Consider this:
You are a nomad forced to move with your food sources. If it quits raining in your area, your crops fail. If it rains too much, the crops are flooded. If you hunt in one area for any time at all, the game moves to a less hostile area beyond your reach. When your food sources dry up in one area, you and your village are forced to pick up and move where food can be found.
Because you constantly move, your village has no walls to protect it from wild animals. Your woman and children, your elderly are vulnerable to the attack of the hungry beasts that seek to devour you. What is your defense? By day you have skilled hunters. They are well trained experts at killing what threatens to attack. They have often yielded a harvest that feeds all the village for months. But by night, even your most skilled hunters are debilitated by darkness. What is your villages best defense against the lions that take advantage of the cover of night. They are hungry and are skilled in patience and vigilance that promotes any opportunity for their success. Your best defense is to keep a fire burning.
In II Timothy 1:6 Paul charges Timothy to "stir" up the gift that is in you by the laying on of hands. That word "stir" is only used in that one place in the New Testament used & it means to rekindle, the remains of a fire or ember, fan the flame. Gift: is a compound word from the original Greek. The two words combined to form this word stir are: charisma: a divine gratuity. (payment) a deliverance from danger and the other word that is a part of this word is a deliverance from danger, a special endowment, religious qualification, a miraculous faculty. (faculty: any natural or specialized skill)
So if your village is at risk for lion attack, you know that a fire burning is your most effective defense, you are called upon to attend to the fire, so what FIRE can you rekindle?
Go to the Word of God and consider what He thinks is sufficient fire to protect you AND your village. What is Fire to God? How do you rekindle that? Your village and your life depend on you keeping that fire blazing, are you?
