It was my daughter Molly’s favorite joke when she was small.
“Knock, knock,” she’d say.
“Who’s there?” we’d answer.
The imagery is in our songs and catch phrases, this idea of being “on fire” for God. I don’t know when it first became popular in Christian circles—maybe during the Jesus Movement of the 1970s, maybe some other time.
Intertwining fire with faith not a new idea, of course. The disciples on the road to Emmaus said they felt their “hearts burning” as Jesus explained the scriptures to them (Luke 24:32). When the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, tongues of fire rested on the disciples (Acts 2:2-4).
The Bible also speaks often of the “refiner’s fire”—the work of God that tests and shapes our faith and character. And God Himself is described as “a consuming fire” in Hebrews 12:29.
Even so, none of these have to do with that passionate, “on-fire” feeling frequently associated with youth camps and mountaintop experiences. I’m not denying such feelings exist—they’re real, valid and sometimes life-changing. But because they’re not necessarily sustainable, not having them can often be a source of guilt.
Don’t get me wrong: Heart-felt devotion to Jesus is important. Revelation 3:16 talks about the danger of letting our faith becoming lukewarm, rather than being hot or cold. And Romans 12:11-12 gives us some pretty detailed instructions about how to avoid this condition: “Never let the fire in your heart go out. Keep it alive. Serve the Lord. When you hope, be joyful. When you suffer, be patient. When you pray, be faithful.” (NIRV)
Unfortunately, what is sometimes overlooked in conversations about having fires in our hearts—or, as other translations put it, being “fervent in spirit”—is that there is no one-size-fits all approach to this. So many things factor into the equation of how we worship, how we speak and write about our faith, how we serve, how we read the Bible and how we relate to God individually.
Upbringing, personality and season of life all play a role, some larger than others.
For example, although I get pretty excited about certain topics, activities and people, I don’t know that I’ve ever used the words on fire to describe myself—about anything, really. It’s just not how I’m wired.
I’m usually OK with this, but sometimes my perspective needs a little tweaking. During one of those seasons in the wilderness when the best I could do was keep putting one foot in front of the other, I came to a simple realization: A lack of spiritual energy doesn’t mean you’re dead. It might just mean you’re tired.
Feelings come and feelings go, don’t they? We may feel like we’re “on fire” for God today; we may not tomorrow.
What matters most—when we’re slogging through a long drought of the soul or enjoying an amazingly fruitful season—is that we’re working on our relationship with God just like we work on any other relationship that is important to us—with consistency, purpose and diligence.
As Eugene Peterson explains in A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, this process is what results in deeper intimacy with God:
“We think that if we don’t feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it,” he writes. “But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in relationship with God is nurtured.”
It’s counterintuitive, for sure. But it is worth the effort—especially over the long haul.
♥ Lois
A lack of spiritual energy doesn’t mean you’re dead. It might just mean you’re tired. Share on XP.S. I’m linking up this week with Let’s Have Coffee, Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.
We’ve had a bit of a break this past week, but overall, it’s been unseasonably hot and dry around here this summer. This is typical Kansas weather for July and early August. But when the temperatures soar, the grass goes dormant and the rain clouds disappear in June, it can be downright discouraging.
That’s why an unexpected rainstorm that blew in a couple weekends ago was such a relief, physically and emotionally. You don’t realize how parched you are from the oppressive heat and lack of moisture in the air until the heavens open and dump out an inch of rain on a Saturday afternoon.
A few months ago, my laptop was updating and taking its own sweet time about it. I don’t normally pay much attention to these regular Microsoft installations, but I happened to be looking at the screen when the following message popped up: “Leave everything to us. Don’t turn off your PC.”
By this time, I was starting to wonder why the update was dragging on so long, so my first thought when I saw the message was, “Uh, that’s not very reassuring at all.” (Then I took a picture, because I somehow had a feeling this wasn’t going to go exactly according to plan.)
Turns out, my hunch was correct. When the update finished, the entire desktop was gone and the laptop was stuck in some kind of Groundhog-Day cycle that brought up the same troubleshooting screen no matter what option we selected.
