Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, July 26, 2026
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: Paul’s reassurance to Timothy is a reminder for us to be loud and proud in building up the confidence and faith of the people around us.
The “gift of God” inside of Timothy can seem to us a bit ambiguous. But it would be fair to translate “gift of God” here, as Paul uses it, in its most literal sense, meaning that the gift inside of Timothy is God. God dwells inside of Timothy, inseparable from Timothy.
Essentially, then, Paul is telling Timothy that in the times where it doesn’t feel like he is good enough, strong enough, smart enough, or just generally enough, he needs to channel the divine that never actually left him. He needs to recenter and recharge in God’s all-encompassing love.
Important to note here is the practical bent that Paul puts on this otherwise abstract advice. Paul lays out for Timothy two crucial ways to get back in touch with the Holy Spirit.
The first is the “laying on of hands,” by which Paul means that Timothy needs to get his faith out of his head. Following Jesus is an embodied venture: the ways we breathe; the things we eat; the types of movement we choose; all of them inform and reflect the fact that we have been radically transformed by Christ. By nudging Timothy toward a laying on of hands, Paul is telling him to shake things up a bit and to reflect on his faith in a different way—a way that will instill for him that his faith is tangible.
The other is an invoking of Timothy’s ancestors. Paul takes some pressure off of Timothy by reminding him that his faith doesn’t have to be carried, shaped and tended to by him, alone. In other words, his faith doesn’t have to be exhausting. Rather, his faith is something familiar. Something established. Something passed down to him by people who love him. If Timothy is struggling to connect to his faith, he should try, instead, to connect to his community and see what happens next.
But most important to note here is that Paul is saying anything at all. Most of us listen to these words as if we were Timothy. Most of us connect to this passage as centuries-later recipients of the spiritual boost that Paul is providing. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But what if we flipped the script and listened to these words as a call to action? What if we connected to this passage as centuries-later imitators, seeking out every possible opportunity to speak loving reminders onto our friends, our families and our greater communities?
We don’t need to be at 100% or feel at 100%, ourselves, to be able to bolster others up. We don’t need to have mastered any part of our faith to be able to call others into it. All we need to do is exactly what Paul lays out here—to remember Christ in our bodies and to remember Christ in our people—and then to bring it up. Explicitly and on purpose.
What would have happened here if Paul assumed that Timothy knew all of these things, and that he could get himself through this round of trials and tribulations? We don’t know for certain—but we do know that these words were powerful enough to persist in a canonized version of scriptural witness that far outlived Timothy, and that is begging for our engagement today.
