2 Timothy 1:6 – Three Ways to Stir up Your Spiritual Gifts
Therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you… 2 Timothy 1:6, New King James Version
I remember camping, sort of. As with most rites of passage, my experience was different. Camping in a wheelchair would be expected to be. Camping with kids across the spectrum of disability, well, that we kept at all is a gift of grace.
The adventure was loaded. With promise and perplexity enough. The counselors at the special camp where I went in the summers from the ages of 12 to 15 didn't need the campfire to add to their challenges and distract their attention. With the chance to spark inspiration into flame in the lives of real humans, they didn't need to prove they could strike two rocks together and suddenly produce a roaring blaze for marshmallows.
They didn't. The area where we camped for one night session was well-stocked with fuel to ignite the campfire and to maintain it. I remember being slightly disappointed that help ward new supplies were only a golf cart ride away. But as we were set up, even the counselor with the least wilderness experience could show all the savvy of Grizzly Adams.
I consider that with respect to Paul's instruction to Timothy beginning 2 Timothy 1:6. His charge has the ring of nudging Timothy toward a wilderness adventure, but the kind I went on as an adolescent. He gets Timothy responsibility for stirring up the spiritual gifts that are within him, but his position for this responsibility is as well-stocked as that campsite.
Why? By God's grace, Paul has already modeled how to stir up spiritual gifts. I'm certain he did it in the macro over Paul and Timothy's time together, but he also condensed some of these principles for Timothy in the first five verses of the epistle. Let's look at three ways Paul showed timothy how to stir up his gifts.
(1) Remember others have stirred the fire before.
Like the counselors at the campsite I knew as a kid, we rest along with Timothy in the reality that this has been done before. Even though they are already familiar with each other through an intense discipleship relationship and one canonical epistle, Paul has already reminded Timothy of the fire Christ lit in Paul, of the torch Christ passed to Paul.
Every flammable metaphor we could employ would not be enough to hold a candle to the completeness of what Christ has done in Paul. Yet we know enough, Timothy knows enough, to understand that he is not the first one to stir Christ's gifts.
God has even so positioned Timothy, and reminded him through Paul's words, that Timothy can see the stirring of God's gifts within his own family. The grace of Christ comes to his memory in Mom's inflections and Grandma's sagacity. He knows, as do we, the trials Christ has been faithful to bring them through. He can reflect on this, compare its reality to his phantasmagorical fears, and stir his faith.
(2) Past and present prayer rekindles faith.
As daunting as the instruction to stir his own faith might be, Timothy is not receiving it from a martinet. Paul has been kind and candid enough to tell him that he has prayed for Timothy night and day. These instructions, even when challenging, are bathed in prayer and delivered as divine words.
Timothy can then stir his affection where we can stir ours. We have been prayed for. We are being prayed for. Surely mentors have taken their most artist cares for us to the throne and have come away with timely counsel, but we have a treasure even greater than this.
Christ prays for us. He is ever making intercession. Through His Spirit, He promised to bring His Word to our remembrance and to give us words to say, especially when we are in trouble.
We can stir our affections and intentions based on the prayers that have already taken place, but there's more. There's a standing invitation. As we recognize Christ is STILL interceding with the Father for us, we can join Him in prayer.
Where our affections are cold and we are distracted, we can, contrary to what CS Lewis says the demons desire, admit exactly that. Rather than redacting our expressions into a prayer language of which people can approve, we can bring our desires as they are and to trust Christ to transform.
(3) Remembering our weakness in context is inspiring.
Bringing Timothy's tears to mind is an odd way for inspired Paul to stir him to stir himself for action. With our ideas of motivation, these don't mix any better than fire and water would. But wait.
Let's look beyond the tears on the young man's cheeks. They dried, and Paul witnessed them evaporating. It was their relationship which emerged stronger.
As Paul and Timothy remembered tears, we can take the same 360° view of our weakest moments. When we seemed to break down, as perhaps Timothy did, we did not break down alone. Many times in our darkest moments we experience Ecclesiastes' cord of three strands in that Christ Himself is our resilience, but He also provides human hands to dry our tears and remember them as part of a developing relationship.
Even our tears can stir our faith when we remember that when we fell we did not fall down alone. Even our tears can stir our spiritual gifts when we deliberately recall that Christ fell under the weight of the crossbeam, and ultimately died on the cross, to bring gifts to men like the ones we have the opportunity to walk in now.
Our weakest impulses, then, and every reminder of them, are not unto death. We are no longer lonely, or depressed, or frustrated as a foreboding reminder of worse ahead.
Instead, even our tears our communion with Christ. Even our tears, as in Ezekiel are a public testimony that our hope is not in this world. Even our tears are a shibboleth of true fellowship. This stirs our gifts to serve Christ as we serve those made in His image.