Naturally, this is not what I expect when Microsoft tells me it’s installing updates that will make my computer run more smoothly. The company said it would take care of everything; instead, a documented problem with the update caused a massive headache at my house for a few days.
Randy finally spoke to a Microsoft technician who was familiar with the issue. But his only solution—to start from scratch and reinstall Windows—would have caused us to lose everything we’d saved since our last backup in January.
We obviously didn’t like that option, so my resourceful husband dredged up his high school computer knowledge and used DOS commands to save all the files from the laptop onto a handful of thumb drives.
Bullet dodged, problem solved, lesson learned. (We’re backing up more frequently from now on, for sure.)
Weeks later, I’m still amused by the irony of the mid-update message from Microsoft. Oddly enough, it also reminds me of promises in the Bible that encourage us to rely on God instead of ourselves.
• “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)
• “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him, and He will act.” (Psalm 37:5)
• “Cast all your anxiety on Him because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7)
• “Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you.” (Psalm 55:22a)
God’s promises are sort of similar to Microsoft’s, but there’s one big difference. When one of the world’s most trusted names in technology says “Leave everything to us” in the middle of an update, I have every reason to expect that my computer will work when the installation is complete.
That doesn’t always happen, of course. Microsoft is a powerful corporation, but it’s made up of finite, fallible human beings. The company sometimes makes mistakes that it’s unable to fix.
God, on the other hand, is all-powerful, perfect and infinitely trustworthy. But when He says, “Leave everything to me,” He gives us no guarantee that we’ll get the result we want. While it’s true that He often answers our prayers in amazing, remarkable ways, we’re not buying a specific, certain outcome from Him when we choose to trust Him.
Situations don’t always turn out like we hope, or wish, or might even reasonably expect. Sometimes news is bad, the answer is no, or approval is withheld. Sometimes hearts don’t change, the way gets longer, the pain gets worse.
Things can get especially sticky when we are working through situations and problems that are at least partly out of our control. It’s stressful when we lack all the information. It’s frustrating when we have to rely on other people who may not have our best interests at heart, people who do things differently than we do, or even those who may not know what they are doing at all.
I’ve found myself here lately, with issues more serious than a malfunctioning laptop. Maybe you have too.
Randy was able to fix our computer without any help from Microsoft. But life doesn’t always imitate technology, does it? It’s hard to know when to act and when to wait. It can be tough to see that line between trusting God and taking things into our own hands.
Worry hovers, anxiety threatens, irritability rises.
In such cases, trusting Him is our only viable choice, one that must be made daily, hourly—perhaps even moment by moment. In the middle of a phone call or in the middle of the night. When work piles up around us or all we have left to do is wait.
So we pray—for wisdom, for patience, for discernment to see what’s really in front of us.
“Lord, be gracious to us! We wait for You. Be our strength every morning, and our salvation in time of trouble.” (Isaiah 33:2)
And we actively, intentionally and perhaps even verbally decide again to trust Him—not to perform a certain way or work everything out exactly how we prefer, but to be our strength and our salvation, our help and our refuge, our advocate and our hope.
When God says, “Leave everything to me,” and we choose to obey—over and over again, confidently or with fear and trepidation—the promised result is far more precious than any desired outcome.
“You will keep in perfect peace the mind that is dependent on You, for it is trusting in You.” (Isaiah 26:3)
♥ Lois
God often answers our prayers in amazing, remarkable ways, but we’re not buying a specific, certain outcome from Him when we choose to trust Him. Share on X When God says, “Leave everything to me,” and we choose to obey, the promised result is far more precious than any desired outcome. Share on X
I heard a sermon about encouragement a few weeks ago.
It covered a single passage of scripture, so the application was limited to what the speaker found in those few verses. As I listened, however, it occurred to me that encouragement is not always a one-size-fits-most endeavor.
I sort of missed the deadline for the “what I learned this spring” post—or maybe the fast and furious onset of summer’s heat and humidity just catapulted me right past the desire to write one.
Perhaps what I need to do is keep track as I go along these next few months, so when the times comes for the next post of seasonal learnings, I’ll be ready. In the meantime, here are a few things that I’m loving right now.