7For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.
We like power and love. We aren’t so excited about self-discipline. Paul contrasts timidity, the inability to transform godly moral convictions into action, with power, love and self-discipline. These three require that we make choices and act on those choices. We need to have a moral backbone. Being timid in this context means we don’t have enough moral strength to do the right thing. It could be we are not operating in God’s power, but our own. Or maybe we are operating outside of God’s love. Or maybe we are just being lazy. The result is the same. We lack the moral courage to make godly choices. So many of us have the appearance of being a Jesus-follower, but we live in our own strength, devoid of real love, and a lack of self-discipline. We need to give up the illusion that we CAN live the godly life. We can’t! It is only in surrender that freedom comes. Love requires that we empty self and meet the other’s needs. And we need to stop trying to discipline other’s lives before we have disciplined our own. We have this timid spirit because we are playing at being a Jesus-follower instead of actually being one.
The Arnold Journey 