Kindle Afresh The Gift Of God

So we're going to be continuing on this morning in our study of 2 Timothy chapter 1. We're coming to verses 6 and 7. And I want to tell you from the beginning what my assumption is about all of us as we come to this text. And my assumption is that none of us live up to our capacity to serve God. None of us do all that we could do or should do to serve God. I'm not talking necessarily about the limitation that sin produces in our lives. I'm not saying we're not perfect. It's true that we are not perfect. And because of our imperfections, we don't serve God the way we should. But that's not what I'm talking about this morning. I'm talking more this morning about our propensity for whatever reason to not do what we could do or we should do.

I think many of us in our day-to-day lives have opportunity to do more and very quickly rationalize and reason out why, no, not now, not that, no. And we do this not having a good reason, one that would stand before God and say, this is why I didn't do it. And so this morning, I want us to see that Paul exhorts Timothy along these lines to do more for the Lord, to not grow cold, not to grow weary. And I think that we need this exhortation as well, as we examine our own personalities, our own preferences, our own proclivities, the things that we're inclined to, the things that we're not inclined to. I think we need to look and to hear what Paul has said to Timothy. Our text this morning is 2 Timothy 1, verses 6 and 7. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true.

For this reason, I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So there's a couple of things going on in this passage that I want us to sort of, if we were cooking a meal, I'd say, okay, you need to get the water boiling for the noodles and you need to start warming up the... the pasta sauce, and you also need to turn the oven on so that you can bake the brownies. And we sort of have to, in the preparation of a meal, we have to do these things simultaneously so that the meal comes together, right? We have to attend to more than one thing. Our text is similar to that. We're going to start with an understanding of gifting. Because Paul tells Timothy, kindle afresh the gift of God. And so what is he telling him? Well, he's saying most basically, and before what he's to do with this kindle afresh, we're told,

what he's supposed to kindle afresh, which is the gift of God. God gives gifts to men. He gives gifts to you. He gives gifts to me. In Ephesians 4, Paul says to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men. Paul enumerates in the verses following that in Ephesians. The gifts that he's given to men. He's given some as apostles and some as prophets and some as teachers. And then he tells us why he gave those gifts to those men. And the reason that he gave those gifts to those men was for the building up of his kingdom. So we all attain to the stature and to the maturity of Jesus Christ. And so in many ways, the gifts that he gives to us as his people, it's sort of like a small group meal, if you will.

If your small group's going to have tacos for lunch, what happens? You bring meat, you bring tortillas, you bring cheese, and you bring sour cream, and we list out. Everybody needs to bring the thing they bring. And what is the end result supposed to be? It's supposed to be a taco that has everything you need on it. What happens if somebody doesn't bring the cheese? A riot. Some of you may not like cheese, but some of us do. And we say, something's missing. And if you're good, if you think about it, you might bring two types of cheese. Or if your job is the salsa, you might bring a mild salsa and you might bring a spicy salsa. You start bringing things and you go, what we want is a good taco. We want a good everything. Well, the church of God is very similar. You and I have been given gifts. And we're to bring those gifts into the house of God for the building up of his kingdom. Which is to say that there is no one here, young or small,

young or old, who can say, I have nothing to offer up to God. He's not given me any gift. If you were to think of your own body, there are things that if you went and talked to a doctor, they'd say there are things that are absolutely essential for you to live. And there are other parts of your body that you can live without. You may go in and you may say, my neck's all swollen and I can't breathe. Have trouble at night. Always getting sick. What might the doctor say? Well, you should have your tonsils out. But my question to you is, are your tonsils of no consequence? Do they have no purpose in your body? Which is to ask, did God put them there for no reason? You might say, well, we're not sure what tonsils do, or we're not sure what an appendix does, or a pancreas. These are the things that we kind of scratch our heads and go, I'm not sure how. People live without those things, and they seem to be okay.

