Have you ever had more month than money, sickness operating in your body at such a high level you didn’t know if you will ever get healed, or so many deadlines to meet you don’t know how to get it all done? If you are like most of us, you have experienced this feeling. It is called being overwhelmed!
Paul’s protege, Timothy, definitely went through this when he was the young pastor of the church of Ephesus. After the revival in Ephesus, Paul put Timothy in charge of this church of 100,000 people. You read that right! The church in Ephesus made Joel Osteen’s church look small by comparison!
Can you imagine the stress of leading all of those people? Timothy had to establish good doctrine, deal with false teachers, raise up elders to help him, make decisions about giving widows financial support, and on and on I could go. More importantly, Timothy had to do all of this in a season when he could be put to death for his faith. That’s pretty overwhelming!
During this season Paul wrote a letter to Timothy we now call 1 Timothy. He wrote to provide him encouragement and advice so Timothy would have victory over his circumstances. Look at this passage out of 1 Timothy 6:
12 Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, 14 that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing, 15 which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.
In the midst of all of this pressure, Paul told Timothy to fight the good fight of faith! Faith is a good fight because we win, but it is still a fight to believe God’s promises when our circumstances look bad.
In verse 13 Paul tells Timothy to keep his confession of faith just like Jesus did before Pontius Pilate! This is important because when we get overwhelmed it is easy to let our confession slip. While I generally teach we believe in out heart and then we speak, sometimes we have to confess our way into faith because faith comes by hearing!
This means we confess truth because it is true even if our heart isn’t fully resonating with that truth yet. Truth doesn’t become true because we believe it. Truth is true because it is true and sometimes we have to keep hearing it to believe it. That’s why we must keep our confession in the face of adversity! Check out this message if you’d like to learn how words change our heart.
Finally, in verses 15-16, Paul gives a major clue about how to get our heart back into faith when we get overwhelmed. Paul reminded Timothy that Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of Lords who dwells in unapproachable light. I say Paul reminded Timothy because I’m sure Paul had told Timothy of his conversion experience when Paul saw a light brighter than the sun. He then heard the voice of Jesus and immediately declared Him as Lord! It was such as overwhelming experience Paul gave His life to the one whom He’d previously been opposing!
Paul intentionally reminded Timothy of the overwhelming presence of God to help him get back into faith when he was facing overwhelming circumstances. Once Timothy saw his negative circumstances from the presence of God, they became far less impressive. We all need to remind ourselves of our past victories with God. These testimonies engage our imagination, which helps us to see God and our circumstances properly. When we remember our testimonies we are also inviting God to move mightily again. The Hebrew word for testimony is aydooth and it means to do again with the same power and authority! This is why Revelation 19:10 says the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
When we hold fast to our confession and remember who God is we will overwhelm our circumstances instead of being overwhelmed! The best news is we don’t have to do this in our strength as God has given us His word and the Holy Spirit to help us. I’d encourage you to read His word daily and invite the Holy Spirit to paint your imagination with who God is in the middle of your circumstances os you can overwhelm them. If you’d like to learn more, check out this message I recently taught at Grace Life Church.
