Boldly Fan the Flame

Well, good morning everybody. Thanks for being here. If you’re new a big welcome to you. I’m glad you’re here. If you’ve been coming for a while or even for a long time, really glad that you’re here sharing with us this morning. So welcome, everybody. When Kyle said to me, would I be willing to preach? I was really wondering what I should talk about. Because if you’ve been with us over the last number of months, you’ll know that through the summer we’ve been doing a series, or we did a series where we were talking about passing on the torch, as it were, to the next generation. And then most recently, we’ve been talking about relationships and marriage and putting on the marriage clothes. So then it came to this sermon and the question was just, well, how do you follow up on that? And I really felt the Lord say to me, just share about some of the things that you’ve been challenged about, because clearly, hopefully, if it’s been a challenge to me, I’m trusting that it will be a challenge to you too. So I called this sermon Boldly Fan the Flame. And what I’m hoping is that we’ll come away being unashamed and bold and wanting to speak for Jesus Christ. So if you have your Bibles with you, the back of your bulletin says 1 Timothy. That is incorrect. It is 2 Timothy 1:3-9, so I don’t want you to be confused, but otherwise you can just follow along with what’s on the screen.

I’m going to read it to us. Timothy, (this is Paul writing to his mentee, Timothy.) Timothy, I thank God for you. The God I serve with a clear conscience, just as my ancestors did night and day I constantly remember you in my prayers. I long to see you again, for I remember your tears as we parted, and I will be filled with joy when we are together again. I remember your genuine faith for you share the faith that first filled your grandmother Lois, and your mother, Eunice. And I know that that same faith continues strong in you. This is why I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you. For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline. So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord. Don’t be ashamed of me either, even though I am in prison for him. With the strength God gives you, be ready to suffer with me for the sake of the good news. For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this not because we deserved it, but because it was his plan from the beginning of time to show us his grace through Christ Jesus.

So here’s what I was challenged about. I will share with you, and that, I pray might be a challenge for you this morning. Three things.. He says to Timothy, I remind you to fan into flames the spiritual gift that God gave you. And we’re going to talk about fanning into flame what God has given us in our ministry and our spiritual gifts. Second thing he says is God has not given us the spirit of fear and timidity, but of love, power and self-discipline, not timidity, but instead power, love and self-discipline. What does that mean and how does it affect my life? And then, number three, never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord. So being empowered by the Holy Spirit, being fired up for him, unashamed of speaking up for Jesus. So that’s really the main point. We need to be fired up for Jesus so we won’t be timid, and we will not be ashamed to share Christ with others. So as I was kind of thinking about this, a story, not a story, a factual account came to mind of corporate timidity. Being timid as a company and how it really potentially can cost you. You might have seen this little funny quip. You have a photographic memory. Too bad you never developed it. Now, anyone born after 2000. You didn’t even get that. You’re like, what’s it mean? So you might not know that film used to be the thing. Cameras had film in them. You took the photo. And by the way, you better get it right the first time because there was no deleting and doing it again. Took the photo, you then took it down to the store, and the camera store would put it in the darkroom, and they would develop and print the film. They developed it. And that, by the way, is now totally by the wayside. Every one of you has what is now a digital camera in your phone. I want to take you back to 1973. This guy’s name is Steven Stassen and he is a new engineer at Kodak. Now, at that time, Kodak, Eastman Kodak owned photography. They were the boss of it. All the cameras were Kodak cameras. All the film was Kodak film. The processing was done by Kodak. They totally dominated everything. So you might ask, well, who’s Steven Sasson? Well, he was an engineer who was employed in 1973. And in 1975 he developed the first digital camera. And that actually is the original digital camera, the blue one on the left that was made at the time. And it could take a photograph and then store the image on the cassette tape. Remember those? We don’t have those anymore either. And then you could take the cassette tape and you could put it in a different camera and you could project the image. Now, I don’t actually have a picture of the image, but it was super grainy just to say. But bottom line is that went on and became the digital camera. Why am I telling you this story? Well, he patented the digital technology in 1975 and he went to Kodak, to the head of the companies and the leaders and said, this is the new thing, this is what we need to be doing. And they were like, I’m not sure about that. He said, you know, we are owning the world here. Everything is print. We are doing that. We don’t really think that technology is going to be that special. We don’t really think people are going to be excited about doing that. In fact, the quotable quote was, it’s a cute idea. Keep it to yourself. Well, clearly they got it completely wrong and their timidity really cost them. Fortunately, they had patented the idea because other companies totally took over in this space, but they still had to pay Kodak for the privilege of using their patent. But in 2007, the patent ran out, and in 2012, Kodak ceased to exist. Timidity didn’t serve them well. So as we’re going to be talking about fanning the flame, and as we’re going to be talking about not timid, but power, love and self-discipline and unashamed to share the gospel of Christ, we’re going to need to see that God is not called us to be timid, but rather to be bold for Jesus Christ. And that’s why you heard Joshua, the section that was read focusing our attention on being bold and very courageous.

