Fan into Flame the Gift of God

Pastor Ron Burcham

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Christmas 2005 is nothing more than a distant memory, isn't it? By now, probably everything is packed away. Thanks to the nice weather, at least around my neighborhood, everyone's taken down their lights and put them away for the year. I'm guessing your Christmas tree has been packed up and stowed away. The Christmas cards have been dutifully recycled. Yes, Christmas is a distant memory. But do you realize it was only three weeks ago? It was only three weeks ago, with all the hype and all the attention and all the preparation, and it was only three weeks ago but yet it seems like a distant memory. That was last year, for pity's sake. That was a long time ago.

For instance, if I were to ask you to take out a pencil and piece of paper, could you write down all of the gifts you received at Christmas and who gave them to you? More of a challenge: When you went home after service this morning, could you find all of the gifts that were given to you at Christmas and bring it back together in one spot again?

It seems to me, when people give a gift, there is an expectation or at least a hope that gift will be received, accepted, that the gift will be enjoyed and that gift will be used, not forgotten, not tucked away in the back of the closet or stored away in some closet someplace but that it's accepted, enjoyed, and used.

For instance, every year, I know my in-laws are going to give me clothes for Christmas. Now, before you feel sorry for me, I'm lucky. My mother-in-law has great taste. I look forward each year to find out what she's going to pick out for me to wear. But I guarantee that, within a couple of weeks after Christmas, I'll run into her someplace and she'll see I'm wearing the new sweater, the new slacks, or the new sport coat or whatever, and immediately a smile will come to her face. Now I'd like to believe that's for me, but I know it's not. It's because of the fact I'm wearing the new sweater she bought me. And so she'll come up and say, “Well, now, is that your sweater you have on?” And I'll say, “Yeah, Mom, doesn't it look great.” And she'll say, “Yeah.” Because she wants to know I accepted her gift, I liked her gift, and I was going to use her gift. I'm going to wear it. That's the expectations with gifts of Christmas.

It's also the expectation with the gift of Christmas God has given us a gift. And God wants us to accept that gift, to enjoy that gift, and to use that gift. That's why St. Paul, when he was writing to a young pastor named Timothy, wrote these words, “I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother, Lois, and then your mother, Eunice, and I'm persuaded now lives in you also. For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying out of my hands, for God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power, of love, and of self discipline.” In essence, what St. Paul is asking is, “Timothy, God has given you a great gift. What are you doing with that gift?” St. Paul is asking Timothy what are you doing with the gift God has given to you.

And that, my friends, is the question for us this morning. What are you doing with the gift God has given to you? St. Paul goes on to explain what this gift is, this gift God has given to Timothy. It's the same gift He's given to us. He said, “Do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord or ashamed of me, His prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God who has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we've done but because of His own purpose and grace.” What is the gift? What is the gift God gave to Timothy? What is the gift God has given to you? What's the gift God's given to me? It's the gospel. The gospel message is the gift. It's the gospel message that says there is an almighty God in heaven and that almighty God looked down upon us and saw our plight and He asked His one and only Son to come down and be a part of us. The gospel is the fact that Jesus is the God man, that although He is completely God, He took on flesh and blood, and He came and He lived among us. He revealed God to us. He taught us. And though He was sinless, He took on all of our sins and He died for us and He came back to life again. That's the gospel message. You see, the gospel message, the gift God has given to us, is forgiveness through the blood of Jesus, forgiveness for all of our sins. And each and every one of us carries the burden of our sin.

Now whether we call it sin or not, that's another thing. Some people don't like the word “sin,” so maybe you want to soften the blow and you want to say, “Well, it's mistakes I've made,” or “It's poor judgments,” or “It's miscalculations,” or “It's bad decisions.” But whatever you call it, what you have to deal with is the burden of it. And the burden is a guilty conscience. It's that small voice in your head that says what you've done is wrong. What you have to deal with is the burden of shame, the shame over something you've done or the shame over something you haven't done. What you have to live with are the regrets, the regrets over past actions. And every human being has to live with that. Every human being knows the pressure of that. The gift is that God takes it all away. The gospel says that, through the blood of Jesus, although He was sinless, He took on all of your sin and He paid the debt, which means your conscience can be clean. It means the shame is wiped away. It means the regrets are gone because God says you start out fresh each and every day, clean slate, as if nothing happened the day before. That's the gift God has given to us.

But there's more. There's more to the gift. St. Paul continues on writing to his young apprentice. He says, “But it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.” He has destroyed death and brought immortality to light. The gift is immortality. We don't usually talk about it in those terms, but that's what God has done. God has made you immortal. Each and every one of us knows we will not live forever in this world. We don't like to talk about it. We don't want to think about it, but the fact of the matter is each one of us knows there's going to come a point in our life when this life will end. We hope it's a long ways away. We hope it's painless and we hope it's quick, but we all know it's coming. The gift says that's not the end. The gift God has given to you says that's not the end. That's only the beginning. It's the beginning of a new life, a better life. It's the beginning of something you can't even imagine. It's the beginning of an eternity with God Himself and a joy and a peace and a happiness we can't even begin to comprehend. That's the gift God has given to us.

And the great thing is God just gives it. God says there's no way you can earn it. There's certainly no way you deserve it, but God gives it freely. In reality, it is the greatest gift you've ever received. It's the greatest gift that has ever been given and it's the greatest gift you have ever received. But do we act that way? Do we act as if the greatest gift that has ever been given that we've received that? Do we have any kind of excitement over the gift, any kind of passion because of what God has done for us and what God will do in our lives? It seems to me that we get more excited about purchasing a new home than we do about the gospel message, that we get more worked up about going to pick up our new car than about hearing about the blood of Jesus forgiving us all of our sins. To be honest, we probably get more excited about a new sweater at Christmas than we do about the fact that God loves us.

