Latest / The Daily Word / June 25 – Stir Up the Gift of God
Transcript
- Cory: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good wee hours of the night. Whatever time you are joining us, welcome to the Daily Word Podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Corey Barnes, and it's my privilege to pastor Arkitabacampus. And I'm excited to be sitting down with you for another Daily Word episode, where we're going to be doing a devotion from today's New Testament portion from our daily Bible reading plan. Today is June the 25th, And that means 2 Timothy chapter 1 is on the docket. Now, this is Paul's second letter to his spiritual son Timothy, and it's the last letter that we have from Paul chronologically. it comes from Paul's Roman imprisonment, and it's likely near the very end of his ⁓ life. Now, in this letter, is writing. To Timothy, who while still on assignment in Ephesus, Paul is asking to come to him in prison so that Paul can pass along the church planting ministry that Paul has been engaging in to Timothy. Now, before Paul gets to that request, he begins this letter by encouraging Timothy to embrace the calling on his life as a leader. And as part of that encouragement, we can see the verse that this devotion is going to come out of in 2 Timothy 1, verse 6, reading out of the New King James Version today. Therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. Now, this verse is one that I've come back to throughout my life because it's something that every leader And and I believe every believer is going to have to do from time to time. See, Paul tells Timothy to stir up the gift of God in his life. And the language that Paul uses here in the Greek, it carries the image of leaning over a fire that's burnt down until all that is left is embers. And then Fanning and blowing on those embers until they glow brighter and brighter and get hotter and hotter until eventually they get hot enough to relight the fire that went out. Now we don't know exactly what happened in Timothy's life that caused his fire to go out. I mean he was sent to Ephesus to deal with issues that were arising in the church and and maybe the demands of Of ministry caused that that fire that once burned bright to kind of kind of diminish and go out. Maybe contending with enemies of the faith just wore Timothy down over time. Whatever happened. Paul is calling Timothy to go back to the fire that once burned bright inside of him and bring that fire back to life. Can can anyone listening resignate with that thought. Had has anyone ⁓ lived life once ⁓ we recognize, we would say that was a season in my life where I was on fire for God. But I I I I don't know what happened. ⁓ Maybe was one thing, maybe it was a series of things, but along the way somewhere I the fire just kinda ⁓ kinda ⁓ out You know, I sure would like for it to be burning again, but but how how do I do that? How do we breathe life back into that fire? well let me encourage you that that fire that seems to have gone ⁓ out. I I can promise you that if God gave that fire, there are still ⁓ little embers burning. They may be small, they may be underneath some ash, but they are still there. Romans 11 tells us that the gifts and callings of God are irrevocable. And if there ever was a fire to begin with in your life, you can go back to that puppy and you can breathe life into it so that it'll burn bright again. So, how do we do that? How do we breathe life on fires that once burned in our life? Well, I can think of a few different ways that we can do that. Remember, it's using your breath. To blow on those little coals, those little embers, until they come back to life and start burning again. And there's a few ways that I can think of to do that. First, we can rehearse God's promises over our life, both those that He has personally given to us and spoken to us through through prophecy or in our prayer time. And also rehearsing the promises that he gave us through his word. Through scripture, we start speaking those things, calling them into existence, saying, Lord, you promised me that this would happen and that would happen. And as we start calling those things out, we're literally using our breath to form those words. We can we can worship and we can sing praises. We can sing hymns. We can worship the Lord just like Paul and Silas did while they were in prison in Acts 16. And we saw the results that came out of their worship then when an earthquake came and it shook the bars on that prison until it was open and they were able to walk out. And we can pray. We can pray both in our known language with the words that we know, and we can pray in our spirit language in tongues. And we can partner with God through our prayer, through our breath spoken to him in petition, so that his gifts would come back to life and that that flame would pop back up in our lives once more. So I think the application, the observation, the scripture, it's all right there for us. I think it's pretty easy to see what we should start doing, but all that's left is to get to the doing. All that's left is to jump into it and to carry through and not just let this moment pass, but to actually put action to what we're recognizing here. Let's pray. Father, I pray that you would give us the grace to be able to carry out what you're highlighting to us, Lord. If anyone who heard me talking today sees a little fire that has gone out in their life, has sees an area that needs to come back to life. Lord, I pray that you would give them the grace to be able to follow through on what you're putting on their heart to begin breathing life back into that fire. Lord, I thank you that your gifts, your callings are irrevocable. You don't just take them away from us. They're still there. And I thank you, Lord, that you have such good plans for us. You want to advance your gospel into this world and you want to shine through us that other people would see our lives and marvel at who you are and what you did in our lives so that they would choose to follow you because they want you to do the same for them. I thank you, Jesus, that every time we come to your scripture, you have such beautiful things to show us. And I thank you, Lord, that you are so worthy of being loved. We love you, Jesus. We really do. Amen.