Have friends or even family ever deserted you because of difficulties you faced while standing for the truth? They’ve been ashamed or embarrassed to be associated with you. And it cost you.

If you have, you can allow Paul’s healing words to come alive in you and be a pattern for your life. 

Listen to Paul’s words from prison to Timothy. Some of the most powerful testimonies of faith come from those who have been imprisoned for their beliefs. Not all prisons have bars of steel. Even in his suffering, Paul wrote:

• God will never give you the spirit of fear. He will give you the Holy Spirit who gives you mighty power, love, and a mind that has been delivered, protected, and secured.

• So don’t be ashamed of the testimony of Jesus or embarrassed over my imprisonment.

• Instead, overcome every evil by the revelation of the power of God.

• Jesus, our Life-Giver, who has dismantled death, obliterated all its   effects on our lives. His immortal life is manifested in us—we have been given resurrection life. 

• So, I am confident in the holy calling of God on our lives to teach the truth (see II Timothy 1:6-15).

Paul said that every difficulty could be overcome without shame, “For I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until the day of his return” (v. 12).

To entrust something means “to deposit it somewhere for safekeeping; to prevent it from being snatched away.” Paul’s faith convinced him that God was more than able to keep all that was placed in His hands safe and secure.

Stand guard, take hold of, and watch over this incomparable treasure by the Holy Spirit living within you and His promise that everything you entrust to Him is safeguarded.