The thing that helped me was realizing this wasn’t abstract theology. You probably know that Paul wrote 2 Timothy from a Roman prison cell during Nero’s persecution, probably shortly before his execution around AD 67. Christians were being burned alive as entertainment. 
So when people slap this verse on a wall hanging… I mean, okay. But there’s a lot more going on.
The word translated as ‘fear’ here isn’t the Greek you would normally see for fear or terror. It’s deilia, which specifically means cowardice or timidity - look at Vine’s Expository Dictionary, it says it’s ‘never used in a good sense.’
Paul isn’t talking about healthy reverence toward God. He’s talking about the kind of shrinking back that stops you from doing what you’re called to do, the kind that makes you abandon someone when it gets dangerous.
And people were deserting, you know? Phygelus and Hermogenes had already abandoned Paul because they were ashamed of being associated with an accused criminal. So when he tells Timothy ‘God didn’t give you a spirit of deilia,’ he’s saying this to a young pastor in Ephesus whose mentor is about to die and whose entire community is under genuine threat.
Oh, and the alternative Paul offers is specific: power (dunamis, the root of our word dynamite), love (agape, the self-giving kind), and a sound mind.
On top of that, the Greek word sophronismos breaks down to something like ‘saving the mind’ - from sozo (to save) and phren (mind). So it’s about maintaining clear thinking and self-control even when everything around you is collapsing. Given Nero’s Rome, that was a lot to ask.
Anyway. It was written to someone who had every reason to be afraid and every reason to quit. That matters for how we interpret it.