So pretty much the three things I want to talk about is to start off with saying we’re being asked, just as Timothy was, to fan into flames, the spiritual gift God gave you. So the first question is to be, well, what is that gift? And what does it mean that he received it with the laying on of hands? Does that tell us a little bit more about what exactly the gift might be? Well, in the Bible there are really four ways in which laying on of hands happens. Two are probably not relevant here. So the first two are babies being blessed. Timothy is clearly not a baby or sick people being prayed for. Not appropriate. But the two things that are is firstly, receiving the spirit, or receiving spiritual gifts, or being given a mission or being set apart for a task. So clearly it’s those two things that Paul is talking about here. Some people have said it’s really the gift that Paul is talking about is the ministry that he has. Others have said that there is a specific gift that he has, and they get from 2 Timothy 4:5,that it was probably the gift of evangelism because Paul says, as for you, be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfilling your ministry. I think, to be honest, probably doesn’t matter. It was probably both. He was being told, use your gift. Be powered up for the ministry because that’s what really needs to be fanned into flame. So I guess I want to pause here for a minute as I was challenging myself, and I would challenge you, is to say, what’s the gift God’s given you? What is he asked you to do? What’s the mission or the ministry that you’re involved in? What are the spiritual gifts that he has given you? Maybe your mission is your family. Maybe your mission is your job environment. Maybe your mission is that neighbor next door or that community that you’re serving. As we’re thinking about fanning the flame for the kingdom of God. The question is, what’s my ministry? What’s my gifting that the Lord wants me to fan into flame? Now it’s interesting the word here for fanning the flame can kind of be interpreted two ways, and I think it’s actually interesting because both are pretty relevant. The first means to rekindle something that’s just barely flickering. It’s to get it going. And I think of times at the campfire where it’s really not that great and the wood is kind of wet, and I’m blowing to the point where I’m lightheaded and can hardly stand up, to get the flame going. So that’s one of the things. And maybe you look at your life and you see my ministry, or what I’m being gifted to do really is flickering.

And I need to, by the power of the spirit, have that be fanned into flame. But to be honest, there’s actually a second way in which this can be interpreted. And that is really to take a flame that’s already existing and looks pretty good and fire it up to a much greater degree. You might think back to the days of the blacksmith, and the way in which they would work is they would use these bellows in what was called a forge. So they would put the fire, and then they would get the bellows going, and they would blow on that fire, and that fire would go from hot to really hot. We’re talking 2000 degrees hot, and we’re talking so hot that you could put metal in the fire and it would turn red, and you could smack it and turn it into a horseshoe or whatever. And I think to myself, there really is a challenge that we can think about our ministry and what God needs to do in our lives in two ways. Maybe we are a little more of a small fire, and we’re really struggling to be a light, and we need to be rekindled. Or maybe we’re actually think we’re a pretty okay fire, and it’s kind of going okay, but he’s calling us to be a bellows, to be fired up, to be 2000 degrees hot, to really make a difference for Jesus Christ.

So one of the challenges I had for myself as I was thinking about this is, well, why is it that my fire or my flame for ministry and for the gifts that he has in my life? Why are they burning lower than they should? What’s going on? And many times, if you think about it, it’s because it’s hard and maybe people are opposed to what you say, or maybe you’re really trying to do it in your own strength and not allowing the Holy Spirit to do the work. Maybe it’s because we’re so busy with the work that we’re neglecting our relationship with Jesus Christ, and so the power that needs to come from inside isn’t really there. Maybe it’s also that we are allowing too many worldly distractions into our lives. Things that really don’t belong there, that are distracting us, that we really should set aside. Maybe the people we’re ministering to, we’ve kind of lost our love for them. We don’t feel passionate about seeing them come to know Jesus or to be blessed. And we’ve kind of just going through the motions and not really fired up. Maybe we be let secret sin sneak into our lives that are contaminating things. And again, the Holy Spirit is being stifled. Maybe we’re not doing the ministry with others. We’re not bringing in others who can encourage us, who can be co-workers with us and labor along with us. The challenge I have for myself as I have for you is we need to fan the flame, and fanning the flame might go from a little flame to a bigger flame, or from an okay sized flame to a raging furnace flame. That’s what God’s calling us to do, so that we can really use his gifting and his ministry, the ministry he has set before us for his kingdom.

