It is natural for people to have at least some fear of the unknown, especially when failure is looming on the horizon. People often fear failure. They are afraid of letting down God's work. They know they must live Christian lives, but they understand their own weaknesses. They recognize the greatness of God's work, and they are painfully aware of their faults and their needs, which can sometimes discourage them. They are constantly concerned about the type of job they will have if they live God's way of life and all of the pressures they find trying to keep a job, and so they become fearful and lacking faith. They read their Bibles and recognize the greatness of the work and calling but that in turn tends to discourage them because they are equally aware of their smallness and vulnerabilities. They read about people in the past and present who were persecuted for Christ's sake and they try to imagine themselves in that situation. Such things can so strongly affect them that they completely paralyze them in the moment. These people are often in danger of being consumed and overwhelmed by their fears, which can make them ineffective. Fear of the unknown was at the heart of Timothy's problem at that moment. Paul had to be quite firm with him, and he tells him what he must do and must not do. Paul was telling him there to rely on God's Spirit to strengthen him and to be able to face possible sufferings in the future. The first step is to identify and clearly distinguish between two things: legitimate forethought, meaning vision and preparation, and paralyzing forethought, meaning anxiety and fear. The worrier is consumed by fear and struggles to trust God. The worrier lets his plans interfere with his relationship with God. Do not let worries about tomorrow affect your relationship with God today. This means do not be guilty of anxious care about tomorrow. It does not mean you have no thought at all about it. Thinking about it is right, but being controlled by the unknown is all wrong. The difficulty with people who are prey to these fears is that they are wringing their hands, doing nothing, and are depressed by them. It just shuts them down. It makes them ineffective. In fact, they are completely governed and mastered by the unknown, and that is always wrong. The essential trouble, if people suffer from this specific manifestation of fear, anxiety, and spiritual depression, is their failure to recognize God's gift of the Holy Spirit and to acknowledge that He continues to give it to them through thick and thin. Their fears stem from their failure to stir up, their failure to think, their failure to get a grip on themselves. They find themselves looking to the future, imagining things, and they say, I wonder what's going to happen? And then their imagination runs away with them and they are gripped by this thing; and they do not stop reminding themselves of who they are and what they are, and this thing overwhelms them. And down they go into despair when they already have the answer or the power within them that they must stir up to counter these discouraging attitudes. The first thing they must do is to ask God to help them to get a grip on themselves, pull themselves up, and stir themselves to action. Even though they are true Christians, they believe the truth, they are born from above, and they are children of God, they lapse into a condition in which they again begin to think as if none of these spiritual things had happened to them at all. Like the worldly person, they allow the unknown to control them and they compare their own weakness and lack of strength with the greatness of their calling and the tremendous responsibility before them, and down they go as if they were still their natural worldly selves. They must learn to say that what matters in any of these situations, conditions, or positions is what is true of God the Father and the Son. They are deeply committed to Their promises for them. They may be weak by natu