A couple of years ago, during a sports clinic at Princeton High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dan Woodruff, the softball coach, lent his office to Dave Redding, the "strength" coach for the Cleveland Browns. Dave wanted to shower before his scheduled appearance at the clinic.

Dan showed Dave the facilities, then left while he was in the shower. When Dave finished showering, he went to leave the office, but found he couldn’t open the door! He wrote a note and slipped it under the door, then sat back and waited.

When Dan went back to his office about an hour later, he heard someone yelling, "Help, help!" Then he found the card outside his door. He opened the door and found Redding. "What’s the problem?" Dan asked. Dave told him that he had been locked inside for over an hour. Dan told him the door wasn’t locked, that he had only to push a button on the handle to make it open.

"We laughed about it a lot when we walked down the hall," said Dan. "The 230 pound strength coach of a professional football team being trapped behind an unlocked door." (1)

I know lots of people who are trapped behind an unlocked door, and the door is the door of timidity. Beyond that door lies a world of opportunity. There is lock on the door, except in their own mind, but there might as well be a hundred padlocks because they lack the will, the courage, the inner strength to turn the handle, open the door, and step into a new world of love and service.

Have you ever been driving and discovered that you forgot to release the emergency brake? You wondered why you felt something holding you back, but you did not know what it was. That is what a spirit of timidity or fear will do to us. We live our lives with the emergency brake on, never risking, never letting go, never living life to the fullest.

I want to direct my message to the most timid persons in this congregation, and I want to say to you, in a loving and yet a direct way, you are a sinner! That’s a surprise, isn’t it? You have never had anyone tell you that timidity is a sin. I mean to be rough with you this morning. I want to help all of us who are cowering behind that unlocked door to see that we are cheating ourselves, we are cheating our neighbors, and ultimately we are cheating God.

Listen to the words of St. Paul, writing to the young pastor Timothy, "...for God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

I want every shy, awkward teenager to listen to me this morning, every reclusive housewife, every backward businessman, your timidity is a spiritual problem. It is keeping you from being the kind of effective witness for Christ that he needs for you to be. You need to walk out of here this morning a new person. Is that possible? Yes, it is possible. St. Paul gives the formula right here. You see, he is concerned that young Timothy be a bold, confident, forthright preacher of the Word. He knew that in the ministry you cannot afford to cower behind an unlocked door. So he is giving young Timothy some important advice-advice that many of us need as well.

Let’s consider that advice for a few moments. St. Paul says that God didn’t give us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind. Let’s consider these in reverse order.

THE FIRST ANTIDOTE FOR FEAR IS A SOUND MIND. That is, there are some real fears in life, but the fears that cripple most are those that exist only in our own imagination. I like the story about the mountaineer who had been gone from home for over a week and when he came back home his clothes were torn, his shoes were worn thin, and it was obvious that he was exhausted. His wife put her hands on her hips and said with suspicion, "Where in tarnation have you been?"

"I went out in the woods to check the still," replied the mountain man, "and a giant bear stepped out in front of me. I took off running ahead of him and finally lost him. I never ran so fast in my life!"

"But that was a week ago," said the wife. "Where have you been since?"

"I’ve been walking back," he said.

If you happen on a bear when you leave church this morning, you might be justifiably afraid. However, if you are afraid of the person next to you, if you are hesitant to reach out a warm hand in greeting and say, "It’s good to see you this morning. How have you been doing?" then something is wrong. Yet there are people who would rather face a hungry bear than talk to their neighbors. It doesn’t make sense, and yet fear has an ability to cause people to do crazy things.

Many of you are familiar with country music star Mel Tillis. Mel’s autobiography is entitled STUTTERIN’ BOY, and it is well-aimed. Mel has always stuttered very badly, except when he sings. He tells about the time he and songwriter Wayne Walker were asleep in a motel on the ground floor. A friend of theirs named Johnny Paycheck, another country singer, needed Wayne’s car keys. He didn’t want to wake Mel and Wayne, so he crawled through the motel window and then tried to find Wayne’s keys. Mel woke up about this time and saw someone fumbling around in the room but didn’t know who it was. He tried to say something but his tongue and his vocal chords both froze up on him. No words came out, no matter how hard he tried to speak. Finally, in desperation, he SANG. That was the only way the words would come out he sang, "Wayne, Wayne, we’re being robbed."

Fear can do some crazy things to us. Sometimes our greatest need is to face up to our fears, to deal with them rationally with a determination that they will no longer be our masters. You haven’t been given a spirit of fear but of a sound mind. Analyze your fears, see them for what they really are. Usually they are imaginary locks on the door of opportunity.

Logan Pearsall Smith, years ago, said something about this. He asked, "What is more mortifying than to feel you’ve missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?"

Can you see the imagery there? Life is filled with plenty

of plum trees, but you have to shake the plum tree in order to enjoy the plums. The negative thinking person, the fearful person, will think to himself or herself, "What if someone sees me out here shaking this tree? I will look awfully foolish." Some of you know what I am talking about. Or we say to ourselves, "Oh, well, I’ll probably blow it anyway. I’m not much good at shaking plum trees." Later we will think to ourselves, "It just wasn’t meant for me to have plums anyway."

