Stir up the gift
Fan the embers
Timothy had a genuine gift from God, and yet Paul, writing to him near the end, found it necessary to prod: stir up the gift of God which is in you. The word Paul uses is a fire word — fan into flame, rekindle, blow on the embers. The gift was real and present, but it had grown cool, banked down, in danger of dimming to a glow. Even a true gift can go dormant if it is not tended.
This is a needed word as we finish discovering our pathways, because knowing your gift is not the same as using it. It is entirely possible to identify the way God wired you to love him and then do nothing with it — to let the embers cool under discouragement, busyness, fear, or simple neglect, until the fire that once burned is only a memory and a faint warmth.
Paul's remedy is active: stir it up, fan it, blow on the coals. Gifts do not maintain themselves; they must be deliberately tended or they fade. Whatever pathway you have come to recognize in this stage, the danger now is to leave it as a self-discovery rather than a summons. The embers are there. The call is to kneel down and blow on them until they catch fire again.
“I remind you that you should stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.”
— Paul, to Timothy — 2 Timothy 1:6 (WEB)
Stir up the gift of God in you — fanning the embers of the way you meet him into flame, rather than leaving your pathway as mere self-discovery.
“Don't neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the elders.”
Even a genuine gift goes dormant when untended, and it is easy to identify how God wired us and then do nothing, letting the embers cool under busyness, discouragement, or fear. The interior work is to treat your recognized pathway as a summons, not a fact — to deliberately tend and use the gift, fanning the coals into flame — since gifts do not maintain themselves and fade when neglected.
This week, take concrete action on the pathway you have come to recognize: use it, develop it, give it away once. Blow on the embers — schedule it, practice it, offer it — rather than letting your self-discovery cool into another unused fact.
Discouragement and busyness are content to let a discovered gift lie unused, the fire cooling under neglect until the pathway is only a memory. But even genuine gifts dim untended, and the cure is to kneel by the cooling coals and blow — and a soul that fans its God-given way into flame becomes a fire not easily put out.
There is a quiet tragedy in the dormant gift — the pathway recognized but never developed, the way God wired you to love him left to cool under the weight of busyness, discouragement, or fear, until the fire is only embers. Even genuine gifts fade when untended; that is precisely why Paul had to prod a gifted man to fan his into flame.
Knowing your pathway is only the beginning; the gift must be stirred, used, deliberately tended, or it dims. This whole stage will have been mere self-discovery unless it becomes a summons to action — to kneel by the cooling coals of the way you meet God and blow on them until they blaze again. Do not let what you have found here settle into another interesting fact about yourself. Stir up the gift of God that is in you, and tend the fire until it burns.
- Have I let the gift God gave me cool into embers?
- Is my pathway a summons I am acting on, or just a fact about myself?
- What concrete step would fan my gift back into flame?
Lord, you have given me a gift and a way to love you, and I have let it cool under neglect and fear. Help me stir it up, fan the embers into flame, and tend the fire — turning what I have discovered into a summons I actually obey. Amen.