Neglect

According to Scripture, all believing Christians are given at least one spiritual gift. No oversights, no mistakes, no missed believers. "To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (1 Cor 12:7). They are empowered by and distributed by the Holy Spirit "as He wills" (1 Cor 12:11). So in Paul's 1st letter to Timothy, he urges Timothy "Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you" (1 Tim 4:14) and in his 2nd letter he tells him to "kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you" (2 Tim 1:6). How many of us could use the same instruction today?

There seems to be two groups in Christendom. One side embraces the gifts and the other largely ignores them. However, both tend to be extremes. One side holds onto all sorts of things that aren't biblical while they indulge and rejoice in their gifts while the other side might acknowledge, "Yes, I have a gift ... the gift of gab" as they glibly shrug their shoulders and move on. The group in the middle, both biblical and using gifts, seem to be a small group. To the former group Paul wrote grand warnings about misusing and misvaluing gifts (1 Cor 12). To the other Paul's words to Timothy are more appropriate. "Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you." Too many of us do.

On one hand many of us operate in a fantasy land. We have direct words from God that, therefore, require people to obey because "it's from God." We have unsaved people gifted with ecstatic gifts (in direct opposition to Scripture (1 Cor 2:14)). We have people so gifted by God that they receive corrections to Scripture from the mouth of God. On the other hand, we have teachers and exhorters and servants and administrators and ... an ongoing and unnumbered list of gifts that are going unused simply because we ignore them. When Paul wrote Timothy the 2nd time, it was to encourage a tired young preacher in the face of hard times and Paul's chains. Paul told him he didn't need to be ashamed of the gospel or his imprisonment because God had gifted Timothy and we have not been given "a Spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline" (2 Tim 1:7). That gifting and that Spirit are the things that enable us to be empowered in an increasingly hostile world. We can, like Paul, suffer loss because we know whom we have believed and what He can do (2 Tim 1:12). We can retain the standard of sound words (2 Tim 1:13) against a world that wants to twist and oppose them because of that gifting and that Spirit. We must not neglect the gift(s) given us. We must retain the standard of sound words. This day -- our day -- is no time to let it decay.