And we could keep going through the organs of our bodies and say, no, if you go without that one, that gets a little more difficult to live. And if you go without that one, that gets really uncomfortable to live. And if you go without that one, you die. But just because we don't know what an appendix or a pancreas or tonsils do in our bodies, we ought not to assume that there is no purpose for them. We should simply conclude that we don't know yet what they're for. Because we know that God's put them into us. And so the same assumption should be made when we come into the church, that whoever's come into the church, they've been given a purpose. They have been given gifts for the building up of the body. That no one is to come into God's house and say, I have nothing of value. Because for us to say, I have nothing of value, is to say, God has made me worthless, which is not true. Now it is true also that when we look at the gifts that God's given to men, some of them are more prominent.

than others. Some of them are seemingly more useful or more valuable. Paul uses this analogy of the body with regard to gifts, and he says, I am an eye, and because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body. Paul says, you are no less a part of the body. You're just a different part of the body. And so it's important that you and I determine and figure out what exactly our gifts are, because God's given them to us for the building up of his church. Maybe some of you have heard this saying that in churches, 10% of the people do 90% of the work. And there is some truth to that. My point in bringing it up is not to say that all the work should be spread equally. My point in bringing it up is to say there's lots of work to be done in the church, and each one of us has a gift, and we ought to bring our gift and do our part. Some of us will have work that's more prominent. I have to stand up and preach every Sunday. That's my work. It's part of my job. None of the rest of you are tasked with that job weekly.

Does that make my work better than your work? More of greater value? Is what I'm doing more important than what Clay and Lucas are doing? Perhaps it's more visible. But if you have gifts and you say, nah, not gonna, nah. I'm gonna use those in my own life or I'm going to use those for my own purposes instead of the Lord. When there's opportunity to use your gifts in the church and you say, I don't have time or interest or desire. You rob God. You take your talent and you bury it. I think many times when we say, well, what's my spiritual gift? We could give you a test, I suppose. But I think we know what we're good at, what God's given us to skill in. And if we don't, then I think we should ask those who know us and who love us. Your spouse, if you're married, could tell you how you can be helpful. Your parents' children could tell you how you can be helpful.

Your pastors and elders can tell you how you can be helpful. The women's ministry in our church, as well as the elders, are aware of what work needs to be done, and we try proactively to give people work to do because we want them to use their gifts because we believe God's given them gifts. And we try to line up the work they do with the gifts that God's given them. That only makes sense. And so God has given gifts to men. Different gifts, varying gifts. Some people he's given more gifting to than others. Nevertheless, everybody has something that they can serve God with. Timothy's gift, which was to be a pastor, to be a preacher, to lead the church, was confirmed through his ordination. It was a recognition of his gifting. God had given him this ability and through ordination that gifting was recognized and it was confirmed. Now I'll tell you, one of the things about gifting is You often have to use your gifts before your gifts are recognized. Another way of saying it is, it's not okay for you to sit by the side and go, well, if I'm asked to use my gift, then I will. When Paul came to Lystra and to Derbe, where Timothy lived with his believing mom and his unbelieving dad, his reputation was already established, that he was a prominent, a preeminent believer in the area, that he was already using his gifts.

This was before he was ordained. This was before he knew Paul. He was already using his gifts and being a blessing. And so when Paul shows up, he goes, oh, there's this man, Timothy. He will be of good use to me because he's already been using his gifts. And so his gifts, which he'd already been exercising, are then confirmed, recognized and confirmed in this case because of the type of gifts he has through ordination. And so our first work is to search out what our gifts are. and how we can be helpful, how we can be best used. This is not to say that we come to the church and say, here's what I'm going to do, because I've determined that I ought to do it. It's a bit of a dance, really. Sometimes people come and they say, well, I want to do this, and I say, yes, I think that's probably a good idea, but now is not the time. Risa's squirming. I wasn't actually thinking about you, but Risa does get told no about this pretty regularly. She has lots of ideas.