So then I want to talk to the second point. So the second thing, I felt very challenged about is what he says in 2 Timothy. Here he says he has not been given a spirit of fear and timidity, but he’s been given a spirit of power, love and self-discipline. Well, it’s very interesting because the word fear or timidity here is actually not the usual word for fear. So the usual word that’s in the Greek is typically the word phobos. Phobos comes from the word phobia, so that you’d be fearful. That’s not the word here. The word here is dahlia. And dahlia actually is the word that really means timid. And so an attitude of timidity is really what keeps us from doing the thing that God is calling us to do. It causes us not to share the gospel of Christ. And interestingly, the Bible tells us here that’s not a spirit that comes from the Lord. Now, I think I find it actually really interesting that Paul does not say to Timothy that he has not got the spirit for him. He says, God has not given us a spirit of timidity. So Paul includes himself right in this conversation. And I think we can say safely, we’re all in that. We all have a spirit of timidity. The easiest thing is to be cautious and timid and not want to be bold. But God’s calling us really not to be like that because fear tells us things are bad. Fear tells us it’s not going to be okay. Fear tells us God can’t be trusted and he’s not in control. We need to take back control ourselves. And that’s really not what God’s calling us to do. What’s he done instead? He said he’s calling us to have a spirit of power, love and self-discipline. So I want to take a few minutes to talk through each of those power, love and self-discipline. What are what are those mean? So firstly, the word power. The word power, interestingly, again, is a Greek word that’s dunamis. Dunamis is the same word we get the word dynamite from. But when I think of dynamite, I think of chaos. I think of just exploding stuff and whatever. Maybe I watch too many cartoons when I was a kid, but to be frank, dynamite is seldom used in chaotic circumstances. It’s used for very specific and valuable things. So think mining. They go down into a mine. They drill into immovable rock. They put sticks of dynamite in. They all evacuate. They blow it up, and it blows apart these rocks to allow people to get in, to find the ore, to find the diamonds or whatever you’re trying to mine. That is incredible focused power which gives remarkably useful outcomes. That’s the kind of power that God is saying, our spirit, that he is fanning into flame, should be characterized by divine power. So our challenge is to use God’s power, not our own power. God’s power and use that as the means for our ministry, and to boldly do what God calls us to do. The second thing he talks about here is, it needs to be characterized by a spirit of love. That’s the motivation. So while power might have been the means by which we do it, love is the motivation for our ministry. And this is a word we’re all familiar with the word agape. It’s God’s love. It’s not people love. So this is the kind of love that really needs to be infused by the Holy Spirit. And interestingly, Jesus said, it’s the kind of love that really needs to characterize our lives. He said, A new commandment I give you that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, for you have love one for another. And John tells us in 1 John 4:18 that love actually casts out the fear that it is the counter to. It says there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. And I love the point about perfect love casts out fear. Perfect love only comes from Jesus. Perfect love only comes from God, the agape love. But it is the counter to the fear that we might feel. I also think it’s really important for us to think about all the things we learn in 1 Corinthians about love is that if love is not really present, all the service and all the work and all the things we do end up being entirely meaningless because people need to see the love that characterizes our person in Christ coming through. So our challenge and the challenge for myself is to show our motivation and to boldly do what God is calling us to do, but to do it with his love so that it will all reflect for his glory.

