Catch Fire!

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were driving through a small town in Tennessee when he saw a large tent that had been assembled by the side of the road.

"They having a revival?" he asked.

"Nope - fireworks", I replied, having seen the signs posted along the road.

Then the thought struck me that revival is a lot like fireworks.  I don't mean that it should be loud and flashy and short-lived.  Far from it!  There are some more positive parallels between the two.

A firework is made up of several kinds of materials.  Gunpowder propels it into the air and causes the explosion.  Different kinds of metals and chemicals such as aluminum, copper, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus create all the sparkle and the color that we see in the night sky. Those things are tightly packed into a cylinder with a fuse.  All the potential for the light, the sparkles, the color, and the sound is in that missile, but until the fuse is lit there is only silence and darkness. 

We're a lot like that.  We are packed full of the potential that God has placed within us.  We have our gifts and talents.  We have dreams of what kind of people we want to be.  If we're wise, we've packed our lives with biblical knowledge and training, but unless that spark of the Holy Spirit has been applied to our lives, we often stay dormant, complacent, and silent. A firework isn't fulfilling its potential until that fuse is lit and we aren't fulfilling ours when we get tired, jaded, cynical, or spiritually dry.

We all have seasons of our lives when this can happen.  Sometimes it's because of a struggle with circumstances, but other times we can get that way even in the middle of good times in our lives.  The important thing is to recognize when it comes and to deal with it.  You don't have to attend a revival meeting - you just need to reconnect with the one who revives.

Just like fireworks, each of us has a different expression in the kingdom when we are living up to our spiritual potential.  You might be a sparkler while your neighbor is a Roman candle, so make sure that you don't expect their journey and ministry to be just like yours. Real fireworks have a dazzling array of colors and pattern. We are all uniquely designed for a purpose.  Make it your mission to catch fire!

Perception or Deception?

Last week my family rented a little house on the Chesapeake Bay as a base of operations for our vacation. The house was next to a nature preserve and the beach was undeveloped - no hotels, no stores, no restaurants. One morning we headed to the beach early because thunderstorms were predicted for later in the day. 

As I approached the water's edge that morning and the first little waves washed over my feet I jumped back from the first shock of the cold.  At that point, if it had been up to me, I would have retreated to the warm safety of the beach blanket, but a certain little girl wanted to play in the ocean so I had to keep venturing out.

After a few minutes of wading just ankle-deep, the temperature didn't seem quite so bone-chilling.  Little by little, I walked further out into the water until the water no longer seemed that cold, but rather refreshing and pleasant.

I've noticed that in our culture there are things that at one time were shocking to hear which are now quite commonplace.  The first introductions of those subjects were like a figurative slap in the face to the mainstream of our culture but as the media continued bombarding us with the same messages over a period of time, the average person began to become accustomed to the new normal that was being presented, just like I got used to the temperature of the ocean water.  In some cases, not only the culture but the church herself began to retreat from what the word of God teaches and began to conform to the world. 

I fell into this very trap myself in my late teens and early twenties.  I remember being in the middle of my sinful lifestyle and being so angry with people who wanted me to act in a more conventionally moral way.  I used to consider those people to be close-minded.  Now I know that it's possible to be so open-minded that your brains fall out! 

The temperature of the water in the Chesapeake Bay that morning didn't change one degree in the short time I was wading.  Only my perception of the cold changed.  God's Word does not change.  It's up to us to place ourselves in agreement with what He says instead of expecting Him to "get with the times".

Focus on the Cross

Last week at my annual eye exam, I was seated at a series of different machines over the course of the appointment. As I got my head into position at one such machine, the eye doctor's assistant explained that during the test all I had to do was to "focus on the cross".  Of course, that phrase immediately screamed "this week's blog post", so I paid close attention to the mechanics of that particular exam.

As she changed settings on the machine, I followed her directions by focusing my eyes on a small cross glowing with a green light on the screen.  As I maintained that focus, I could see a series of red lines moving in chaotic, agitated patterns in my peripheral vision.  The screens changed from time to time and the cross moved to various positions.  Sometimes all the lights went off at once. When that happened, there was always an after-image of the cross bathed in royal purple light, but no sign of the former red lines.

Since I was already primed to hear the spiritual lesson in this ordinary part of my yearly exam, understanding came quickly.  No matter how frightening and angry the chaos in our lives may look at any time, we must keep our eyes on Jesus.  He is the constant in an ever-shifting world that can bring confusion.  Even though He is constant, we may need to shift our focus to see Him working in different ways in our lives. Though His character never changes, sometimes His methods can be unpredictable to us, so we need to adjust our concentration to make sure we are tuned in to Him and not just to a solution for the current problem we are facing. When all is said and done in this life, there will be no remembrance of the problems and the turmoil and the fear and the pain.  We will see only Jesus - in his royal glory.