Which means she gets told no a lot by her husband and by the elders and by whoever else she's floating her ideas to. But the answer, yeah, right, the answer is not to say, stop having ideas. That would be the wrong thing. And so each one of us have to see how we can be of service. And then we have to seek to be of service. Would you mind if I? Do you think it would be a good idea if? Some of you like to talk a lot. So when we're talking about gifts, I don't want to get so spiritual that it's not really helpful. Some of you like to talk a lot. And what I would say to you then is, what do you talk about? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, maybe not Instagram, it's more pictures than words, I suppose, filled with people talking. If you're going to talk in these places, what do you talk about? Does your speech, is it aimed at building up God's kingdom, strengthening his people?

Calling people to love Jesus Christ. Is that what you talk about? Or do you talk about something else? Do we talk about politics? Do we talk about masks? Do we talk about vaccines? What do we talk about? Some of you like to write. What do you write about? Some of you like spending time with people. What do you do with them? I don't want you to think of having gifts in the church as being limited to formal church ministry events. I was just talking to Vanessa and she said, I think you should tell people to invite their friends and their neighbors to church. They should invite them there. It's just really profound, right? And I said, honey, it's hard because our whole church has, we're a tight-knit community, and most of the people here, not all, but most of us are transplants, meaning that we don't have connections reaching out into the community for years. And she just said, I don't buy it. And she's right. I was wrong. She's right.

She says, I don't buy it. They go to the grocery store. They go to the park. They get their hair cut. They get their oil changed. They should talk about Jesus when they go do it. They should use their gift. They're going to talk about something while they're there. They should cultivate their gifting to the end that God would be glorified and they would speak of his mercy and his grace. So how do you know what your gifts are? Well, I would simply tell you, look at what you spend your time doing. Figure out how to glorify God. as you spend your time, how to speak to those around you who don't know him. This is a gift, I think, and I'm sort of honing in on the gift of speech because I don't think there are that many people in our church that just don't like to talk. We love to talk. Let's say something of value. Another way to identify your gifts, though, is to examine the callings that God's placed on your lives. This is how Timothy's gifting worked. His gifting was that he be a pastor, and so what does Timothy exhort him to do?

Rather, what does Paul exhort Timothy to do? Kindle afresh the gift of God. Why does Timothy need to kindle afresh his gift? Well, because the flames have died down. Timothy wasn't of a disposition to run at full capacity, doing all that he could. So Paul says, you have this gift. Kindle it afresh. Turn it over. Get the flames coming again. It's very common for us to take the things that we're good at, the things that we're gifted at, the things that God's made us to excel at, and to squander it. Charles Spurgeon, when he was speaking on this text, talked about how tools get rusty if you don't use them. And he says, if you want to get the rust off your tool, go use it. If your shovel is rusty, go dig something up with it, and all the rust will come off. We get busy. We get tired.

We have all kinds of reasons that we need to be rekindled, realigned, and said, these are the things that you are. These are the things that you're good at. These are the things God's given you. Do them. In our lives, there are times and there are seasons when we grow, and it seems where growth is happening. I think generally when people get married, there's a season of growth that's going on because the normal in life has been unsettled, and they have to accommodate themselves to new life, new joys, new sorrows, new responsibilities. It's usually a time of growth. And that happens for probably a couple of years. Same could be said when you have children. Same could be said when you buy your first home. When your children get older and they start school and all of a sudden you're like, oh, life is different now. When your children graduate and they leave the home. We have these seasons of growth in our lives where we have to change because life is changing around us.

We also have seasons when we become convicted of sin. Have you ever had in your life a time where there's no new sin, but God's awakened you to it in a way that you hate it, in a way that you didn't two months ago or six months ago or five years ago? It has been there. Perhaps your spouse could point to it and say, this is news to you. Or your parents could say to you, you just realized that this is a problem. God in his way of dealing with us gives us seasons where we become convicted of sins in our lives. And it's in these seasons that we need to be rekindled. Our commitments, our zeal, our faith need to be kindled afresh. If we don't do this work, the fire dwindles. You think of that big brush pile we've got out in back. If we went out and set that whole thing on fire, You know, got it going all the way around. I ask you, would everything be burned by the time the fire burned out? Nope. Why not? Because some areas will burn faster than others, and some types of wood burns, you know, is going to be gone, and then the big log that's laying there is not going to burn all on its own. So what do you have to do when you have a fire if you want everything to be burned? Very simply, you have to tend to it. You have to push it up.

