To catch up on our adventure through 1 Timothy, click here and read from the bottom post up.
"Command and teach these things."
The word for "command" literally means "insist on." Paul is encouraging Timothy to be more forceful with these things.
It seems that Timothy was different personality-wise from Paul--maybe less assertive, more timid.
In 1 Corinthians 16:10-11 (NIV), Paul writes:
"If Timothy comes, see to it that he has nothing to fear while he is with you, for he is carrying on the work of the Lord, just as I am. [11] No one, then, should refuse to accept him. Send him on his way in peace so that he may return to me. I am expecting him along with the brothers."
And in 2 Timothy 1:7 (NIV), Paul exhorts Timothy:
"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline."
I don't think he calls on Timothy to fundamentally change his personality, but just to make a course correction--to be a little more assertive: "Insist on and teach these things."
We tend to think that God uses one kind of cookie-cutter personality for leaders--or that the leader has to be a flaming extrovert. But God uses all kinds of personalities in leadership.
God can use us right where we are and with what we have. He does indeed want us to grow (like Paul wanted Timothy to be a little more assertive), but He is not likely to totally change our personality.
God made our personalities and wants to work through them. But there are also bad habits and sins that we pick up along the way that He wants to lead us out of. With Timothy it was timidness. With a more extroverted person it might be something like not listening to others, for example.
Embrace your personality as it is, but continually grow. What course corrections is God leading you to make?
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