Paul Told Him to Stir It Up, Which Means It Was Still in There

A man decides, at some point, that whatever he had is gone.

He would not announce it. It is not the kind of conclusion anybody stands up and says. It arrives as a resignation, in a truck or at a sink, and it usually sounds like this: whatever that was, I had it once, and I do not have it now, and I have made my peace with that.

And what follows from that conclusion is the actual damage. Because a man who thinks the fire is out stops going near it. He does not poke at it. He does not put anything on it. Why would he. You do not carry kindling to a cold ring.

So he keeps the shape of things and moves the center of his life somewhere else, and he is not a hypocrite for doing it. He is being reasonable about a situation he has assessed and gotten wrong.

Gotten wrong is the word. There is a letter about this and the instruction in it makes no sense unless something is still lit.

The instruction assumes the coals

Here it is, in the King James Version:

Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. (2 Timothy 1:6)

Stir up the gift of God, which is in thee.

Stop on the assumption before the instruction. You cannot stir up something that is not there. The word is what a man does with a poker at a fire ring in the morning, when there is gray ash on top and everybody assumes it went out overnight, and he turns it over and there is orange underneath.

Paul is not telling Timothy to go get something. He is not telling him to pray for a fresh one. He is telling him that what is in him is in him, and to go turn it over.

And notice which is in thee. Present tense, written to a man whose fire had plainly gone down far enough that an old man in prison thought it was worth writing about.

You have something in you right now and you were never emptied of it by a cold stretch. 2 Timothy 1:6 says stir up the gift of God, which is in thee to a man who needed to be told, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a returning feeling who is named a verse later as what was actually given.

The next verse says what he was dealing with

The very next sentence tells you what the ash was made of, and it is not what anybody assumes.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)

The spirit of fear.

Timothy was not bored. He was not disillusioned. He was afraid, and the letter goes on to be about not being ashamed, about hardship, about a man named Onesiphorus who was not ashamed of Paul's chain.

That is worth knowing, because fear looks exactly like flatness from outside and often from inside too. A man who has been afraid for long enough stops feeling afraid and starts feeling nothing, which is what fear does when it settles in for years.

But of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Three things listed as given. Not promised for later. Given, past tense, in the same breath as the fear is denied.

You have power and love and a sound mind already given and you were never handed the spirit of fear at all. 2 Timothy 1:7 states both halves in one verse, and it is His Spirit who is the one named there rather than an improvement in your circumstances.

He does not take His gifts back

There is a sentence in Romans that people misuse and that says something enormous when it is left in place.

For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. (Romans 11:29)

Without repentance in the old English means without a change of mind. He does not revise the decision. What He gave, He gave.

That is not a promise that a man will feel it. It is a statement about the status of the thing itself while he does not feel it.

And Paul says it again in the same letter to Timothy, and this is the hardest and best version of it:

If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself. (2 Timothy 2:13)

He cannot deny himself. The faithfulness is not keyed to the other party's performance. It is keyed to His own nature, which is the one thing in the arrangement that does not fluctuate.

You have a gift that was never revoked and you were never able to lose it by going cold. Romans 11:29 says the gifts and calling of God are without repentance and 2 Timothy 2:13 says He abides faithful even where belief fails, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than your consistency who keeps that true while nothing is felt.

And if the flat has gone further than flat, if it has reached not wanting to be here at all, that is not a thing to sit alone with. A doctor, a counselor, somebody you trust who will pick up the phone. In the United States the 988 crisis line answers day and night. Nobody is asked to carry that by himself.

What He does with a wick that has gone out

The other picture worth having is the one Isaiah gives, because it describes the exact moment a man expects to be dropped.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. (Isaiah 42:3)

Smoking flax is a lamp wick that has gone out. It is not producing light. It is producing smoke, which is the evidence that it used to be lit and is not now.

And the promise attached to it is not that He will relight it on a schedule. The promise is that this is not the moment He puts it out. The one useless, embarrassing thing about a spent wick, the smoke, is the thing named in the verse, and the verse is a promise of protection rather than of replacement.

Matthew quotes this verse about Jesus, which means it is not an Old Testament nicety. It is a description of how He works.

You are protected in the exact condition you are embarrassed by and you have not been marked for replacement. Isaiah 42:3 says the smoking flax shall not be quenched, and it is His Spirit who makes an ancient sentence about a wick a thing that reaches a man in his own kitchen.