You have to get out there with a shovel or your foot or a tractor or something and you have to push and stir the fire up. You have to get the flames back with the fuel so that it keeps burning. Otherwise, the fire burns out and then you've still got the sticks and the twigs that weren't in the burn section and the big logs and all that stuff just kind of strewn about, not consumed. And so we are like that fire. That's why Paul tells Timothy, You need to kindle afresh the gift of God. We are inclined, under normal circumstances, to die down, to grow cold, to not consume everything that there is to consume, to not run at full capacity. Why do we grow cold? There are many reasons. The first I'd mention is that we get tired. Sometimes we just think we have too much work to do and it's overwhelming to us. Too much volume, too many irons in the fire, too much stuff to attend to, and we get tired.

tired. Why else do we grow cold? Too little progress or too slow. We get discouraged and we say it's not worth it. Why else do we grow cold? The cost of faithfulness is too high. Continuing to work and to labor in something, we just go, this is going to take a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of hardship, and I don't know that what's to be gained is worth all of the effort if I have to do this for another two months or two years. Why else do we grow cold? Sometimes our giftings don't line up perfectly with our desires. Sometimes we don't do what we should do because it's not something we necessarily enjoy or thought that that's what our life was supposed to be about. When John Calvin was making his way through Geneva, his intention was not to be a pastor. He was opposed to the work of being a pastor. He didn't want to do that. John Calvin instead wanted to spend his time in scholarship, reading and writing.

Scholarly works. And so he comes through Geneva, and this man, William Farrell, comes to him and says, We need a pastor. And you're the man. And Calvin says, No, I'm not. And William Farrell says, Yes, you are. And Calvin says, No, I'm not. I have this thing I'm working on, working towards, and this is what I'm going to go do. And William Farrell says to him, God damn your work if you don't stay and be a pastor. We need you. And Calvin said, I don't want God to damn me or my work. I will stay. And so his gifting, he thought, I'm supposed to be a scholar. But God hadn't called him to be a scholar. He called him to be a pastor and in due time a reformer to give his gifts to the church. There are other times that we grow cold because our gifting doesn't align with our personalities. You remember in the Bible when God called out Moses, what did Moses say?

I want you to be a leader of my people. Moses said, sign me up. When can I start? What's Moses say? Not me. I'm slow of speech. God says, no, you. Moses says, no, I can't. I can't. And then as it goes on and there's this back and forth, God gets angry at Moses. It says that his wrath was kindled against Moses because he was rejecting the calling, the gifting that God had given to him. But even then God didn't release him from the calling. What did he do? He gave him Aaron. I will give you Aaron as a mouthpiece to speak. Moses just wanted to be a shepherd of sheep. God called him to be a shepherd of his people. You could say the same thing, sort of in a different direction, about Jonah. Jonah's personality was not such that he wanted to go to the Ninevites. He preferred that they would be consumed and destroyed. And it was clear that Jonah could preach to them. He wasn't incapable of the work.

He just didn't want to do it. He would rather see their destruction. He didn't want to go to Nineveh because, quote, I knew that you were a merciful and forgiving God, whereas Jonah would have preferred their destruction. Does God ever call you to work that you don't feel equipped to do, that you don't prefer to do? And all God's people said, yes. Husbandry, fatherhood, early hours, late nights, submitting to your husband. living with your wife in an understanding way? Don't all of these things cut across the natural grain and our natural inclinations? These are not what we're good at. And yet to the extent that God's called us to each one of these works, he's gifted us to do it. Which is to say that just because something's hard or not enjoyable, there's no reason for you not to do it. It may be that in the course of time, what you need to say is, I really don't like.

