I like that it uses a spirit of timidity, a spirit of shyness. And it's like where we are in these days now, we definitely need to carry a spirit of evangelism. If you are walking under fear, if you're walking under timidity, then evangelism is gonna be pretty hard for you because you're going to be definitely struck down. You know, people are not receptive these days to the things of the Lord, and of course, that's the move of the Antichrist spirit, but we have a mission as believers. We are believers in Christ, and we are told in the Bible to go out and to, you know, make disciples of men. We are told to go out to deliver the good news, the gospel, and we cannot do that underneath a spirit of timidity. And it's like the Bible also says, you know, John 3.16, for God so much he loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. So, I mean, if he gave his son so that we would not perish, then we have a duty to carry on the legacy, the legacy of Christ, and we cannot do that under a spirit of timidity. So I just want to encourage you to take the scripture and kind of look at it in different versions. Pray, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what it is that He wants to bring out of it for you to dissect and digest so that you can go out and not operate in fear and not operate in timidity and spread the love of Christ because it's what we are called to do. I don't want to see, you know, people out there just, you know, in fear of rejection and fear of being shot down because ultimately the Bible tells us, you know, Jesus says, you know, that we will have trouble in this world. He says, take heart. He has overcome the world. So we have a duty to go out and to evangelize to give the good news. And that doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, you have to be on the street corner. You can evangelize within, you know, going to your local grocery store. You can evangelize on your job. There are many different ways that you can spread the love of the gospel. All you have to do is again discipline yourself to be in that time, be in the word, and ask the Holy Spirit, what does evangelism look like for me? You know, there are like I said, there are many different ways, whether it's on your job, whether it's just, you know, if you take any public transportation to work, however, it is, if you walk, if you bike, if you go to the gym, if you go to a store on a regular basis, but we cannot operate in the spirit of fear or a spirit of timidity. So let this message today just be of an encouragement to you to go out and to, you know, spread the word, spread the gospel to deliver the good news. Because, like I said, we are in perilous dark times, darkness is spreading like crazy, especially in the season of Halloween. I mean, every year I do something different on Halloween. Last year I gave out Bibles and not Bibles, but I gave out children's books, and I didn't give out Halloween candy, I just gave out some fruit snacks. But that was my way of kind of like, you know, evangelizing to the children and you know, kind of getting the good word, the good, the good word, yes, the gospel, out there to children. Now, I'm quite sure there are some that did not read the book, did not partake in it, but it is not my duty to, you know, make sure what happens with those books, or it's not our duty to, you know, really make sure that these people are saved. It is our duty. We are called to deliver the word, and it is up to the Holy Spirit to go and to, you know, deliver that word a little bit, not deliver the word, but it's up to the Holy Spirit to, you know, water that seed and to, you know, allow it to, you know, grow and to take it and to do with it, you know, what he needs to do with it. So let me encourage you to go out there, especially as we are in the season of darkness this year. I will be out and I will be on street corners and I will be evangelizing. Like I said, that may not be for you. That is between you and the Lord, that's between you and Yahweh, for him to direct your steps and show you how exactly it is that he wants you to go out there and deliver his word. But it's up to you to be bold and not under spirit of timidity, to discipline yourself to go out and to do what the word calls us to do. So, all right, guys, like I said, this is just a brief episode for today. This is just a breadcrumb, a little bit of encouragement. I encourage you guys to all go out and to do your due duty as a believer. And I pray blessings and favor over you this season. I believe I pray that you are all blessed. I pray that fear has no part of you. And I pray that as you go out, the Lord blesses you, He keeps you, and He shines His face upon you. All right, guys, until the next episode, be blessed, and most importantly, be a blessing.