I Cannot Tell Faithfulness From Fear

You do it their way and you have started to wonder why.

Not the reason you would give somebody. The reason you would give somebody is easy: it is the arrangement, it is what was signed, and a man does what he said he would do.

The question underneath that one is the problem.

If there were no consequence at all. If nobody would ever check, ever, and no part of it could ever come back on you. Would you still do it exactly as written.

And you do not know.

That has been sitting in you since about February and it has spread. Because if you cannot answer that, then you cannot tell whether six years of doing this properly has been faithfulness or whether it has been a frightened man being careful.

And if it has been fear, then the thing you have been quietly proud of turns out to be the thing you should be least proud of.

You have not said this to anybody. It is not the sort of thing a man says.

And you have noticed something worse in the last few weeks, which is that you have started to distrust your own motives generally. Not just at work. You catch yourself doing a good thing and you immediately ask what you are actually up to.

That is the real trouble now. Not the pattern. The auditing.

There is a verse about what God has put in a man, and it settles this in a way you are not expecting.

Not the spirit of fear

Paul writes to a young man who is under real pressure and tells him what is actually in him.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7, King James Version)

Three things given. Power, love, and a sound mind.

That third one is the one for you. A sound mind is a mind that works. A mind that can look at a thing and see it accurately, including a thing about itself.

You have been given a sound mind for exactly this kind of question, and 2 Timothy 1:7 lists it as something already in you rather than something to be achieved. The Holy Spirit is the one who gave it, and He gave it before February and He has not taken it back since.

Now notice the shape of the sentence, because the shape does something to the auditing.

It does not say God will remove your fear if you ask properly. It says God has not given the spirit of fear. It is a statement about the source of what is in you.

Fear may be present. Fear is not what was issued.

You are carrying something that did not come from God and is therefore not the truth about you, and it is written that what He gave was power and love and a sound mind. The Spirit of God is the one who makes that distinction hold, and 2 Timothy 1 is where the inventory is given.

And here is what that does to your question.

There has been an attempt running for months to determine, by looking inward, whether the motive is clean. That is an audit that never terminates. A man can always find another layer.

The verse does not ask you to complete that audit. It tells you what is in the room and lets you work from there.

You have been running an inspection Scripture never asked for, and the written word hands a man an inventory instead of a verdict. The Holy Spirit is the one who ends an endless audit by naming what is actually there.

Both, probably, and that is fine

Let me say something plain that will help more than it sounds.

It is almost certainly both.

There is a man in you who does it properly because he said he would, and there is a man in you who does it properly because he does not want trouble. Both of those are in there. They have been in there the whole time.

That is what a human being is. Nobody has ever done a right thing from one motive.

You are not required to have a single clean motive before your work counts, and Scripture never once made purity of motive the entry fee. The Spirit of God is the one who works with mixed people, and 2 Timothy 1:7 names what He gave rather than demanding what a man produces.

There is one place where it would matter, and it is worth naming so you can check it and stop.

Fear becomes a problem when it starts deciding things that ought to be decided by conscience. When a man stays quiet about something genuinely wrong because he is afraid, that is the moment fear is running him.

Is anything like that happening? Is there something genuinely wrong that is going unsaid?

If the answer is no, then this whole question is an audit and not a warning, and you can put it down.

You are able to check that in about ten seconds and then let the rest go, and it is written that fear was not the thing given. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a real warning feel different from a general anxiety, and He does not leave a man guessing when it is genuine.

Ask it out loud, to Him

So here is the thing to do, and it is one sentence, and it is not addressed to yourself.

Say the question out loud, to God. Not into your own head, where it has been circling since February. Out loud, in words, to Him.

Is this faithfulness, or am I afraid.

Then stop, and go in, and do the work.

You are handing an unanswerable question to somebody rather than continuing to grind it, and 2 Timothy 1:7 says a sound mind was given for exactly this. The Spirit of God is the one who receives it, and He is not offended by the question.

The reason to say it out loud is that a question asked to yourself has to be answered by yourself, and you have been trying that for months and it does not terminate.

Asked out loud to God, it is out of your hands. And if there is something in it He wants you to see, He will show you in His own way and it will be specific, not this general fog.

You have been given the kind of mind that can hold a question without being ruled by it, and the written word says the spirit of fear was never issued to you. The Holy Spirit is the one who does that in a man, and 2 Timothy 1 is the whole warrant for putting the audit down.

Then go in and do it as written, the way you have for six years.