But when you say that, it should be said as a confession of your sin and a request for help, that you would grow into the things God's given you to do. Perhaps there's some other reason you've grown cold, that you need to be kindled afresh. Whatever the reason, I want you to know that it's common for us to grow cold in our zeal for the Lord and doing work for him. And so Paul exhorts Timothy to fight this temptation. Kindle afresh. Stir yourself. Get stirred up. Ask God to stir you up to this work. Don't neglect it. Don't forsake it. Don't throw it aside. Don't reject it. Ask God to stir you up to do it. I think too often we think that when something's hard or difficult or seems unprofitable, our answer is always, well, then I don't have to do it now. And I'm not convinced that most times that's not God's answer. People say things like this when they want to get a divorce. It'll be better this way.

No, it won't. No, it really won't. And that's a really practical way to answer it. It's a terrible, awful thing. And so we need to be kindled afresh, just like Timothy did. And then Paul goes on and he says, for God has not given us a spirit of timidity. Paul's argument here in saying this is that our timidity is what keeps us from using our gifts. Now, what is timidity? Well, it's cowardice or fear. Have you ever had the opportunity to do something and you got caught? You did a double-take and you're like, But if I say that, if I do that, if I engage, I'll be out of control. I don't know what will happen then. I don't know how they'll respond. I don't know how this will all shake out. I will be on a high wire without a net. This is timidity, cowardice, or fear. It's being soft or flaccid when we should be firm and bold, when we're silent instead of speaking, when we're passive instead of proactive, when we compromise instead of standing firm.

All of these things flow out of a spirit of timidity. I mean, which one of us can say we can't speak for the Lord if we can look at how it went with Moses when he said, I can't say that. I can't do that. And it doesn't help that much of the opposition that you face in society today, sometimes it's implicit, sometimes it's explicit, is that you ought to be timid as a Christian. You ought to live in a state of fear. Never being too sure that you know the difference between right and wrong. good and bad, righteousness and wickedness. You shouldn't be too sure of that. You're to be kind and loving and tolerant. But the problem is, though you are supposed to be those things, the problem is those words have been redefined and they no longer reflect the kindness or the love or the tolerance of God. God's tolerance is that he doesn't consume us in an instant because of our sins. And you see him being tolerant even from the garden until now.

not immediately consuming and destroying his adversaries. But now, tolerant has come to mean accepting of wickedness, approving of wickedness, participating in wickedness. But this is not the tolerance of God. In many ways, these words, these pressures that we feel to be timid, have been remade, reshaped according to the sinful desires of our hearts instead of according to God's holiness. In Romans 2, it says that God is, do you not know that God's loving kindness and patience towards you is so that you will what? Repent. He is not kind to us because he approves of our sins. He is kind to us. He gives us time so that we might repent.

That's the aim of his kindness, is to give us time to turn away from sin, where kindness, as we would hear about it in our society today, is acceptance of sin, approval of sin. And this is not kindness. And so timidity is a danger to all of us and to those who live around us. And God's kingdom, I tell you, will never be built by timid men. When it comes to leadership and men serving God, They will always be the type of men who are not always well liked. They may well be respected, but they will not always be well liked. There will be people who oppose them, who are afraid to interact with them, who are intimidated.

But Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God has suffered violence and that violent men take it by force. And I don't want you to misunderstand this as saying that the kingdom of heaven is receiving violence and is being taken away by violent men. What it's saying is that it suffers violence in the sense that it produces violence for the progress of the kingdom. Men who were moved by God got up and said something and did something. as they were able with the gifting God gave them to build his kingdom. Timid men, fearful men, are not building men. Nehemiah was no such man when he wanted to go back and he wept over Jerusalem and over the foundations of the city. He was not a timid man. He went and faced all of the opposition of the people living there. And it's described as having in one hand a shovel or a trowel and in the other hand a sword.

not a timid man. And so when Paul tells Timothy, we've not been given a spirit of timidity, he's speaking to Timothy's own personality and his own expectations and his own temptations to sin and says, this is not what God has given you. He's not given to you to be a timid man. Why would Timothy be timid? What would he fear? Probably similar things that you and I would fear. Failure, number one. I'd attest to you that your Christian growth The seasons when you will grow the most as a Christian will be likely the seasons that follow your great failures. That's when you'll grow. And generally, the bigger the failure and the greater the humiliation, the greater opportunity you have to really grow. As I look around at you and I think of some of the failures that have gone on and when you've grown, I go, that's when the growth happens. When the hammer finally comes down and you no longer have the thing that you wanted. When life's in shambles, all of a sudden, growth comes.

And the difficult thing about growth is it doesn't often seem like you're growing at the time that you are. You feel like you're barely surviving, and yet there's a harvest of righteousness being worked out in you by God. And so we fear failure, thinking that we'll grow from our successes when really we grow from our failures. What else do we fear? We fear conflict. Timothy, time and again, you may think that some people like conflict, and for my part, I don't think that's true. Or maybe a better way to say it is, if there is someone who truly likes conflict, that's not a design feature, that's a design flaw. Conflict is a necessary part of our lives, living in a fallen world. Timothy was a man who didn't like conflict, a man who didn't want to get into the fray. And so Paul, through his letters to Timothy, is always exhorting him to stand firm, to not let his age or his disposition or his upbringing hinder his work.

What will I say and what will I do if I say this? It's like smacking a hornet's nest and they're going to get angry. What am I going to do? Better not to smack the hornet's nest. God's not given you a spirit of timidity. In Romans, what we read in our assurance of pardon this morning, it said that God's not given us a spirit of slavery leading to fear again. Very similar construction. What else might we be afraid of? Responsibility. We talk in terms of not wanting to open that can of worms. We know that what's coming, if I say this, then they're going to cry.

If I say this, there's going to be trouble. It's going to be late night or a number of late nights. And so we fear responsibility when instead we ought to think that our faithfulness in little things, not being timid in little things, will produce greater faithfulness in bigger things later. We will not be faithful in big things if we are afraid with little things. And I do want to say to you about fear that men who do hard things don't do it because they're no longer scared. It's just not true. Men who do hard things are often very scared as they do them. The difference is not their fear. The difference is whether or not they submit to their fear or not and let it rule their day. Whether they see their weaknesses as something to be fought against or if they see their weaknesses as something to be listened to and submitted to. Whatever it is that we fear, whatever it is that causes us to be inclined toward timidity and cowardice, Paul teaches us that we haven't been saved.

only to return to those things. Paul contrasts the spirit of timidity with the spirit of power and love and discipline. God gives us power to do things that in our own strength we can't. If we're left to ourselves, we are timid. And the fire is hot, and rekindling it is work. And so God gives power to strengthen us. In 2 Corinthians 12, 9, we read, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. My power, says the Lord, is perfected in your weakness. And so if we're going to use the gifts he's given to us for his glory, we will need his strength to do it. If he only gave us gifts and didn't give us strength to exercise them, they would just sit there because we couldn't manage them. If we're left to ourselves, his gifts will just rust and decay under our power, under our timidity, under our fears.

And so he gives us power. There have been times in my life, and I hope in your life as well, where you've seen this conflict of, should I say it, should I do it? And you feel like, I've got to decide. And by God's grace, you say, I'm going to do it. And you do it, and all of a sudden you're off and running. It's not like, I'm going to do this little thing and then we'll reassess. It's like, now we're off and running. In the conversation, in the thing, and you go, this is happening in real time. Is God not good to you in giving you strength in those times?