The third thing we want to talk about is self-discipline, and this is the manner of the ministry, if you like. So power is the means. Love is the motivation. Self-discipline is the manner. This is a very interesting word. It’s actually not used much in the Bible and it’s very hard to translate. So there are a whole bunch of words that sort of could mean the self-discipline. Your bible might say a sound mind. It’s basically a frame of mind enabled by the Holy Spirit that is calm and patient in ministry. It’s not chaotic. So the words like moderation and prudence and properly prioritized and temperate, it’s one of those don’t panic when things go wrong. Don’t act in an emotional, out of control kind of way because basically things are the way they are because God says they’re that way, and that’s what he wants. William Barclay has this great quote that says, It is Christ alone who can give us the self-mastery that will keep us alike from being swept away and from running away. So in the middle of self-discipline, not swept away by the chaos, not running away from the terror, basically focused on doing what is the ministry that Christ has for us. I saw the word prudent in there. I don’t know about you, but prudent is not really in my conversation much these days. It’s kind of a 1900s word, it would seem. But I’m wondering, like, who uses the word prudent these days? Well, it turns out Proverbs uses the word prudent quite a lot. So I thought we would actually learn something from what does it mean to be prudent? Because that’s self-discipline. Four things that I think are interesting about being prudent. Proverbs tells us that a sketch of a prudent person looks like this, a prudent person is knowledgeable but restrained. And Proverbs 12:23 says, and this is the message prudent people don’t flaunt their knowledge, talkative fools broadcast their silliness. Prudent people don’t flaunt their knowledge. Maybe you’re actually really knowledgeable. Maybe you are really informed about something. Self-control, self-discipline lets you sprinkle that in in a cautious way, not just bombard people with all the stuff you know. Prudent people focus on reflecting Christ rather than reflecting themselves. A prudent person doesn’t have a quick temper. Again, the message says fools have short fuses that explode all too quickly. The prudent quietly shrugs off insults, quietly shrugs off insults. So just think about that coworker that came up with that snarky remark at you. How do you respond to that? Do you give them a quick, snarky remark right back? Or are you the kind of person that graciously just hears it, says a kind word in return, or maybe just doesn’t actually react in any way? Prudent person shrugs off insults. Prudent person is appropriately cautious. Again, Proverbs 22:3 says A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences. Prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions. Again, the self discipline is one that anticipates things, isn’t chaotic, sees problems and steers away from them. And lastly, a prudent person receives correction humbly and openly. Again. Proverbs 15:5 tells us a fool despises his father’s instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent, heeds reproof, is prudent. None of us like to be set straight on stuff, but often, if we can hear what’s being said, if we can take it in, internalize it, adjust, and do things better for God’s kingdom by the power of His spirit, that’s the prudent and self-control that this is talking about.

So think about it. We’re not to have a spirit of fear and timidity. But what are we being asked to have is a spirit that’s being fanned into flame. The spirit needs to be characterized by power, love, and self-discipline. The third thing I just want us to remind ourselves about is he also says so never be ashamed to tell others about the Lord. This, I think, was a real challenge to me. And I think, to put it in context, we need to think about Paul writing this to Timothy and the context of when he wrote this. This is AD 64. Rome has just declared Christianity as a outlawed religion. It’s illegal to be a Christian. So when he then says to him, you should not be ashamed, it’s like, well, every time I open my mouth, I put my life in danger. So I understand that that was a tall order for Timothy. Just like we might feel it might be a tall order for us today. Jesus said, and this, I think, is important as we think about being ashamed of Christ. He said in Mark 8:38, for whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels. Paul said in Romans 1:16, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. So we might find this a real challenge, and I find this a challenge myself. The first thing I was asking myself is, what am I ashamed of? And I think there really are three things we might be ashamed of. The first, we might be ashamed of the name of Jesus Christ. And why do I say that? I find myself very quickly when things get onto kind of spiritual topics, saying things like, I have faith or I’m a spiritual person. Well, there are lots of people that have faith and have spiritual kind of tendencies. I love Jesus Christ. I should be using Jesus as the name that I am proud of rather than ashamed of. Often we may be ashamed of the people of Christ. I called myself out this very week with this whole thing. I was on a work trip. I needed to come back a day early so I could be here to be in the church service today. And when asked why I was heading back earlier, I said I had another commitment. Really, Steve? Another commitment. That’s the best you could do. I didn’t share that I wanted to be with Jesus and be with Christ’s people in church celebrating him. The most important thing I say is in my life, and the best I could come up with was another commitment. Shamed of the people of Christ, shamed in the name of Christ. And the third thing we might be ashamed of is the gospel of Christ. You know, the gospel of Christ is very selective and it’s not very popular, but it is the life giving message that we have. Jesus tells us that he is the only way of salvation And that we as sinners and we need a Savior and he is the person that has come and has died on the cross to save us from our sin. That’s the good news. That’s the gospel. That’s what we really should be sharing. Many times I catch myself not. And maybe I was thinking then, well, what are the reasons that underline that? And sometimes I think we feel we don’t feel worthy to be able to share about Christ. We kind of think our lives are a mess and we need to get the lives fixed up. And then when they’re better, we can share with people. Well, bottom line is we are sinners. We’re always going to be sinners. We are saved by grace and quite frankly, that’s the beauty of it. That’s the gospel. That’s what we should be sharing.

