Fan the Flame

2 Tim 1:6b "fan into flame the gift of God"  It is of no use to be tepid, we are meant to be red hot.  We need to work at our relationship with God or else the passion will fade and we will turn lukewarm and non-effective.  It takes a daily discipline to keep the fires burning.

The Holy Spirit gives each one of us gifts according to the will and pleasure of the Father. it is up to us develop and grow proficient in our gifts through the constant exercise of our gifts for the sake of the body. 

The blacksmith knows that in order to make metal malleable he first needs a hot fire to soften and purify it.  To make the fire hotter he employs a bellows to blow a stream of air on the coals.  He literally fans it into flame.

The Father always want us to completely sold out, completely dedicated to the task that He has called us to. Anything less is simply not good enough.

Rev 3:16-17  "So, because you are lukewarm — neither hot nor cold — I am about to spit you out of my mouth."

No, He wants us to fan the flame into fire that it might test our mettle.

1 Cor 3:13 "fire will test the quality of each man's work."

We have been given gifts that need to be developed. The more we use them, the more we learn and get better at using them.  Just like the parable of the talents it does no good to merely know that they are there and bury them.  

in the Greek the word "anazoopurein" literally means to rekindle, to add more wood to the fire. I remember my house in Rochester, NY had a wood burning stove.  In the winter I had to add more wood to fire so that it would burn through the night or else the fire would die out and we would wake to a freezing house.  There was quite a technique to it. You have to remove some of the ashes so that it wouldn't choke the fire. You gathered up the embers and put kindling, or small pieces of wood and you blew on the embers. Soon the embers would burst into flame and the kindling would catch fire.  It was only then that you could add cord wood to build your fire. There was an art to that also or else the logs would not catch fire.  After a while you had a roaring fire that would put out a considerable amount of heat; so much so that if you got it too hot the sides of the stove would start to get an orange glow.

It takes work to fan into flame the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Still other translations put it this way, "stir up the gift of God" (NKJV).  Put some soup on the stove and if you let it sit for too long all the good stuff sinks to the bottom and there is only water on top. But if you stir it up all the ingredients blend together into a hearty broth the not only tastes good but nourishes as well.  Again, it takes standing over a hot stove and putting some effort into it to stir up the pot.

As way of a final illustration we are all born with muscles.  The more you exercise them the bigger and stronger they get. The end product is that you are able to do more with them.  Stop using your muscles, as in the case of when someone is paralyzed and those muscles become atrophied and become useless.