Friday: I Am Shy and Tied Up
WEEK 46
FRIDAY
I AM SHY AND TIED UP
Mark 4:37-41
We are looking at the mastery of shyness and self-consciousness. Paul said to the timid Timothy that he was not ashamed because he knew whom he had believed, and he was able to guard what Paul had entrusted to him. The remedy for shyness and introversion was twofold, “I know whom,” and, “I am sure that he is able to guard what [I have entrusted to him]” (2 Tim 1:12 RSV [margin note]). What had Paul entrusted (or “committed” KJV) to him? This thing, that thing, the other thing? No, Paul had committed himself to Christ. In other words, he had made a self-surrender. The self-surrender had cured self-consciousness. He got himself off his own hands into the hands of Christ. That broke the tyranny of self-preoccupation and self-interest and gave him a Christ-preoccupation and a Christ-interest. As a result, his shame and his shyness dropped away. He was absorbed with Christ. He talked about him, thought about him, and loved him; and as a result he forgot himself. His timidity was gone.
If you have to talk about yourself, think about yourself, be preoccupied with yourself, then of course you will become automatically timid and shy. For you’ll be conscious of your own shortcomings. But surrendered to Christ, your center is Christ, your love is Christ, and your message is Christ. Then you have something to talk about and something worthwhile to talk about. Shyness and timidity are swallowed up in a new passion to talk about him.
At interview time, an African American college youth said to me very seriously, “I’m invited to these nights where we can meet the girls, but I don’t know what to say when I meet them. I am shy and tied up.”
I answered, “You’re not in love with any of them, are you?” He slowly replied: “No, I don’t believe I am.” I replied, “That’s your trouble. When you really fall in love with one of them, you’ll know what to say; it will say itself.” That leads us to the center of the problem of shyness and timidity in religion: it is that you’ve never really surrendered yourself to him. When you do, you’ll love him; and if you love him, you’ll talk about him. Sam Shoemaker says: “If you’re shy in religion, you’re shy of religion.”*
O Christ, if I do not talk about you, the stones will cry out; the hard, bare facts will cry out. Take my shyness and set it ablaze with you. I surrender it to you. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am free from shyness, for I am free from myself; Christ has me, has me wholly.
* No published source was located for this quotation, but see Samuel M. Shoemaker, Confident Faith (New York: Revell, 1932).