I remember camping, sort of. As with most rites of passage, my experience was different. Camping in a wheelchair would be expected to be. Camping with kids across the spectrum of disability, well, that we kept at all is a gift of grace.
The adventure was loaded. With promise and perplexity enough. The counselors at the special camp where I went in the summers from the ages of 12 to 15 didn't need the campfire to add to their challenges and distract their attention. With the chance to spark inspiration into flame in the lives of real humans, they didn't need to prove they could strike two rocks together and suddenly produce a roaring blaze for marshmallows.
They didn't. The area where we camped for one night session was well-stocked with fuel to ignite the campfire and to maintain it. I remember being slightly disappointed that help ward new supplies were only a golf cart ride away. But as we were set up, even the counselor with the least wilderness experience could show all the savvy of Grizzly Adams.
I consider that with respect to Paul's instruction to Timothy beginning 2 Timothy 1:6. His charge has the ring of nudging Timothy toward a wilderness adventure, but the kind I went on as an adolescent. He gets Timothy responsibility for stirring up the spiritual gifts that are within him, but his position for this responsibility is as well-stocked as that campsite.
Why? By God's grace, Paul has already modeled how to stir up spiritual gifts. I'm certain he did it in the macro over Paul and Timothy's time together, but he also condensed some of these principles for Timothy in the first five verses of the epistle. Let's look at three ways Paul showed timothy how to stir up his gifts.
(1) Remember others have stirred the fire before.
Like the counselors at the campsite I knew as a kid, we rest along with Timothy in the reality that this has been done before. Even though they are already familiar with each other through an intense discipleship relationship and one canonical epistle, Paul has already reminded Timothy of the fire Christ lit in Paul, of the torch Christ passed to Paul.
Every flammable metaphor we could employ would not be enough to hold a candle to the completeness of what Christ has done in Paul. Yet we know enough, Timothy knows enough, to understand that he is not the first one to stir Christ's gifts.
God has even so positioned Timothy, and reminded him through Paul's words, that Timothy can see the stirring of God's gifts within his own family. The grace of Christ comes to his memory in Mom's inflections and Grandma's sagacity. He knows, as do we, the trials Christ has been faithful to bring them through. He can reflect on this, compare its reality to his phantasmagorical fears, and stir his faith.
(2) Past and present prayer rekindles faith.
As daunting as the instruction to stir his own faith might be, Timothy is not receiving it from a martinet. Paul has been kind and candid enough to tell him that he has prayed for Timothy night and day. These instructions, even when challenging, are bathed in prayer and delivered as divine words.
Timothy can then stir his affection where we can stir ours. We have been prayed for. We are being prayed for. Surely mentors have taken their most artist cares for us to the throne and have come away with timely counsel, but we have a treasure even greater than this.
Christ prays for us. He is ever making intercession. Through His Spirit, He promised to bring His Word to our remembrance and to give us words to say, especially when we are in trouble.
We can stir our affections and intentions based on the prayers that have already taken place, but there's more. There's a standing invitation. As we recognize Christ is STILL interceding with the Father for us, we can join Him in prayer.
Where our affections are cold and we are distracted, we can, contrary to what CS Lewis says the demons desire, admit exactly that. Rather than redacting our expressions into a prayer language of which people can approve, we can bring our desires as they are and to trust Christ to transform.
(3) Remembering our weakness in context is inspiring.
Bringing Timothy's tears to mind is an odd way for inspired Paul to stir him to stir himself for action. With our ideas of motivation, these don't mix any better than fire and water would. But wait.
Let's look beyond the tears on the young man's cheeks. They dried, and Paul witnessed them evaporating. It was their relationship which emerged stronger.
As Paul and Timothy remembered tears, we can take the same 360° view of our weakest moments. When we seemed to break down, as perhaps Timothy did, we did not break down alone. Many times in our darkest moments we experience Ecclesiastes' cord of three strands in that Christ Himself is our resilience, but He also provides human hands to dry our tears and remember them as part of a developing relationship.
Even our tears can stir our faith when we remember that when we fell we did not fall down alone. Even our tears can stir our spiritual gifts when we deliberately recall that Christ fell under the weight of the crossbeam, and ultimately died on the cross, to bring gifts to men like the ones we have the opportunity to walk in now.
Our weakest impulses, then, and every reminder of them, are not unto death. We are no longer lonely, or depressed, or frustrated as a foreboding reminder of worse ahead.
Instead, even our tears our communion with Christ. Even our tears, as in Ezekiel are a public testimony that our hope is not in this world. Even our tears are a shibboleth of true fellowship. This stirs our gifts to serve Christ as we serve those made in His image.
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