Timothy at the moment was guilty of the spirit of fear, he was gripped by it; so Paul reprimands him—'God hath not given us the spirit of fear but of power and of love and of a sound mind' (2 Timothy 1:7) ... our essential trouble, if we suffer from this particular manifestation of spiritual depression, is our failure to realize what God has given us, and is giving us, in giving us the gift of the Holy Ghost.... It is a failure to realize what God has done for us, and what God is still doing in us.... The Apostle has to tell Timothy to stir up the gift of God.
     Our fears are due to our failure to stir up—failure to think, failure to take ourselves in hand. You find yourself looking to the future and then you begin to imagine things and you say: 'I wonder what is going to happen?' And then your imagination runs away with you. You are gripped by the thing; you do not stop to remind yourself of who you are and what you are, this thing overwhelms you and down you go. Now the first thing you have to do is to take a firm grip of yourself, to pull yourself up, to stir up yourself, to take yourself in hand and to speak to yourself ... the big thing that Paul is saying in effect to Timothy is: 'Timothy, you seem to be thinking about yourself and about life and all you have to do as if you were still an ordinary person. But, Timothy, you are not an ordinary person! You are a Christian, you are born again, the Spirit of God is in you. But you are facing all these things as if you are still what you once were, an ordinary person!'