What happened to the passion? What happened to the excitement for what God has done? What happened to that spark that's there? All of us have had it. Whether we came to faith as a child through the waters of baptism or through an adult, through the reading of God's Word, all of us at one time had that spark, had that passion, that excitement. Have you ever witnessed the faith of a child? It's great. Faith of a child is astounding to me. Walk down the education wing sometime. Visit the preschool. They're amazing. They have a strong, committed faith and a confidence about them. They not only believe God can do everything but God will do everything. That's the confidence they have.

My two younger daughters, we still tuck them in at night and we say our prayers with them. And we always start them out just on a memorized prayer. And we've been doing that for awhile. Well, now here lately, the older of the two, Madison, she's 6, but I need to add almost 7. It's important. She's been adding on to the prayers at night. So she'll say her memorized prayer and then she'll add on to that. And then she'll say, “Dear Jesus, thank you for the day. Thank you for the presents I received.” If somebody in the family is sick, she'll say, “Please make Mackenzie feel better. Hope Mommy's cold goes away. Help Nana's shoulder feel better.” She not only prays it, though, Folks, she believes it. I mean she believes it in the depth of her heart and soul that Jesus is listening and Jesus is going to answer. Is it any wonder that Jesus said we should have the faith of a child, to have that spark, to have that excitement?

Have you ever been around an adult who's come to faith in Christ? A person where the faith is new to them. For whatever reason, it finally has gotten through and they understand the gospel and what Jesus has done for them. If you have, you probably tried to avoid them. Let's be honest with yourselves. You'd probably avoid them, because their language is laced with words like “God” and “Jesus” and the “power of prayer.” See, they're not shy. They're not timid. They're excited about what God has done for them, and they want to tell other people about what God is doing in their lives.

Where's our spark? Where's our passion? Where did it go? And maybe a better question is how can we get it back? How can we get that spark back? How can we have that excitement in our lives about God and all the things He's done for us and look forward to all the things He's going to do in the future? St. Paul says to Timothy, “Fan into flames the gift of God.” He says, “Rekindle the fire. Rekindle the fire and get it going and get it blazing brightly again.” He says, “God didn't give you a spirit of timidity.” God did not give you a spirit of timidity. God never intended for us to be covert Christians. Do you know what covert Christians are? Covert Christians are undercover Christians. That means we believe in Christ but we want to make sure nobody knows. We're really careful. God doesn't want you to be a covert Christian. God never intended for you to be shy, bashful. Certainly, God didn't want you to be apathetic about your faith. God says, “I've given you a spirit of power. I've given you a spirit of love. I've given you the spirit of self discipline.” That's what God has given to us. It's an untapped power resource we can't even imagine. God says He's given you the spirit of power. That means, within you, there is a boldness you don't even know. There is a strength, there is confidence you don't even know you have. But the gift God has given to you, His spirit, is a spirit of power and strength within you. God's given you the spirit of love. That means you can love others unconditionally. Without that spirit, you couldn't do it. But because of God's gift to you, you can love your spouse unconditionally. You can love your children unconditionally. Because of God's love in you, it means you can love somebody else even if they don't love you back. It means you can love somebody else who's mean and downright nasty to you, but you can still love them. That's the power that's within you. God says you have the power of self discipline. That means God enables you to live the life He desires, to live the life that, frankly, we desire. When we've been hit by the gospel, the life we want to live is in conjunction with the life God wants us to live and He says, “You have the power to do that because that's the spirit living within you.”

It's time for us to stop being timid. It's time for us to stop being covert Christians. It's time to be bold about our faith, to be excited about what God has done, to have a passion for everything that's happening in our lives. It's time to rekindle the fire. It's time to fan it into flames. We rekindle the fire when we feed the fire. Every fire needs to be fed. Fires need oxygen to grow. Our fire needs the word of God. The word of God is like oxygen to us. It rekindles the fire. It gets it burning brighter. We need to hear from God's word, to study God's word, learn from God's word, and have that fire rekindled within us. We need to join together one fire to another because we burn stronger and brighter as two rather than one.

I ran across an interesting pamphlet from the U.S. Government talking about forest fires. It says a solid line of fire always spreads faster, and this builds up intensity quicker than does a series of spot ignitions. Intensity increases abruptly when two fires burn together. Intensity increases abruptly when two fires join together. What that's saying is we need each other. If we're going to rekindle the passion within us, if we're going to rekindle the fire, we have to come together. Because when we come together, two fires will intensify abruptly burning together. We come together as fellow Christians studying God's word. We come together to enjoy the fellowship of one another, to pray for one another, to spur each other on. We rekindle each other and the end result is we're all burning stronger and brighter and have more excitement and passion to us than we would if we were separate. We need to feed the fire, and we need to join our fires together.

Next week, we begin rekindling the fire in this congregation and, I pray, in this community. We're going to begin rekindling the fire. I'm going to offer a series of messages on Sunday morning for six weeks, studying God's word, learning from God's word, being fed with God's word so that fire can be rekindled and start burning brightly. If you haven't already, I pray that you will sign up for a small group so you can join together with other Christians, that you can come together and intensify abruptly the fire that's burning inside of you. As you enjoy each other's company and the fellowship you have, as you study God's word, as you pray for one another, and as you watch each other's fire grow stronger and brighter each and every week, I believe it's vitally important for us as a congregation and us as Christians to rekindle the fire that God has put inside of us. Because He has given us the greatest gift you could ever receive.

It's time we do something with that gift. It's time we rekindle the fire. Amen.