Do you see what you are doing? The plums are out there for the taking, but you and I, when we are dominated by a spirit of fear, talk ourselves out of them. Of course, we are not really talking about plums. We are talking about opportunities for service, for enjoyment, for enriching our lives. You and I have not been given a spirit of fear but of a sound mind.

THE SECOND ANTIDOTE FOR FEAR, ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL, IS A SPIRIT OF LOVE. When we are intimidated by a spirit of timidity or fear, it causes us to break the 11th commandment. What is the 11th commandment? "A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another." (John 13:34). Fear, when it manifests itself as timidity or shyness, is the most selfish emotion of all. As Christians, you and I cannot afford the luxury of giving in to a spirit of fear because Christ has called us to love one another, and how can you love someone else if you are scared to even speak to them?

Now, admittedly, people are not always loveable. In a "Peanuts" cartoon sometime back, Lucy speaks to Snoopy: "There are times," she says, "when you really bug me, but I must admit, there are also times when I feel like giving you a great big hug."

Snoopy looks up, with a grin on his face, and says to himself, "That’s the way I am, hugable and bugable."

That is the way all of us are. Sometimes we are hugable and sometimes we are bugable, but we dare not allow our timidness or our shyness to prevent us from making the effort of love. I like the way Lois Wyse once put it: "In a world where bad deeds are celebrated, and good ones relegated to page 49 of the paper; Where first place goes to push and shove, And the cost of things is put above the cost of time together; Isn’t it wonderful that from time to time, The best of us, Reach out and touch, The rest of us?" There is a lot of Gospel in that. "Perfect love casts out fear." (I John 4:18).

When the late Dr. E. Stanley Jones preached on love in India, a church leader complained that though he had saturated his leadership with love, one of the laymen was making a lot of trouble and threatening to split the church. The frustrated clergyman asked Dr. Jones what to do since love hadn’t worked. "Increase the dosage." retorted Jones.

Wouldn’t it be tragic to go to your grave with a heart full of regret over the people you could have reached out to and did not? For some of us the only thing that is keeping the door locked is our timidity. We know that it is God’s will for us to share our love for others, but we are afraid. The antidote, of course, as E. Stanley Jones says, is to increase the dosage. Keep loving until you reduce that door to splinters.

Donald Nicholl tells of a man lying desperately ill in a hospital. He was terrified, confused, and in despair. His world had stopped. As Nicholl put it, "Nothing of his true self seemed to remain except a tiny particle the size of a grain of mustard seed. Outside that particle was chaos and darkness. Suddenly he heard a voice from the nearby corridor,`I’m so bloody lonely I could cry.’ It was the voice of an old miner who was in the hospital for the first time in his life...Hearing the terror in the old man’s voice the desperately ill man...from the pit of his own terror, said to himself,`I’ll go out and sit by him if it’s the last thing I do.’ And he did. And from that moment, his own terror began to lift....In the voice of the old man he had heard the voice of God calling him to wholeness and holiness." (2)

"You can begin any time, anywhere," says Nicholl, "even if you are a tiny grain of a mustard seed lying in a pit of terror." Perfect love casts out fear. It really does. A spirit of sound mind, a spirit of love.

THE THIRD ANTIDOTE THAT ST. PAUL GIVES US FOR A SPIRIT OF FEAR IS A SPIRIT OF POWER. One scholar has translated "power" to mean "a confident faith." Isn’t that what spiritual power really is a confident faith in God? David was but a shepherd boy, but he could face the giant Goliath because of his confident faith in God. Esther was a shy teenaged beauty queen, but she could approach the mighty king Ahasuerus because of her confident faith in God. When you and I give in to fear or timidity or shyness, we are, in effect denying our faith in God. Pardon me if I seem somewhat harsh at this point, but God needs mighty men and women for the facing of this hour. And he will give us the power to overcome the spirit of fear if we will allow him.

Have you ever watched lightning strike a tree? I hope you have never been that close. They tell us, though, that it is an illusion that lightning comes down from the sky to strike a tree. Actually only a tiny "leader bolt" comes from the sky. When you see that massive flash as lightning strikes a tree, you are actually seeing a tremendous charge of electricity come up from the ground through the tree. That is what lights up the sky. The charge was already present in the tree. The "leader bolt" simply freed it up. That is what can happen when we put ourselves in God’s hands. We have tremendous power, tremendous energy, tremendous potential within. Placing our faith in God, receiving his peace, his joy, his love, simply sets us free to be what he created us to be.

We have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power. A poor sailor in a ship wreck was thrown upon a rock. He held onto that rock for all he was worth until the tide went down. Later a friend asked him, "Didn’t you shake with fear when you were hanging onto that rock?" The sailor answered with a sigh of relief, "Yes, but the rock didn’t."

Thomas Carlyle once said that "the first duty for a man is still that of subduing fear." Some of us have been putting the first duty off, but it does not have to be that way. Some of the nicest people I know are fearful, shy, timid. Life could offer us

so much more, and even more importantly, we could offer life so much more if we could push open this door that is locked only in our minds. Paul has given us the answer right there. It is ours for the taking. He writes to young Timothy: "For God has not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

1. Timothy C. Walker, THE STAINED GLASS GOSPEL