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I am reminding you to fan into a flame the gift that God gave you when I laid my hands on you. God’s gift was not a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of power, and love, and self-control. So you are never to be ashamed of witnessing to the Lord, or ashamed of me for being his prisoner; but with me, bear the hardships for the sake of the Good News, relying on the power of God. Keep as your pattern the sound teaching you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. You have been trusted to look after something precious; guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

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­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­“You have been trusted to look after something precious” and that something precious is the message that heaven is available to all of us of. When we remember we can get to Heaven we start acting the way we should in order to get there. But sadly it’s easy to forget what we should be doing, this is something that happens to us all.

St Peter was the first pope, he was Jesus’ closest follower yet we know that on three occasions he denied knowing Jesus, he denied being one of his followers. It’s very easy if we are confronted by someone who thinks anyone who believes in a religion is strange to go along with them and say “yeah, it’s all a bit weird isn’t it?” But do we do that about other things?

Who here is Nigerian? Ghanaian? Indian? Pakistani? Bangladeshi? Polish? Jamaican? Bajan? British? Any other nationality? You’ve all happily put your hand up.

Who supports Crystal Palace? Arsenal? Chelsea? Liverpool? Which other team?

Who here is a Catholic? Pentecostal? Church of England? Hindu? Muslim? Again, hands going up happily but it’s so easy to pretend our faith is not as important to us as it really is.

As our reading says, believing in God is a gift from God, being able to have faith that he is there is a gift from him given to us by his Holy Spirit. This does not mean you are sinful if you don’t believe in him, God will wait patiently for us all to come to him.

But when we have that gift we should be bold with it, listen again to what St Paul says “God’s gift was not a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of power, and love, and self-control.”

The spirit gives us the power to be bold in our faith, to profess it proudly, to let people understand it is part of us just as our culture or ethnicity is part of us. This does not mean going round shouting it from the rooftops, “Hello I’m Jayden and I am Christian and I believe Jesus came to give his life as a ransom sacrifice for all humanity so that we could be with him in Heaven” I would be scared, and I suspect you would be too.

The love the spirit imparts to us is love to share with all around us. As we have said before, to love someone in the biblical context is to want the best for them. St Francis of Assisi said ‘Christians should preach the Gospel at all times, when necessary, use words” this means the love should be shown in our actions, by being kind. However, this does not mean we support people if they are in the wrong. We support them to do the right thing, but by helping them do the wrong thing we are harming them, and not loving them.

Thirdly, self-control; we have to able to go gently in this task, to not get upset when people ridicule us, when they call us hypocrites, when they say we are stupid, or brainwashed and believe in stories that no one can prove.

There’s a pretend prayer of “Lord give me patience, because if you give me strength I’ll beat them to death” Patience is a virtue all of us develop as we mature.

When we do not understand something in class our teachers treat us with patience, they have strategies that break down the information so we can find it accessible. That same patience is the self-control being spoken of here.

So in our faith we have to be proud of it, we have to witness to it in our care of others and we have to be patient with people. We will fail sometimes, we all do, but it is always there to turn back to and to lead us to heaven.

 

Heavenly Father

Please give me the power to profess my faith boldly

Please give me the love to show my faith clearly

Please give me the self-control to witness to my faith wisely

May the gifts you impart to us make us worthy of being called your children, and may they lead us to heaven

We ask this through Jesus Christ your son.