When you're afraid to have difficulty or hardship to address the problems in this relationship or that, thinking, well, it would be better just to let the fire go out, if you will. By faith, you go and you speak to your husband or to your wife or to your grown child or teenage child or your parents or whatever it is. You go and you say, we're going to have the talk. I'm going to say the thing. God gives you power to do it. And what you find in those moments is that he gives you love and discipline as well. All of a sudden, when you did it in your own strength, anger, hardship, foul, wicked, nasty, tearing down, this is what comes out. Because we don't have the strength in us to do any better. But when we repent of that and we come in the power that God supplies and we have in our hands the work that he's given us to do, he gives us love for the people that we're talking to or that we're ministering to.

that we're trying to be reconciled with. He gives us discipline to moderate ourselves in our speech and our actions in a way that we don't have when we try to do it in our own strength. In those situations, it's not for us to take credit for God's goodness. As we use our gifts and the strength that God provides, love for God and for our neighbor and discipline are the things that govern or guide our discussions. They govern our actions. I was talking to a pastor one time, and he had a guy that wanted to go in his church that wanted to come up to Indianapolis and wanted to go to some rally back in January. This was right after the hullabaloo out in D.C. And so the young man comes to him, and he says, Pastor, I want to go to this protest. What do you think I should say? There's going to be hundreds or thousands, how many people are going to be there? If I want to speak, what should I say?

So what do you know? Well, you know that the man has some zeal, right? He's willing to go into a tough situation and he wants to be one of the leaders there. He cares about what's going on in his country, as he should. And he wants to stand up and he wants to say something. And he's a Christian, so he's asking his pastor, what should I say? And what did his pastor say to him? Good and faithful words. He says, if you're going to go and you're going to speak, what you ought to do is stand up and talk to them about their sins. And you ought to invite them to get down on their knees and pray that God would be merciful to them and to our nation. That's what you ought to get up and say. Take your zeal and the gifting that God's given to you and do something that demands that he give you the strength to do it. How easy would it be for that man to stand up and to talk about all of the injustices and all of the wrongs that he may well be right in acknowledging. But the problem is he'll do it in his own strength.

He won't need God to say that. He won't need faith. Where if he were going to take the zeal that God's given to him and use it to turn a profit for God's kingdom, he would call those people to repentance. He would need real love because that would be an unpopular thing to do with that group. And so when you get stirred up to do something in your life, in your church, in your family, make sure that what you do is for God's glory and for the building up of his kingdom and that you need faith to do it. Anger is a great catalyst, but not to godliness. You can get angry and do all kinds of things. And so kindle afresh the gift of God that's in you. Use his gifts to build up his kingdom. Use your gifts, the gifts he's given to you. Offer them up to him freely. Be willing to be made a fool of. Rely on his strength as you do it. Don't be fearful.

And look to him for the increase. Look to him to make a profit out of what you say and what you do. As you consider speaking and acting, you ought to say with the psalmist, unless the Lord builds the house, unless he fixes this thing, unless he works and he acts, what I do will be in vain. And I'm going to do it anyway. Because I trust that God will meet with us and he'll give his power. And he'll bless the use of the gifting that he's given to us. So live by faith and do what God calls you to do as you're motivated and moved to do it. Sometimes you'll have time to think about it, and sometimes you won't. Sometimes if you don't speak right now, you won't get to speak later because the opportunity will have passed. So don't live fearfully. Live faithfully. Speak as you should, as you believe God would have you speak. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you that you've kept us from timidity, rather that you've called us out of it.

Would you help us to use the gifts and the opportunities that you give us to build up your church and to help your kingdom grow in our homes, in our marriages, with our children and with our parents, in our workplaces? Help us not to keep silent when we should speak. When we speak, help us to rely on you. And we pray, Father, that our work, our love, and our faith would bear good fruit. in building up your kingdom and growing your people and being an encouragement to those around us. Help our work and our labor not to be in vain. When we stand before you, Father, we want to hear, well done, good and faithful servant. And so equip us for that work. Spiritually, help us to see the necessity and the urgency of loving our neighbors, of speaking your truth to them, of calling them into repentance and to faith.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.