2 Timothy 1:6 – Three Dimensions of Blessing
Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. 2 Timothy 1:6, New King James Version
"Take any doctrine and return it exclusively, "cautions a speaker whose balanced principle I revered without noting his name, "and you destroy it."
Knowing that I dislike necessary confrontation and can make too much of consensus, I love when Scripture itself reconciles in one verse what can be competing doctrines of extremes. 2 Timothy 1:6 is such a verse, intermixing in the order it mentions, the blessing of disciplined, individual human responsibility, emphasis on the sovereign, unearned gift of God, and, even still, the crucial place of community for one who will live in the fullness of God's blessing.
(1) Like Timothy we are blessed when we take responsibility to stir our gifts.
Timothy's active part in becoming more like Jesus as he ministers in Ephesus is so crucial that Paul uses precious ink, precious paper, and, even more, precious time in what is generally regarded as his last letter to repeat himself. He reminds Timothy that we cannot wait on circumstances to stir us. We cannot wait on a mentor to stir us. We cannot, holy as it sounds, fool ourselves into thinking we are waiting for God to stir us. There are steps, as we have discussed in a previous entry, we take to stir ourselves.
We prioritize prayer. We don't wait for the feeling to strike us or for someone else to motivate us. We specifically focus on reminders of God's goodness in our lineage and experience. We remember our times of tears in a fashion discerning enough to find in them God's strength made manifest in our weakness. These are disciplines that will not wait for us to monitor the excuses.
(2) We are blessed when we maintain awareness that what we stir is God's sovereign gift.
Mentions second in this instance solely because of the order in this one verse, the more we stir, the more we are active, the more we focus thought and attention, the deeper our gratitude grows. Without God's gift deposited in us, and His faithfulness to complete its development, we would be, says Paul elsewhere, but boxing the air. The more our gift is developed concurrent with our strenuous exercise of it, in fact, the more we discover that we cannot out-give God.
For He Who deposited the Holy Spirit within us as believers as His earnest, the engagement ring for us as members of the Church His Bride, He continues to give to overflowing. The sovereignty of God works concurrently with human effort. Spurgeon was right when someone asked how he reconciled the two and he brushed aside the division with the reality that he need not reconcile friends.
(3) God uses other people to deposit and develop our gifts.
Perhaps as we begin to appreciate the preeminence of God's sovereignty in blessing us with His spiritual gifts AND begin to understand the place that He gives to individual responsibility, the healthy tension between the two, we can begin to believe, is enough to occupy us. The devil's next play, unhappy as he is as we begin to grasp two of the facets of the diamond of God's grace, is to isolate us from the outworking of that grace among men.
You've heard it, and perhaps from some who are inclined toward deep theology. All they need, they believe, is there God, themselves, and their thoughts. Anyone else, one can readily come defensively assume, is a distraction. That's why I love that 2 Timothy 1:6 includes the agency of other humans at both ends. God uses Paul as Timothy's reminder to make the most of his gifts. Spiritual gifts were not Paul's to give, or Peter's to sell to the sorcerer who wanted to buy them in the book of Acts, but He does use other people with all of their limitations to develop us spiritually.
This factor can be the most perplexing to us. It stymied Bob McNamara who would go from running General Motors to becoming the architect of America's Vietnam policy. During one instance of frustration in GM, a subordinate with more management experience had the temerity to remind him in an encounter recorded in David Halberstam's The Reckoning, ""It's too bad, isn't it, Bob, that the place has to be run with people? They have so many flaws."
We need reminders that God uses people's hands to convey His gifts to us. We need reminders that God uses people's open hands to prove the efficacy of the gifts He has given us by receiving from us what He enables us to produce. Other people aren't an interference or a doctrinal aberration. They are His reflected image, and they will be our co-heirs and fellow rulers forever.
"Take any doctrine and return it exclusively, "cautions a speaker whose balanced principle I revered without noting his name, "and you destroy it."
Knowing that I dislike necessary confrontation and can make too much of consensus, I love when Scripture itself reconciles in one verse what can be competing doctrines of extremes. 2 Timothy 1:6 is such a verse, intermixing in the order it mentions, the blessing of disciplined, individual human responsibility, emphasis on the sovereign, unearned gift of God, and, even still, the crucial place of community for one who will live in the fullness of God's blessing.
(1) Like Timothy we are blessed when we take responsibility to stir our gifts.
Timothy's active part in becoming more like Jesus as he ministers in Ephesus is so crucial that Paul uses precious ink, precious paper, and, even more, precious time in what is generally regarded as his last letter to repeat himself. He reminds Timothy that we cannot wait on circumstances to stir us. We cannot wait on a mentor to stir us. We cannot, holy as it sounds, fool ourselves into thinking we are waiting for God to stir us. There are steps, as we have discussed in a previous entry, we take to stir ourselves.
We prioritize prayer. We don't wait for the feeling to strike us or for someone else to motivate us. We specifically focus on reminders of God's goodness in our lineage and experience. We remember our times of tears in a fashion discerning enough to find in them God's strength made manifest in our weakness. These are disciplines that will not wait for us to monitor the excuses.
(2) We are blessed when we maintain awareness that what we stir is God's sovereign gift.
Mentions second in this instance solely because of the order in this one verse, the more we stir, the more we are active, the more we focus thought and attention, the deeper our gratitude grows. Without God's gift deposited in us, and His faithfulness to complete its development, we would be, says Paul elsewhere, but boxing the air. The more our gift is developed concurrent with our strenuous exercise of it, in fact, the more we discover that we cannot out-give God.
For He Who deposited the Holy Spirit within us as believers as His earnest, the engagement ring for us as members of the Church His Bride, He continues to give to overflowing. The sovereignty of God works concurrently with human effort. Spurgeon was right when someone asked how he reconciled the two and he brushed aside the division with the reality that he need not reconcile friends.
(3) God uses other people to deposit and develop our gifts.
Perhaps as we begin to appreciate the preeminence of God's sovereignty in blessing us with His spiritual gifts AND begin to understand the place that He gives to individual responsibility, the healthy tension between the two, we can begin to believe, is enough to occupy us. The devil's next play, unhappy as he is as we begin to grasp two of the facets of the diamond of God's grace, is to isolate us from the outworking of that grace among men.
You've heard it, and perhaps from some who are inclined toward deep theology. All they need, they believe, is there God, themselves, and their thoughts. Anyone else, one can readily come defensively assume, is a distraction. That's why I love that 2 Timothy 1:6 includes the agency of other humans at both ends. God uses Paul as Timothy's reminder to make the most of his gifts. Spiritual gifts were not Paul's to give, or Peter's to sell to the sorcerer who wanted to buy them in the book of Acts, but He does use other people with all of their limitations to develop us spiritually.
This factor can be the most perplexing to us. It stymied Bob McNamara who would go from running General Motors to becoming the architect of America's Vietnam policy. During one instance of frustration in GM, a subordinate with more management experience had the temerity to remind him in an encounter recorded in David Halberstam's The Reckoning, ""It's too bad, isn't it, Bob, that the place has to be run with people? They have so many flaws."
We need reminders that God uses people's hands to convey His gifts to us. We need reminders that God uses people's open hands to prove the efficacy of the gifts He has given us by receiving from us what He enables us to produce. Other people aren't an interference or a doctrinal aberration. They are His reflected image, and they will be our co-heirs and fellow rulers forever.
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