Passing the Flame
Passing the Flame, series finale · Go and Grow combined service · 2 Timothy 4:1-8 (CEB)
“You do not have to keep this fire burning on your own. God lit it. God keeps it lit. Your part is to pass it on.”
This is the finale of Passing the Flame, four weeks in Paul’s letters to a young pastor named Timothy. Preached August 9, 2026, on Go and Grow Sunday, it was worshiped as one combined service in a lessons-and-carols shape: four short Scripture readings traced the whole series, and each one was answered by a reflection, a song, or the testimony of our own children and youth. So the message did not come as one sermon. It came as four short reflections, and they are gathered here in sequence.
In the reflections below:
How a relay handoff, not the running, becomes the image for a whole series about receiving faith and handing it on.
The three-generation chain Paul names, Lois to Eunice to Timothy, and what it says about a faith you did not choose for yourself.
Why “God’s word cannot be imprisoned” is the line that holds when keeping the flame lit costs something.
Paul’s closing confession, “the Lord stood by me,” and the resurrection underneath it that means death cannot put the flame out.