Satan loves to tell us that people are not interested in hearing about Jesus. Well, bottom line is that is a lie. People need to hear about Jesus because quite frankly, that’s the only ticket into eternal life with Jesus, with the Heavenly Father, and with Christ. And so if we don’t tell them, who will. And finally, we might say, we don’t think we’re well equipped enough where we know enough stuff to be able to do this. Well, in essence, all we really need to be sharing about is what the change Jesus has made in our lives. Let the Holy Spirit do the rest of the work, sharing how and what might needs to happen to change people’s hearts. We have the best news in the world. Witnessing is really just telling other people the best news in the world. It’s an embarrassment, I think, when we just say, we have this great news and we’re not going to tell anybody. I’ll catch myself a lot here. You know, if you get me talking about sports, you get me talking about my family. Even if you get me talking about world events, I love that stuff. Get right in there. Get chatting about that. When you get me talking about Jesus, Why am I more ashamed and quiet and don’t speak about really what is the most important thing in the world? So I was kind of thinking about how this blaze for Christ, how this, you know, being really filled with a spirit that is bold, a spirit that is characterized by power, love and self-discipline. How would that all tie together? And I was thinking about an illustration. And this you can see here, this is Cape Town. Many of you will know I’m from South Africa, and that’s Table Mountain that you can see at the back for obvious reasons. It looks flat. It’s not flat, by the way, if you go hiking there,totally not flat. But why am I showing you this picture? Well, on the top of Table Mountain is Table Mountain National Park and it is gorgeous. It is a beautiful place to hike. And not only is it beautiful and gorgeous because you’ve got views everywhere. You have unique flora. The flora that is on this mountain, there are over 400 species found nowhere else in the world. Now, interestingly, it’s quite dry and the flora needs to be able to tolerate that. It’s also super windy many times in the years, right in the middle of what’s called the Roaring 40s so the wind blows here a lot. But this is some of what is there. And it’s called fynbos basically means fine bush. And right there you see what are called proteas. That’s on the left is the king protea. That is the national flower of South Africa. But you can see lots of different varieties. Just absolutely gorgeous. But you heard me say the words kind of dry and very windy. Well that is a formula for fire. And every so often it burns across the whole of the mountainside. So what you’re seeing here is a fire that happened in 2019, but this fire was pretty dramatic. This fire burnt like crazy, and so much so that the firemen that you can see, they’re not even trying to fight the fire, they’re just trying to protect the houses that are kind of on the border of this national park. As the fire was, it just burnt everything. It burnt right down pretty much to the rock. The University of Cape Town is right against the mountainside. They had damage to their library. It was a pretty substantial fire. And when it was done, there was absolutely nothing left. Everything was burnt pretty much down to the rock. And you might say, well, that’s a disaster. Well, the answer is no it’s not because fynbos is built to be burnt. It doesn’t mind being burnt. When it burns it actually shoots all of its little seeds, and the seeds then automatically are triggered to begin to germinate. The interesting thing is, what isn’t ready for fire and for burning is invasive species, and fire just burns out all of the invasive specie. The ones that remain the fynbos, that’s what belongs there. But what was really special about this fire is when everything gets burnt right down to the rock, absolutely nothing remaining, a unique flower called the flame lily germinates. And you go, well, how did that happen? Well, fynbos is kind of higher. It’s bigger, and it creates quite a lot of shade. And there is no sunlight for the little flame lily. But when everything is burnt right to the rock, the flame lily easily germinates and has no competition. And therefore there were just fields of flame lilies after this fire. So what do I take away from that? When we’re saying we want the Holy Spirit to fire us up, to flame into fire, take our little flame and make it a big flame, take our moderate flame and burn it into a blazing inferno. It might be a little uncomfortable. All of those invasive species in our lives, they might need to go. Some even the fynbos needs to be ready to burn because it’s going to go, maybe even right down to the rock. But when it goes down to the rock, things that the Holy Spirit may be doing in our lives, just like the flame Lily might suddenly come out and suddenly we will be effective in ministry in ways that we really didn’t imagine possible. So what’s my takeaway from today? What’s the challenge I had for my life and I pray as a challenge for you? We need to be fired up to serve Jesus Christ, and we need to boldly and unashamedly blaze for our Lord Jesus. Let’s pray.