Where's your focus today?

Are You Being Used?

I have often heard people talk about God "using them" in ministry.  I've heard others say they didn't like the term "being used".  That's because the world has given us a connotation that being used means you are being generous with your time or your talents or your money on behalf of someone who doesn't care about you at all and is just exploiting you to satisfy their own selfish needs and desires.  God can indeed make use of us, but His use of our lives is not exploitation but fulfillment.

When a violin is in the hands of an accomplished musician it is being used for its intended purpose and the music that results is breathtaking.  A paintbrush in the hands of a master painter creates beauty that astounds us. When we place ourselves in the hand of God, He can cause amazing things to happen as we yield our will to Him.  Just as the violin and the brush don't work on their own, neither do we.  

John 15:5 says, "I am the vine, you are the branches.  He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."

Abiding - just being continually, persistently, constantly, steadfastly, perpetually - in Him.

A few years ago, my husband and I were house-hunting and we went to view a home that was being shown to us by a gentleman who was handling the sale.  We mentioned briefly that we needed a home with a large living area because we hosted a weekly Bible study in our home.  We didn't mention our denomination, our doctrine, the topic of our current study - nothing at all.  It was just a passing comment.  We looked through the home and returned to the living room to find the man weeping.  He said, "I can't explain it, but I just suddenly feel convicted that I've been neglecting the Holy Spirit in my life and that I need to repent for that."  We were taken aback because we hadn't preached, witnessed, or proselytized. We hadn't mentioned the Holy Spirit.  All we had done was wander through a house.  Of course, we prayed with him and invited him to visit our church, which he did, but the point of this memory is that you don't have to set out to do something for God.  He will use you naturally for His purposes when you are just being.

Many of my blog posts are about my granddaughter, Bella, who is 2 1/2.  She is just a normal little girl, growing up in a loving family, who is learning and changing just as she should.  She has absolutely no idea that God is speaking to me through her in the tiniest little things that she does and says.  She makes sure that our family always joins hands and prays before meals, but I doubt that her understanding of Jesus goes much further than that, yet God imparts very heavy lessons to me through her almost every week.  She's not striving to serve. She is just being.  In the middle of just being herself, she is "being employed for a purpose" which is another meaning for the word use.

If you are a member of a church body, you may have a certain formal role in ministry that leads you to expect that God will be using you for certain activities at a church service, but you are by no means limited to your title or responsibility.  In fact, the most meaningful times of ministry that I have experienced were times when I had no plan to "go out to minister".  They have been chance encounters when I have been doing very ordinary things. We don't have to work so hard at forcing ourselves to structure ways to reach out. God will set us up for divine appointments and situations that we had no idea were coming.

The beginning of Acts 17:28 says, "In Him we live and move and have our being...." I realize that's an explanation of spiritual truth, but if you picture it in your mind as if your physical body was enveloped by Jesus, you can see that nobody can encounter you without encountering Him.

John 7:38 says, "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  It's a flow that comes naturally as an outcome of truly believing.  We don't have to force the water out, or pump it, or splash it, or carry it - we just have to let it flow.

Represent!

A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I took a four and a half hour scenic train ride through the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee.  We began with a nice lunch in the dining car and then moved to our assigned train car - the cheap seats.  The seats were comfortable, but we had opted for the least expensive car with just ceiling fans and windows that could open to keep us cool.

We hadn't been seated in the car long when a woman came along with her two friends to sit across the aisle from us, escorted by a coach attendant who asked if this spot was suitable for them.  The lady very snidely said, "I guess you weren't listening when I told you I needed air conditioning".  The worker explained to the lady that the tickets she had purchased were not for a car that had air conditioning.  She continued to complain and he finally left and returned with the conductor to talk to her about her complaints.  I guess they finally got through to her that this is where she would be spending the entirety of the trip because there was no more interaction between her and the train staff.  However, that didn't stop her litany of complaints and criticisms of everything from the staff to the seat to the scenery as she talked to her friends throughout the rest of the trip.

Why am I telling you this rather uncomfortable little story?  It's because the whole time this woman was airing all this unpleasantness she was wearing a massive cross necklace.  My flesh so badly wanted to go over and ask her to please drop the pendant down the front of her shirt so nobody could see it.  I certainly didn't want people to associate Christians with being rude, entitled, troublemakers.

Cross necklace or not, if you are known by others to be a Christian, they are watching to see how you treat others, how you react under stress, how you serve your employer, and how you prioritize God in your life.  If you are as negative as the world, what is there in your life that would draw someone to Jesus?  Are you attracting people to the kingdom or repelling people from the kingdom?

Her attitude made me check mine.  We are walking testaments to the possibilities of how God can transform a life.  Let's represent Jesus in such a way that folks can see "Christ in us, the hope of glory".